One of my presentations at this year's Lavacon (2013). It looks at a Case Study where content technologies and communication practices found unexpected applicability within the upper echelons of an organization...

1. Content
on Top
Joe Gollner
Managing Director
Gnostyx Research Inc
@joegollner

2. Case Study: Enterprise Reporting Systems
• Government Financial Reporting Mechanisms
• How performance is measured, reported & monitored
• Major Area of Technology Investment
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
• Business Intelligence
(BI) Systems
• Executive Dashboards
• In reality, reporting
is communication
• Editing, adapting,
positioning, publishing

3. From Humble Beginnings….
• It should have been
a quiet project
• A Discovery Portal
for Canadian Farmers
• A solution driven by XML metadata
& aggressive usability testing
• Explosively well received
• Led to executive level interest
• Led to unexpected requests…

4. Single Source of Program Information
• The result was an immediately
successful discovery site
“better than Google”
was one Farmer’s feedback (!)
The number of participating
partners began to grow rapidly
Other stakeholders became
interested in the collected
content as the best data
source available

5. Key to Success: Tools that are simple & effective
• Success Factor #1
Focus on the Content
Clients need
• Success Factor #2
Simple & extensible
use of XML, metadata
& Web technologies
• Success Factor #3
- Iterative development, testing, refinement
- Flexible approach to engaging content partners

6. Strange Requests Followed
• Something in the Discovery Portal hit a nerve
• Can we have something similar for our financial reports?
• Can we use this to make sense of our performance data?
• Can we offer something similar to other stakeholders?
• Can you make sense of all our financial data?
• Me:
Sure, I guess
• But…

7. What about your Management Systems?
• These Departments had spent millions on financial
systems, business intelligence applications &
executive dashboards (hundreds of millions actually)
• These systems
were intended to
track low-level
financial events
& provide detailed
reports on
progress against
objectives

8. And there were other systems in the same boat…
• Human resource systems,
• Case management systems,…
None of these
systems seem to
provide
executives
with the
information
and insights that
they were
intended
to provide
None of these
systems were
trusted…

9. So where is the real information?
The real information
lived in documents
that were formally
signed & submitted
on a monthly basis
Management
systems
were updated to align
with the documents
…to the extent that
this was possible…
Obvious question: Why do you need to do this & how do you do it?

10. One Reason: Complexity
• Real Events rarely, if ever, go according to plan
• Serious exceptions cannot be reflected in
planned information systems
• Exceptions
are recorded
externally
• Explanations
are provided as
references to documents

11. Second Reason: Lost in Datatopia
• Management
systems provide
a lot of data
but very little
information
• Largely devoid
of the context
that can give data
relevance

12. What were the Executive looking for?
• And that they saw in the
Farmers’ Discovery Portal?
• Two Things:
• Client-centered context
that organizes the data in
ways that aligned with what
the clients saw as important
• Straight-forward metadata &
plain-language descriptions
that helped stakeholders to
understand key details –
especially exceptions

13. How did the Management Reports get prepared?
• An Army of Financial Analysts
• Pulled data from various systems
• Added missing exceptions and explanations
• Packaged, polished, & published the Management Reports
The reports went
through an
elaborate review
& revision process
The opportunity
for manipulation
was more than
a little scary

14. A New Project is Born
• Expand the content discovery solution to contain
more types of data from a wider array of sources
• Provide a managed environment within which
to prepare, track and deliver management reports
• Support exceptions
in a controlled way
• Support introduction
of client-centered
content views
• Support addition of
contextual metadata
• Support provision of
explanations…

15. What does all this mean?
• Essentially
the Lunatics are
running the Asylum
• The Financial &
Management processes
rely utterly on their
content management & publishing activities
• These activities are often hugely inefficient & risky
• These higher echelons desperately need:
• Content Management technology & techniques
• Formalized communication practices

16. The Good News
• We can do this
• Communication
practices &
content
technologies
can fill the gaps
in these
management
systems &
processes
Harvesting Information

17. A Real Executive Dashboard
• Based on, and linked to, the real information

18. Why is this Important?
• Enabling the vertical flow of real information
is essential for effective institutions
• Widespread failures in this area have led to the
breakdown of institutional accountability
• Fixing the problem demands
• Effective communication
practices
• Adaptable content technology
• Open & extensible content
• Without this, Digital Dashboards
are essentially useless or worse misleading…

19. This Tells Us Something about Content
• Content is what
we manage
in order to deliver
highly effective
information
INFORMATION
• Content can
handle the
complexities
associated with
real events
• Exceptions
• Extensions
CONTENT
By managing & leveraging the content we can
make the sea of data understandable & useful

20. Making Connections
Joe Gollner
Gnostyx Research Inc.
www.gnostyx.com
jag@gnostyx.com
Twitter: @joegollner
Blog: The Content Philosopher
www.gollner.ca