A brief overview

                                                “Information is Power”

Today is an information age, to achieve competitive advantage companies are in a process of accumulating as much information as they can. To manage such mammoth information or content is a challenging task in itself. Content can be of any type such as documents, multimedia files, such as audio or video files. Processes involved in content management life cycle is as follows

                                                            Content Management Flow

As can be seen from the figure content management starts with creating content pertaining to a particular subject. Next step is to update our database with the new content after editing it. Next step involved is publishing the content from where a desired viewer can view it. Translating content may also be required which can be in terms of translating content into a particular regional language etc. Once the desired viewer has viewed the content there is a need to archive the content for future reference. Once content archival is done next process is to retire the content and look for fresh ones. This is a comprehensive life cycle a typical content management team follows. The stakeholders involved in content management system are as follows

• Content creator/author – responsible for creating and editing content.
• Content Editor – responsible for streamlining the content message and the style of delivery, including translation and localization.
• Publisher – responsible for publishing the content to a platform where a viewer can view the content.
• Administrator –responsible to providing access rights to the content. He is the person who is responsible that other stakeholders perform their work efficiently.
• Consumer, viewer or guest- A person who views or read the content. He is the one who is the end user of the content.

In today’s tech savvy world most of the content is stored in the form of softcopy. The content is stored in large databases. To manage contents online content management system software are available in the market. Two basic elements for content management system are (1) storing stuff in a content repository, and (2) supporting the workflow of a group of people engaged in putting stuff into that repository.  A typical content management system is a set of automated processes that support the following features:

• Creation of documents and multimedia material and their import
• Identification of stakeholders and their roles
• Assignment of roles and responsibilities to different instances of content categories or types.
• The ability to track and manage multiple versions of a single instance of content. This is an important aspect, as publishing wrong content version may finally lead to dissemination of wrong information.
• Publish the content to a repository to support access to the content.

Many software companies like IBM, Microsoft already have software which manages enterprise wide content. Content management system also assists Knowledge Management system in efficiently managing the information. Thus we can see content management is an important aspect of any knowledge based organization.