Today, October 21st, between 12:30 PM -1 PM EDT, Barry Bealer, President/CEO of RSI Content Solutions, will be taking a virtual stage at the NISO Two-Day Virtual Conference, sponsored by none other than RSuite client, SAGE Publications.

Barry's presentation, 'Trends in Publishing Automation' will be about publishers and how they have traditionally focused on the development of content along product lines. Barry will speak about how today, publishers are moving towards a product agnostic production focus that requires automation to meet time to market demands. He will then review the current trends in automation technology within a publishing organization.

For more information or to register, please visit NISO's event page.

Diane Burley, Chief Content Strategist at MarkLogic explains how RSuite CMS has improved productivity and reuse by ease of search across their sales and marketing departments. MarkLogic also sees RSuite being used as a central repository, not only for sales and marketing, but expanding throughout the company. As RSuite is completely rolled out, they plan to see consistent new uses.

Publishers today are under increasing pressure to meet shorter time to market demands, build more products through content reuse, and automate the entire lifecycle of content development. HarperCollins has embarked on a transformation project to meet their long-term publishing strategy.

Mike McGinniss, Senior Vice President, Publishing Services from HarperCollins Publishers and Denis Wilson, Editor-in-Chief of Book Business will discuss:

• Pros and cons of transformation projects
• Lessons learned from executing cross-organization and cross-functional projects
• Best practices for meeting aggressive timelines

Whether you are just starting a digital publishing transformation project or plan on embarking on a project, you won’t want to miss attending this webinar.

Software applications present some of the greatest design flexibility as it tends to lack many of the conventional constraints present in the physical world. In my last blog entry I wrote about some unintended ways even a good design can go astray. Similarly, customer requests have the same potential for creating problems with a product.

The customer is always right?

The first time I built an application was when I was moonlighting on database application development. In this case, the customer had space in their office where I worked. I could engage one of the users of the system any time and have them provide immediate, direct input as I went along. We rolled out the application and it proved nearly unusable. Because much of the design evolved organically focused on the details, the overall system proved unusable.

A lesson on context

I ended up discarding much of the work we had done and starting over. This time I now understood what the customer was trying to do. I also had seen firsthand how building features without a strong sense of context could create a system that was very difficult to use. I started to work in the off hours when the office was empty. Then every few days engaged directly with the customer. This ultimately proved successful.

Lessons learned

My early programming experience in many ways mirrors that of the software industry. New methodologies have been developed to develop applications that respond to a customer requirements in a productive manner

The redesign of RSuite 4 provided the opportunity for us to also revise our product development methodology. We now use the Agile methodology with shorter design cycles and more frequent updates so that product development efforts are validated quickly.

Agile allows us to be more responsive to customers. Instead of developing for months or years before putting development in the hands of users, AGILE dictates shorter development cycles usually measured in weeks. Priorities can be shifted rapidly if needed. Unexpected issues that might derail the timeline in a long development cycle are now incorporated into the normal product engineering routine.

Community input

Before beginning the redesign we launched a new community support site for our customers. This site handles the traditional support issues and made it much easier for our customers and support agents to track and resolve issues. It also serves as a "database" that the product management and engineering teams can reference when prioritizing new development.

A corporate memory of customer issues provides a historical backdrop to better understand areas that challenge users. Active, unresolved issues can also be evaluated immediately. At times we will identify an issue that we are in a position to address quickly. Already we have made UI changes that may not have been formally brought to the team's attention. Potential product improvements may be discovered whenever a customer contacts support to use a feature.

Community tools

The support community also offers customers community forums. Documentation as well as formal and informal information about RSuite can be found in our forums. Some forums are entirely made up of official information from us. Other forums are dedicated for customers to make and comment on suggestions, request advice, or offer their feedback to other customers or us. There are forums for both end users as well as integrators and developers. Having this communication available is a valuable source of direct and indirect feedback for us. 

Implementation reviews

Implementations of RSuite are also an important input into the product. We review implementations, conduct customer visits, and also host an annual conference so that we can maintain engagement with our customers and understand how they are using the product. Regular meetings occur between product management & engineering and the project managers. RSuite imposes no theoretical limitation on how the product can be extended. When we look at how solutions were implemented, we sometimes identify things that will help improve the efficiency of future projects. We can also verify our best practices are being followed and determine areas for improving communication.

Responsibly responsive

Customer feedback is an important consideration in keeping RSuite's evolution responsive to our customers' needs. Users of software may have suggestions about a specific product modification or addition. Sometimes these suggestions can be implemented as requested. To be sure it is important that we also understand the motivation and requirements behind the request. We must then consider the best strategy to address that need. Sometimes that may not exactly match the initial request. But it will likely lead to a superior result if it is contextualized with a broader product vision.

