Showcase: Stellent - Enterprise Information

Feature

posted 15 Mar 2005 in Volume 1 Issue 8

Showcase

The company
Name: Stephen Morton
Company: Stellent
Title: Solutions consulting manager
E-mail: stephen.morton@stellent.com
Web: www.stellent.com

Knowledge is power

Stellent is a global provider of content-management-software solutions that drive rapid success for customers by enabling fast implementations and generating quick, broad user adoption.

With Stellent, customers can easily deploy multiple line-of-business applications – such as websites, call centres, dealer extranets, compliance initiatives, accounts payable imaging and claims processing – and also scale the technology to support enterprise-wide content management needs.

Before we jump straight into a description of the Stellent product suite, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss some of the key cornerstones of our company and outline our approach to what is commonly termed ‘enterprise-content management’.

Information only has value when someone accesses it

Knowledge is power, or so Sir Francis Bacon would have us believe. Without a doubt access to the right information at the right time is the Holy Grail of all applications. Created to ease the burden of managing content, I would prefer to think of the quote in the following light: “Knowledge is enablement” – knowledge enables employees to perform their roles to the best of their abilities.

Stellent’s product suite is designed to manage all unstructured content within an organisation, namely all content that doesn’t naturally reside within a relational database, CRM or ERP application. This includes all the documents that we create on a daily basis using our desktop applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, e-mails, scanned documents, internet and intranet web pages, images and videos etc.

Stellent uses a slightly different twist on the ‘knowledge is power’ maxim – we think of it in this way: “Information only has value when someone accesses it.” This single line describes one of the key cornerstones of the Stellent product suite and direction of the company – we deliver software solutions that focus on ensuring content can be accessed across the enterprise in the most appropriate fashion.

We encourage our customers to think about the Stellent Content Repository in the same way they think about relational databases. Our customers would not hesitate to store structured data in a relational database, so why do they not expect a similar level of control over their unstructured content?

Figure 1 shows the typical volumes of information within an organisation.

It clearly demonstrates that structured data is significantly smaller in volume compared to personal content.

Ease of use drives user adoption

Too many applications fail to understand this simple concept, presenting the user with complex creation and management environments that are ultimately unable to deliver the final content to the users who require access to it. If we consider that these complex creation and management environments are put in place to ensure that the final content is accurate, complete and approved, then the entire process has been worthless unless the final document can actually be retrieved and viewed by an employee, regulator, customer etc.

We also believe that if a product is difficult to use, awkward to access or complex to configure, then it will not be implemented correctly and ultimately ignored by users, thus reducing, or in some cases completely removing, its value. This introduces another cornerstone of the Stellent product suite: “Ease of use drives product design, ease of use for end users and ease of use for system implementers and administrators.”

To use the Stellent application a typical user requires no knowledge of content management, metadata, business processes etc. In fact, we are perfectly capable of presenting our solutions to users without introducing them to new applications or new working methods. How do we do this, I hear you ask? Our approach is to not only allow users to access content through a web-browser but also to tightly integrate with a user’s desktop applications, for example by integrating content management directly into the user’s Word-processing software, spreadsheet application and e-mail clients, as well as Microsoft’s File Explorer and existing document directories.

If a user understands how to use their desktop applications and how to save and retrieve files from a file directory then they are already trained in how to use the Stellent content suite.

The act of dragging a document and dropping it into a folder is an action that most users are familiar with. To the user it’s a natural way to store an item, but to the business there are significant advantages that may not be obvious to the user, which include:

Automatic trigger of a business process (ie, approval, review etc);
Full metadata tagging of each item (each item is categorised);
Tightly controlled security (right content to right people);
Full metadata and free-text indexing of the item (extensive search);
Item re-use across multiple repositories into internet and intranet sites etc.

Single source management

How can companies ensure that they have one single, consistent version of the truth? How can they ensure that information available to an internal employee is the same as that available to their call-centre operatives, displayed in their internet and partner extranet sites and is also consistent across their internal intranets? This is clearly an emerging issue for a large number of companies and one that has until recently been approached by duplicating content across the organisation or creating sophisticated interfaces between disparate applications.

For example, let’s imagine we are promoting a new product. The product marketing team will decide on the product parameters and pass the information, possibly via e-mail, to the internet support team who will post this information to the internet site, the same information is e-mailed to the partner team so that the partner extranet site may also be updated (this is probably achieved by re-entering the same information into their partner system), the corporate communications team also receives notification via e-mail and again re-enters it into the intranet sites and finally our call-centre manager re-enters the information, once again, into the call-centre knowledge base.

So we now have five versions of the truth.

Let us assume a customer is calling the company to enquire about the new product they have recently read about on the company internet site. They will speak to the call-centre operative who will access the call-centre knowledge base and view a different (although we hope it’s the same) item of content from that on the website. If the information differs then confusion ensues, and the call-centre operative may well then access the intranet to try and resolve the issue, only to find a subtly different version of content and finally throw the towel in!

This scenario is currently the norm, not the exception, and within most companies today there is a growing demand for a single corporate repository. Having made a case for a single repository this in itself is not enough – the key is for the repository to be ‘re-skinned’ for each different type of interaction. For example, a call-centre operative will be presented with an interface that is tailored for them to search and view information, the internet site will typically present the information in a glossy brochure approach, the intranet will present information based upon business divisions and departments etc.

