Interview: PG Bartlett, Vice President – Marketing, Arbortext, Inc.

February 12, 2004 Blog No Comments

My interview with PG Bartlett, Vice President of Marketing for Arbortext, Inc. will shine some light on the issues affecting the adoption of content management and your abilty to sell content management to your boss. Learn what some of the biggest obstacles and misconceptions are and how you can address them.

TCW: PG, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed by The Content Wrangler. We’ve all heard that content management is supposed to make us more productive and eventually reduce the amount of money we spend publishing content. But, how do we sell content management to a boss or decision maker? What specifically can content management help us do better?

PG: A successful content management implementation should deliver not only process benefits (reductions in cost and time-to-market) but also improvements in the quality of the information itself. You have to justify the investment on the basis of the hard, measurable savings that you will achieve from process improvements. But to create a sense of urgency that your organization should make the investment now, you should lean on the less tangible benefits that will come from improving the quality of the information itself. Ideally, you should also tie the investment to the company’s current key strategies.

If you define “content management” broadly to include not only the benefits that a content management system (CMS) provides but also the benefits of related technologies such as XML-based authoring and automated publishing, the benefits can be enormous.

On the process side, we have seen benefits including:

Improvements in author productivity of 50% to 100%
Reductions in publishing time of up to 95%
As much as 20x reductions in the cost of updating information to keep it current
Improvements of 30% to 50% in the cost and time of translations to other languages

The benefits of improving the quality of information vary based on the type of information you’re creating. If you’re creating service information, the benefits of delivering information that’s more accurate, consistent, complete and timely can include a more productive field service force, greater customer satisfaction, and higher customer retention.

TCW: Are there any commonly overlooked benefits that can help us sell content management to upper management (if you work for a firm) or a client (if you are a consultant)? Content reuse seems like a no-brainer benefit, but what are some of the less obvious improvements that may provide a return on investment?

PG: There are at least two that may often be overlooked:

Tying project goals to improving customer experience may lead to unanticipated benefits. For example, you may find that customers find considerable value in being able to receive information that’s customized to your audience—from “mass production” to “mass customization.” A side benefit may be a significant reduction in the cost of printing, warehousing, shipping and scrap.
Integrating information from business systems directly into documents may processes but also in the freshness and consistency of the information you provide.

TCW: What are some common objections to content management? And, how can you overcome these arguments?

PG: The biggest objections include:

“Too complex and difficult” – Companies are creating real competitive advantage by implementing content management by improving their cost structures, their agility and their customer relationships, and these benefits far outweigh the challenges of implementation.
“Not necessary” – Most executives remain unaware of the breadth and depth of inefficiencies that exist in their processes for creating and sharing information, but they will respond to what others in their industry are doing so case studies and ROI projections can be invaluable tools.
“Too all-encompassing” – In many cases, achieving the benefits of content management require the integration of separate “information silos” that span separate departments. To get these departments working together, high-level executive sponsorship is needed. Vendors and outside consultants can often help break the logjam.

TCW: Some analysts report content management projects are failing to achieve the return on investment they promised. If my boss or client has been reading the same analysis, how do I overcome their objections to content management? After they read these negative reports, they start to believe content management software tools are not yet good enough. I don’t believe that’s true. Yes, they could be improved, but they do work. Don’t they? If so, why do some content management projects fail? Poor planning? Lack of strategy? Failure to commit resources?

PG: Content management projects succeed or fail at the same rate as other large IT projects, and for the same reasons. Almost invariably, the problems arise not from tools or software but from trying to obtain significant benefits from a “quick and dirty” implementation.

In most unsuccessful implementations, they hoped that they could just buy some software, bolt it on to an existing process, and the benefits just roll in. The problem is that most of the benefits arise from fixing process problems, and fixing them requires not only a change in tools but also a change in behavior.

In successful implementations—and we have seen many—they invest the time upfront to plot out a long-term plan that addresses problems and opportunities in a comprehensive way. The knowledge to create these plans typically does not exist within the organization because the discipline is still relatively new, so they bring in experts to help.

About PG Bartlett: PG Bartlett is Vice President of Marketing for Arbortext, Inc.. Bartlett is responsible for overall corporate positioning, branding and identity, and driving an integrated communication strategy. On a daily basis he oversees public relations, market research, direct marketing and analyst relations. Since joining Arbortext, Bartlett has hosted electronic webinars on topics ranging from