“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:

• 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)
• May require considerable and ongoing dedicated training resources to ensure proper implementation and maintain consistent use over time
• 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
• 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
• 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.