Every so often we get inquiries from our RSuite enterprise clients or prospects about why there are services required to implement our RSuite software if the pre-configured environment is pretty much useful out-of-the-box?  If one digs a little deeper and analyzes exactly what types of services are required, I think a publisher will be surprised that services related to customizing or extending the content management software are actually pretty small.  Sure there will be custom forms for metadata capture or custom search forms, but these are generally a few days worth of work at the most.  On the other hand, services related to content structure and workflow re-engineering have a huge impact on the services required for a content management product implementation independent of the software package chosen.

Content Engineering

Content engineering can be simply defined as understanding the structure of your content and putting a migration plan to make it adhere to some type of standard.  In some cases very large publishers have crafted a proprietary content standard, but many adhere to industry standards such as NLM, D4P, DocBook, etc.  The amount of services required to transform the content from one format to another can vary widely depending on the amount of file formats and complexity of content.  While this effort can be categorized as part of the content management project, it is not part of the content management software.  

Content structure and organization reflects how an organization has worked over time.  If the publisher was disciplined and remained in compliance with industry standards, the amount of services to get the content into the content management system is minimal at best.  Basically, if the publisher has well structured content that adheres to a DTD, then it should just work in RSuite or other systems.  The challenge surfaces when multiple products adhere to different DTD's and then the publisher wants to consolidate under one standard.  Again, a very good idea, but this is an issue beyond the content management software. Or the publisher has no DTD and wants to migrate all of their content to a standard.  Again, an excellent idea, but the effort to complete this should not reflect on the content management software.  As one of our engineers has said, "there is no magic button to transform the content, you either have the discipline to adhere to a standard or it will take some work to transform the content so that it does comply".  There is no simple solution.

Workflow Analysis and Automation

Services related to workflow are generally consultative in nature whereby a business analyst sits with all parties to understand current "as-is" and "to-be" workflows.  In some cases publishers have done a very nice job documenting their current as-is workflows but have a difficult time envisioning the to-be workflows.  This is normal and can generally be addressed by creating some pilot workflows and showing the client how the software will help them.  In some cases though a publisher which has been doing business one way for the past 20-years can have cultural challenges to change to the to-be workflows.  This has been becoming less and less over the past 5-years as the need to embrace multi-channel publishing is critical to the sustainability of the publishing business.  In other words, optimizing workflows, creating efficiencies, and actually automating multi-channel publishing are no longer options.  It does mean in some cases that people within the publishing organization will have to be re-skilled or let go.  That is unfortunately the nature of the game right now for publishers.  Workflow equals efficiency which equals cost reductions which equals a reduction or reallocation of staff or an increase in production throughput.

A publisher that requires significant manual steps (e.g., a person needs to review and approve content) in their workflow will not realize the true benefits of implementing the workflow software.  Manual steps are still required in the editorial process, but minimizing them is key.  An automated step (e.g., content transformation) is the key to gaining the efficiencies that are sought by management.  Depending on the complexity of the automated steps, the amount of services required can vary widely.  The key is automating the highest value steps in the workflow and minimizing the manual steps.  Again, the more a publisher understands how they need to change their process, the less services will be required to implement the content management software.  The software will do whatever you configure it to do, but time spent understanding exactly what a publisher should be doing takes time and requires a visionary within your organization to think outside the box.

The Bottom Line

For both content engineering and workflow related services, the more a publisher is organized in these areas, the less services are required for a content management project independent of whether it is RSuite or not.  The painfulness of addressing years of neglect in a structured or disciplined production of content can require significant services to unwind the structure, business rules, or lack of adherence to standards.  Unfortunately this can be seen as a barrier to implementing a content management system.  

While a new content management system could offer tremendous value in content reuse, version control, and production efficiency, the new software cannot magically address the messiness of the content or undocumented workflow. If your team has been organized and have very structured content with a well documented and agreed upon workflow (even if you are using legacy technology), then services to implement a CMS should be relatively small.  

If you are embarking on a content management initiative, I would highly recommend that you have an honest assessment of your content structure and your workflow.  If these pieces are in order, then you have just increased your odds of a successful content management system implementation and reduced the required services to implement the software.

