Is Bad Content Management White Collar Crime?

In the last few weeks, four different people have asked me about content or knowledge management systems. This made we wonder why all the interest in content or knowledge management system when they have been around for many years. I listened to the various stories and motivations to developing a better system. The reason ranged from:

• People leave the company and the next person is not able to find previously created work.
• There is a need to rapidly develop training and adapting already existing material is quicker if they could only find the material.
• People are trying to find the latest media (especially logos) created by various people and they are not sure where to locate them.
• Companies want to change something in one location and it be changed everywhere, but do not have the tools to accomplish this task.

These problems have always been around for lots of years. Back in 2001 when I first helped build a knowledge management system for a hosptial, we had to use folders and a SQL database, because we could not afford an enterprise content management system. In 2004 when work for an aviation company we purchased a LMS/LMCS that was cutting edge at the time, but is outdated now. Many companies did the same thing. Now those systems are outdated and new trends like social media, collaborative learning, and the cloud are making content or knowledge management more challenging. Now working for a Fortune 500 company the need is even greater. Let's explore what has have occurred in the last 10 years to make content management systems essential. Now there are:

• Fewer people doing the work and with layoffs poor content management makes locating material worst.
• Less people, doing the work which makes it more important to repurpose material when possible.
• Collaboration or social media is popular, but this can make locating content more difficult. 
• Storage space is cheap and companies want to go paperless, so people tend to keep everything digitally.
• When content management is poor people want to keep assets on their computer hard drives (so they can find them), which makes content management impossible.
• Companies have several content management systems, which do not talk to each other. For example some companies have:
• Content management systems for their websites (ex. WordPress)
• Documents management systems (ex SharePoint)
• Learning content management systems (ex. OnPoint)
• Enterprise content management systems (ex Alfresco)
• Training authoring systems (ex Lectora)

As I thought about  content managment I knew why people were struggling and thinking if I could help them find the right tool things would be great. I knew having a content management tools without the 3 P’s (people, procedures and process) does not work.

In Part 2 - we will talk about how to implement the 3 P’s (Processes, Procedures and People) to develop a content or knowledge management system that works.