Results of 2005 The Content Wrangler Content Creation and Publishing Workflow Survey

Organizations of all sizes struggle with content creation and publishing workflow issues. These problems are varied, time-consuming, and waste finite resources. Many can negatively impact an organization’s ability to meet business goals, be cause for regulatory and legal headaches, and frustrate employees.

To help better understand and quantify the major content creation and publishing workflow problems affecting business communicators (e.g technical, medical, training and marketing writers) and to learn which software tools are being used to help reduce workflow obstacles, The Content Wrangler created a short survey. 234 communicators responded. The data collected indicates content creation and publishing workflow is an area in which most organizations can make improvements and save significant resources. Additionally, the data suggest software vendors—both authoring tools and content management systems—have a lot of work to do when it comes to product name recognition and adoption (read: sales). A brief summary of some of the issues uncovered is presented here for your review.

Workflow: Automation or not?

77.8% of participants believe their content creation and publishing workflow could be improved by automation
6.4% said they did not believe their content creation and publishing workflow can benefit from automation
15.8% said they did not know whether their content creation and publishing workflow could benefit from automation

Workflow specifics: What are the biggest problems?

Participants were asked to rate workflow problems as “always a problem,” “often a problem,” “sometimes a problem,” “seldom a problem,” “not a problem,” and “don’t know.” Most common problems were rated “often a problem,” or “sometimes a problem.”

Often a problem: Waiting, change management, and content reuse – The results indicate content creators and publishers are often waiting for others to complete their tasks, causing delays that force them to rush to complete their tasks and/or prevent them from being able to find time to create value-added content. Content reuse, content retrieval, and change management issues were also rated as “often a problem.”

Ensuring those who need to know are notified when changes occur – 34%
Determining which changes need to be made and where – 36%
Reusing content in an efficient way – 32%
Managing reusable content – 30%
Locating all instances where content has been reused – 27%
Changing all instances where content has been reused – 25%
Locating all instances where reusable content should be used – 30%
Obtaining timely content review- 35%
Getting content approved prior to publication – 28%
Rushing to complete tasks on time – 36%
Waiting for others to complete tasks- 41%
Finding time to create additional value-added content – 36%
Finding time to accomplish all the tasks that should be completed prior to deadline – 29%

Sometimes a problem: Version control, finding existing content, and retiring outdated content – The results indicate content creators and publishers have difficulty identifying and retiring outdated content, preventing inaccurate and inconsistent content from being published, ensuring changes are made to all content that needs to be changed, and meeting deadlines. Problems with version control, and change management issues create further bottlenecks. Content creators and publishers say they have to spend time recreating content that already exists simply because they can’t locate it. And, to make matter worse, in order to meet deadlines, they are often forced to skip steps in their organizations’ content creation and publishing workflow.