Reuse: A Substantial Factor in Determining ROI for Content Management

(Click here for Part 2)

When developing your business case for content management there are many factors that can be used to determine return on investment, but if you plan to reuse content, reuse can be the biggest factor for real return on investment. Reusing content (write once, reuse content many times) results in lower costs of creation, maintenance and delivery of content and if you translate your content, reuse can have an even greater impact on lowering costs.

Where reuse has an impact on ROI
When you write content once and use it many times you are reducing your costs in many ways. Areas of impact include:

About Ann Rockley

Ann Rockley is President of The Rockley Group, Inc, a consultancy that has an international reputation for developing enterprise content management strategies, unified content strategies, and information architecture for content management. Rockley is the author of the best-selling book "Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy" with TRG Senior Consultants Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning, New Riders Publishing ISBN 0-7357-1306-5 (Buy from Amazon.com). She can be reached at 905-415-1885 or moreinfo@rockley.com, www.rockley.com.

• Content creation
  The cost of content creation is reduced by the percentage of reuse. Authors spend less time repeatedly authoring content because they can reuse existing content wherever possible, supplementing it with new or modified content where appropriate. Reviewers also spend less time reviewing content because they only have to review the content that is new or changed; existing content has already been reviewed and signed off.
• Content maintenance
  When content is created once and used many times when content needs to be updated it only has to be updated once. The time required to search for multiple occurrences of content is eliminated.
• Content delivery
  Content designed for reuse can quickly and easily be delivered in any desired media (e.g., paper, web, wireless). The cost of reformatting content for delivery to different media is eliminated.
• Translation costs
  Content which is written once but used many times only has to be translated once. If you translate into multiple languages the reduction in translation costs can be very significant.
• Quality/Customer Support
  The quality of content is improved because it is consistent and accurate wherever it appears. Focusing on effective structures and organization of content up front means better materials for users. Better materials for users results in fewer support calls.
• Faster time to market/Opportunity cost
  Faster time to market is achieved through shorter content creation and maintenance cycles and review cycles. Reduction in the time to complete the content life cycle results in a product getting to market faster and faster delivery of the product can result in significant opportunity cost savings.
• Better use of resources
  Resources are optimized because the repetitive processes of creation and maintenance are reduced. Because they are required to do less repetitive work, everyone involved in the content creation process can do more value-added work or respond to new requirements. The value added work can result in increased revenues.

The part 2 of this article will focus on how you determine your percentage of reuse.  Subscribers of DCLnews will be notified automatically. (To subscribe to DCLnews click here.)

To learn more, join us for a Content Reuse Webinar on March 1.

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