Content

on Top

Joe Gollner

Managing Director

Gnostyx Research Inc

@joegollner

• 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

Case Study: Enterprise Reporting Systems

• It should have been

a quiet project

• A Discovery Portal

for Canadian Farmers

From Humble Beginnings….

• A solution driven by XML metadata

& aggressive usability testing

• Explosively well received

• Led to executive level interest

• Led to unexpected requests…

• 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

Single Source of Program Information

• 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

Key to Success: Tools that are simple & effective

• 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…

Strange Requests Followed

• 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

What about your Management Systems?

• Human resource systems,

• Case management systems,…

And there were other systems in the same boat…

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…

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?

• 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

One Reason: Complexity

• Management

systems provide

a lot of data

but very little

information

• Largely devoid

of the context that can give data

relevance

Second Reason: Lost in Datatopia

• 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

What were the Executive looking for?

• An Army of Financial Analysts

• Pulled data from various systems

• Added missing exceptions and explanations

• Packaged, polished, & published the Management Reports

How did the Management Reports get prepared?

The reports went

through an

elaborate review

& revision process

The opportunity

for manipulation

was more than

a little scary

• 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…

A New Project is Born

• 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

What does all this mean?

• We can do this

• Communication

practices &

content

technologies

can fill the gaps

in these

management

systems &

processes

The Good News

Harvesting Information

• Based on, and linked to, the real information

A Real Executive Dashboard

• 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…

Why is this Important?

CONTENT

INFORMATION

• Content is what

we manage

in order to deliver

highly effective

information

• Content can

handle the

complexities

associated with

real events

• Exceptions

• Extensions

This Tells Us Something about Content

By managing & leveraging the content we can

make the sea of data understandable & useful

Making Connections

Joe Gollner

Gnostyx Research Inc.

www.gnostyx.com

jag@gnostyx.com

Twitter: @joegollner

Blog: The Content Philosopher

www.gollner.ca