Content Management: drivers of effectiveness’
Part 2:Tools and technologies to get the job done

Surfacing the right resources

In addition to asking about strategies and platforms to deliver content, we also queried respondents about the tools and enablers their organizations use to help people find resources. Our goal was to address the topic of “findability” through a broad lens, looking at obvious options like search, taxonomy and metadata, as well as advanced analytics and discussion forums and social networks where colleagues can recommend and share useful materials.

As Figure 4 (Page 7, KMWorld September 2014, Volume 23, Issue 8 or Download Chart) shows, the most popular enablers—including search functions for specific repositories, metadata and customized views and alerts—are in place in at least three-quarters of organizations. Significantly fewer respondents report the presence of more advanced tools such as enterprise taxonomy and federated search capabilities that integrate search results from multiple repositories. That makes sense, given that enterprise-spanning tools tend to require more time and resources to connect different parts of the organization and get disparate stakeholders on board.

However, when we switched from looking at adoption rates to how people ranked the effectiveness of the enablers in Figure 4, the enterprise-spanning tools rose to the top of the list. Federated search received the highest marks, with 52 percent of users rating it as effective, but enterprise taxonomy wasn’t far behind, with 47 percent of users categorizing it as effective. Other high-scoring enablers included:

• customized views and alerts (50 percent effective),
• metadata (47 percent effective), and
• links to popular or highly rated content (44 percent effective).

When it comes to helping employees locate content, wider-ranging tools may require a larger upfront investment, but they also yield better results. The same is true for portals and alerts that push content to specific audiences and recommendation engines that help users find peer-endorsed content. In general, organizations can maximize their content management investments by adhering to consistent taxonomy and metadata structures, enabling access to all repositories through a single search function, and proactively delivering relevant resources through custom views and/or alerts.

The importance of alerts was emphasized when we asked respondents how employees were most likely to learn about new and valuable content in their organizations. The survey group was fairly evenly split on this question: 27 percent said search, 22 percent said browsing, 21 percent said messages/links in communities or social networks, and 17 percent said alerts related to their role or topic area. However, when we compared people’s responses to how they rated the overall effectiveness of their firm’s content management approaches, those who said employees are most likely to learn about content via alerts were achieving significantly better results than those who said search was the primary vehicle to surface fresh content (see Figure 5, Page 7, KMWorld September 2014, Volume 23, Issue 8 or Download Chart).

In almost every instance, people are more likely to look at content that is directly distributed to them—that’s the beauty of newspaper and magazine subscriptions, e-mail newsletters, RSS feeds and a myriad of similar delivery schemes. Organizations must provide reliable search capabilities so employees can find what they need, but the most successful firms inform employees when fresh and interesting content is posted, rather than waiting for them to proactively seek it out.