Technical skills for publishers using a CMS and XML

Publishers often ask us what skills they should have on staff in order to be ready to use a CMS and XML. Our response is that publishers will be more effective if they have staff with the technical skills tied most closely to their content and products. Not every publisher needs to be able to perform RSuite customizations using Java. (In fact, few publishers need or have this.) But every publisher should know their own content and publishing processes. This is especially important when a system is first rolled out, but continues to be useful for normal system maintenance and for those occasional unexpected problems when you need help fast to get your product out the door. It’s not that you can’t outsource these skills; it’s that you will be more nimble with them.

Identifying Your Content Architect Candidates

At RSI we usually refer to someone with these skills as a “content architect”. In most cases, our customers already have one or more staff members poised to take on deeper content architecture expertise, and hiring isn’t necessary.  You’ll recognize these colleagues as the ones you already turn to for answers about why and how things get done.

• They know your content and products deeply.
• They know your processes backwards and forwards.
• They are naturally interested in the under-the-cover details of your existing systems.
• They have technical aptitude – an intuition for how software works or might work. They might also have a background in scripting or another software development area.

Most often (but not always!) these colleagues will be on your print or digital production teams.

Skills and Knowledge Areas to Consider

The following are typical areas of focus for content architects. Each item’s relative importance depends on factors like the volume and pace of your publishing schedule and the complexity of your content and processes. While you don’t necessarily need the same person to be expert in all these areas, having one or two people with broad knowledge across the areas provides the shortest path to solving problems and planning system improvements.

DTD/XSD maintenance

Publishers rarely need staff who can develop an XML schema (DTD or XSD) from scratch, but someone on staff should be able to read your schemas, understand how they are used to mark up your content, and talk in detail with partners, vendors, or other departments who need to use them. This is crucial because you need this skill to manage your vendors (e.g., Is the XML created by your vendor good enough?).

Sometimes it’s useful if your content architect can make minor schema changes and deploy updates to RSuite, but since such changes are rare and rarely time-sensitive, you can usually do without this skill on staff.

Metadata maintenance

Metadata is all the data you use to manage your content and to enable findability and usability on the web and elsewhere. It drives many internal and customer-facing publishing systems. Content architects can help you plan how to build in metadata quality aids and checks, and can diagnose problems when something goes wrong. For example, if topical metadata is missing, content might not be findable on your website or might not be delivered to a partner. How might your CMS help avoid this problem? How can you tell when a problem has occurred?

Transformation knowledge and technical skills

Transformations are the automated or semi-automated steps that convert content from one form to another, such as from Word to XML or XML to ePUB. Transformations are responsible for much of the efficiency gains and product improvements CMS and XML bring.

But here’s the thing: Unless you have products that are very high volume and can be held to extraordinary consistency standards (think “dictionaries”), then your transformations will never really be finished. No sooner will you get one issue or book out the door then you will realize that your next project is just a little different. You need a new type of article, or a new type of layout element. This is normal and this is okay – as long as you can quickly and affordably adjust your transformations for minor changes.

When using RSuite, this means someone on staff (or at least on call) should be able to maintain Word-to-XML mappings and XSLT scripts and the mappings and XSLT scripts responsible for generating outputs from XML. Our most successful customers do light maintenance themselves and call us or other experts only for more complex changes.

Template maintenance

Most of our customers use two types of templates: those for Microsoft Word, and those for their page production systems (e.g., InDesign). Templates define many of the inputs and outputs of your CMS. Along with transformations, they enable you to work predictably and, therefore, efficiently. A staff content architect should understand how templates must be used to ensure successful transformations, and ideally will be able to make minor changes to templates to correspond with maintenance level transformation changes.

Workflow and content lifecycle management

“Workflow and content lifecycle management” is a fancy way of saying someone needs an understanding of the changes content goes through over time, from creation/acquisition through to delivery to all targets, and who or what is making those changes. While the prior areas focus on the technical details of the content and software, lifecycle management adds in knowledge of who (or what system) is doing what when. This holistic understanding is required to quickly debug and correct problems when they occur, and to know when outside help is and isn’t needed.

How to Start?

The best way to prepare someone to be a content architect after your CMS launches is to make them one of the primary participants in CMS implementation. They will naturally learn most or all they need to know through the project. If your content architect is going especially deep with transformations or schema management, then formal training might be desirable, but in most cases it’s not needed. What they will need is some time to gain experience while still being backed up by outside experts.

Your content architect will also need some of his or her ongoing work hours freed up. For some publishers, this work represents only a minutes each day. In other cases, such as when significant new product development goals are being rolled out concurrently with the CMS, this could turn into a fulltime job. Your RSI project manager can help you think through what is most likely in your organization.

