“The user shall determine the suitability of the product for his or her intended use and shall assume all risk and liability and connection therewith.”
Product disclaimers are everywhere. Presumably crafted by very smart people wearing suits, who know much better than the rest of us, these little nuggets of wisdom caution us against all sorts of things. Tossing an aerosol can into an open flame for instance, or using hot sauce to rinse out our contact lenses. Essentially, they remind us of what a product isn’t intended for, and what bad things might happen if we don’t pay heed.
However, you’ll find no such disclaimer on a piece of content management software…but there should be, and I’ll explain why.
In our line of work, we talk to mid-market manufacturers on a daily basis. When discussing product support documentation, a remark that we hear all too frequently goes something like this:
“Well, we bought this popular content management system/authoring tool a few years back, but we don’t really like it/use it/are getting away from it.”
Time and time again, we hear the same story. These mid-market manufacturers, by all accounts successful and staffed with intelligent people, decided to move into managed content using a software application, and then at one point, stopped. Why is this?
Was the application faulty or flawed? Did the software company makes dubious claims that simply weren’t true?
In reality, no, neither. Assuming the mid-market manufacturer did a modicum of homework and purchased an application from a reputable software vendor, the application was likely perfectly functional.
The problem is the disclaimer, or more precisely, the lack thereof. It’s what the software can’t do that’s the real issue.
Were I to write a disclaimer for a content management software application, it would have to at a minimum include the following:
“The use of this product implies no remedy nor correction of the following issues, included but not limited to:
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Continued, excessive use of your engineering team’s time spent developing and reviewing product support documentation may result (Product support content will not research, review, and edit itself)
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May require considerable and ongoing dedicated training resources to ensure proper implementation and maintain consistent use over time
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It is the responsibility of the user to both identify and structure legacy content for re-use; the software only allows for the potential of this functionality
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It is the responsibility of the user to establish and maintain an internal process that supports the flow of information into and out of the software
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The software vendor makes no claim regarding the quality or usability of the content managed within.
Your individual results may vary.”
Content management software companies have done an excellent job making sure they have exposure; it is their job to exist in the spaces where people that have the challenge of developing and maintaining content live.
However, in doing so the line between content development and content management has been blurred and this especially true in the mid-market. It’s one thing to have the ability to single source and manage content, quite another to improve the way it is developed, integrated into internal workflow processes, and then maintain over time.
So after you’ve read all the website materials, sat through the webinar, and heard everything there is to hear about what the software can do, make sure to stop for a minute and consider how’ll you address what it can’t do, too.
Tags: cms, content management, engineering documentation, manufacturing, mid-market, single sourcing
In my experience, the most common problems resulting in general ECM unhappiness are:
- The company did not have the right ECM expertise to help them find the right solution
- The company did not have the right ECM expertise to help them customize the solution
- The company did not have the right ECM expertise to help them deploy the solution
- The company did not have the right ECM expertise to help them management the solution
Instead, these functions have been just handed over to IT and more often than not they make do with the personnel they have. Investing in just one ECM subject matter expert can make a huge difference in solution acceptance.
I can see your point of the consultant’s growing frustration with customers that have not properly assessed their business needs and have run away with a solution rather than doing the due diligent process:
- does the “solution” meet our requirements, business, legal, support etc
- have we got the resources for a successful configuration, testing, training, change management and implementation
- do we have subject matter expertise to support the solution and maintain it properly
The implementations I have been involved in were mostly “managed” by IT. And in no disrespect for IT I feel that it is not a “system implementation” but “business process implementation”. You need to analyse the strengths of the new tool and that requires in many cases changing/tweaking your business processes to take advantage of the product. That seems an under valued (or should I dare say totally ignored) aspect of software implementation. There is a lot of replicating and believe it or not that usually leads to customisation, which ten leads to upgrade issues and high costs.
I feel that information management/knowledge management aspect of new tools/software exploration should lead to the project rather than IT sec. But in all a more inclusive/collaborative approach between IT/IM/KM is required for a successful choice and implementation.
Good article John. Definitely should get thoughts flowing for those who have yet to acquire a CCMS.
Most folks need to make sure they understand their own processes and requirements when shopping around and have any demonstrations tailored to their environment and not to some pre-packaged demo suite.
Good article indeed (means probably I would defend a similar opinion
. The point is that when a customer prefers to beleive the software will get it all solved there is nothing to do. Just wait. Then comes the time for “psychologists” ; someone has to handle what has become a company secret … 30% of the Master Data are duplicate or uncorrect, there are not many documents managed in the entreprise content management system and the software maintenance price is incredibly high when compared to real business value. And indeed during that time no one has spent a cent in creating shared value content. So all users could stay safe, sitting on their personnal knowledge they negotiate on occasion. What about handling the information sharing process at first ?