So we arrive at another cornerstone of Stellent’s approach to content management: “Create content once then re-purpose and deliver it to multiple consumption points simultaneously.”

What is the value of unstructured content?

Companies today pay virtually no attention to the cost of the creation of unstructured content and the value it holds for the business. Most are obsessed with their desire to number crunch and to control structured information, where little value is placed upon the analysis of unstructured content.

Recent research on knowledge work shows that knowledge workers spend more time recreating existing information than they do turning out information that does not already exist. Some studies suggest that 90 per cent of the time that knowledge workers spend in creating new reports or other products is spent in recreating information that already exists. In 1999, a European study by IDC examined this phenomenon, called the ‘knowledge work deficit’, and concluded that the cost of intellectual rework, substandard performance and inability to find knowledge resources was $5,000 per worker per year.

Here’s what they found:

The time spent looking for and not finding information costs our mythical organisation a total of $6m a year. That doesn’t include opportunity costs or the costs of reworking information that exists but can’t be located;
The cost of reworking information because it hasn’t been found costs that organisation a further $12m a year (15 per cent of time spent in duplicating existing information);
Not locating and retrieving information has an opportunity cost of more than $15m annually. Accelerating the introduction of a blockbuster drug or delaying its demotion to generic status by just one day through use of information access software could mean $8.5m or more each day;
Call-centre costs and volumes have been decreased by 30 per cent and more when better search and browsing tools were implemented.

Product suite

Stellent Universal Content Management provides rapid success and distinct advantages to customers via its product functionality, breadth of content managed, architecture and solutions – all of which enable rapid implementation and quick user adoption.

The product suite is built upon a unified architecture that allows organisations to deploy web-content-management, document-management, collaboration, records-management and digital-asset-management applications on one platform and with one user interface. This architecture enables customers to fully leverage content management investments across the organisation and throughout various applications.

Universal content management offerings

The foundation: Stellent Content Server

The repository. The foundation of Stellent Universal Content Management begins with a completely web-based repository, where all content, regardless of content type, is stored for management, re-use and access.

Core services. While stored in the repository, all types of content, ranging from e-mail, discussions, documents, reports, spreadsheets and records to images, multimedia or other digital formats, receive the same set of fundamental core services. These core services include library services, security, conversion services, workflow, personalisation, index/search, replication and administration.

Application modules

Built on top of the Universal Content Management core services are five key application modules. All modules draw from the same set of core services, but offer additional services specific to the type of content being managed.

STELLENT WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT provides the additional services necessary for creating, managing and publishing web content and providing an infrastructure to support ones, hundreds or even thousands of websites.
STELLENT DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT provides additional services necessary for capturing, securing and sharing digital and paper-based documents and reports.
STELLENT COLLABORATION MANAGEMENT provides additional services focused on the unique needs of an ad hoc collaborative environment.
STELLENT RECORDS MANAGEMENT – a DoD 5015.2-certified solution that provides additional services specific to creating, declaring, classifying, retaining and destroying records based on active content. Stellent Records Management is a complementary technology solution to any records management programme.
STELLENT DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT provides additional services focused on the unique needs of managing and providing access to rich media and digital assets.

Integration options

Stellent Universal Content Management’s single layer of integration enables web-content management, document management, digital-asset management, collaboration and records management to be interchangeable, extensible and complementary to each other, reducing integration costs and ensuring a lower total cost of ownership. Stellent technology is standards-based, multi-platform and service-oriented, and provides productised integrations to leading application server, portal and enterprise-resource-planning applications.

Key applications

Stellent enables organisations of all sizes within a broad range of industries to implement web-based line-of-business and enterprise-wide content-management initiatives. While your immediate priority may be one or multiple line-of-business initiatives, rest assured that Stellent Universal Content Management is scalable and flexible enough to support your long-term content-management strategy. Many organisations start with one or more line-of-business content-management applications, such as:

HR and employee portals;
Compliance applications for ISO certification, JCAHO and HIPAA mandates;
Contract management;
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance;
Partner extranets, intranets or public websites;
Records management;
Enterprise report distribution;
Call centre online resources.

While some organisations grow from multiple line-of-business applications to an enterprise-wide initiative, others begin immediately with an overall enterprise-content-management application, such as:

Standardised platform for intranets, extranets and public websites;
Enterprise-portal content integration;
Multi-site management infrastructure;
ERP/CRM content integration; Collaboration.

Key benefits

Improve operational efficiency and productivity: Improve business processes with consistent automated routing and approval cycles for all types of content. Provide consistent, 24x7 self-service access to secured documents, records, web content, discussions and digital assets.

Lower total cost of ownership by consolidating servers and infrastructure: Consolidate documents, web content, records, digital assets and collaboration into a shared system and architecture. Reduce the number of content applications you have in-house;
Easily manage multiple sites with a consistent corporate brand: consolidate servers and infrastructure. Enforce consistent branding while empowering business units to own site design and maintain content;
Reduce risks in the event of disaster, theft or loss: thorough back-up, recovery and roll-back support reduces the amount of time and effort required to re-construct mission-critical information;
Minimise risk of costly fines and penalties: reduce the risk of fines, sanctions or criminal penalties for corporate executives by complying with laws and regulations;
Make all corporate audio and video training sessions available via the web: enable quick and easy browser-based access to all digital assets.