In summary, you need a content architect for light maintenance, to solve unexpected problems, and to help plan for content and CMS changes over time. The good news is you probably already have the  right person on staff!

I had the opportunity to attend the Outsell Signature Event last week that brings together top executives from the information industry.  As always, everything that Outsell does is top notch and so in an inviting setting and surrounded by movers and shakers in the industry a number of key topics were discussed, debated, and argued.  The event traditionally focuses on all aspects of the information industry and provides an executive level view of the economy, business models, technology adoption, current stress points, and business and technology transformation.

Some random points from the sessions:

• The economy is going to continue to grow at a relatively slow pace for the next few years and it will be worse if the US government does not address the debt ceiling quickly.
• Many information providers are being disrupted by the shift to electronic products.  Those who have adopted a more progressive business model are able to weather the storm a bit easier.  Those who are stuck in their old ways are beginning to feel the significant decline of print revenue.
• Design of electronic products have evolved tremendously with users expecting a clean, functional design.  No longer is it acceptable to have great content and a poor interface.
• Software vendors are also feeling the disruptions with changing software licensing models.  The need to have an a la carte license model is a requirement, not an option.
• Transformation is not an option anymore.  Too many variables are changing at breakneck speed and an organization needs to be ready to change or face the inevitable decline.
• Wearable technology is really cool and will take some time to be adapted but don't be surprised if you are wearing a small device (e.g., watch, pin, earring) within the next decade that is attached to the internet in some way.

While RSuite CMS was not front and center at this conference as an exhibitor, it was interesting to speak with publishers who continue to be challenged by managing a large (dare I say big data) set of disparate content.  

Publishers realize that content management software is an absolute necessity to transforming their organization, and I believe executive management understands the larger problem is with their processes and culture.  The culture (i.e., people) side of transformation is probably the most challenging and will continue to require a significant investment of time and money to address. The process side of transformation is a bit easier because everyone wants to make their jobs easier and more efficient.  It is great to finally hear executives say that XML content management is no longer a "nice to have" but a necessity in business transformation to meet multi-channel publishing goals. Fortunately, RSuite CMS is positioned very well to help out publishers in their transformation.

I look forward to the meeting next year.

RSuite CMS, a content management system used by some of the most globally recognized publishers, will be exhibiting at the American Collective Stand S31 in Hall 8.0 during the Frankfurt Book Fair. Click here or below to make an appointment between Wednesday, 9 October and Friday, 11 October to speak with an RSuite specialist.

• Reduce product development and time to market by over 50%
• Achieve total control of your content using the newly released RSuite 4
• Realize your multi-channel publishing goals!

            ...and so much more

Time slots are almost completely filled. Schedule your meeting today to lock down your time with an RSuite CMS specialist.

RSI is proud to announce the relaunch of www.rsuitecms.com, a website which provides details on our three new licensing models.

These three licensing models, called "editions", will make RSuite available to publishers of any size, as well as other industries. The new editions are: RSuite CMS Team Edition (TE), RSuite CMS Standard Edition (SE), and RSuite CMS Enterprise Edition (EE). 

Find out which edition is right for you:

RSuite CMS Team Edition (TE)

RSuite TE is a hosted CMS solution ideal for the needs of small and mid-sized publishers or organizations who are stepping into content management for the first time. We have packaged the popular features and function of our industry-leading solution and made it easily accessible and affordable.

RSuite CMS Standard Edition (SE)

RSuite SE is the perfect solution for mid-size publishers and media companies that demand the full feature-set of an enterprise solution without the price tag. RSuite SE manages the full lifecycle of content from creation to packaging and distribution. RSuite SE is a scalable CMS that can serve as a central repository for all of your content, provide significant automation through workflow, and package and distribute content to targeted licensing partners or other platforms.

RSuite CMS Enterprise Edition (EE)

RSuite EE is a full featured CMS that scales to terabytes of content and thousands of users. If you are looking for an industrial strength CMS to leverage your investment in MarkLogic, RSuite EE is the CMS you need. Why build on top of MarkLogic when you can install and be running in hours with RSuite EE? Trusted by some of the world’s most recognized global publishers, RSuite EE provides the framework to run your entire publishing operation.

Interested in seeing a demo? Click the demo request button under the product that best describes your company's needs. We'd love to hear from you!

Today, stresses on the publishing industry are more accelerated than most other industries. New expenses are added to reach publishing targets and those expenses don't always add to total revenue. A content management system (CMS) helps publishers manage, store, transform, and delivery content in a sustainable and economical way. A CMS is a publisher’s factory. 

Want to learn how your organization can benefit from RSuite CMS?