When Content Means Business
If content is the key to achieve competitive advantage, xml is the keyhole. But businesses dont know how to find it...
3 October 2001
Content is at the heart of ecommerce, you must have heard this idea before.
Content of course can be anything anyone like, but the reality is that content is data.
The adoption of the term ‘data’ versus
‘information’ ‘content’ or even ‘knowledge’ is that emphasis is on the format.
Data is what we create, transform, store, transmit.
One of the smartest and most practical data formats for data turns out to be xml.
You sure must have heard of xml. It is like html, the data formatting compatible with web browsers that made it the essential language for internet content, except that it is lighter and more portable, making it increasingly suitable for content that needs to be accessed via mobile devices.
XML turns out to be suitable for most things, in particular it is an efficient format for data exchange, ie, content syndication.
XML is becoming increasingly adopted by software products, and just another new word that we have learnt to use in our daily language.
Yet companies have not learnt how to leverage their content assets, and how to integrate the ‘content’ element in their business equations, in particular in the manufacturing industry.
The 'content gap', the inability to leverage content to fulfill business objectives, affects competitiveness.
A recent survey by Arbortext
of 279 companies in the manufacturing sector in central Europe in the Automotive, Industrial, Aerospace, IT and Telecoms sectors.
88% of respondents agreed that the quality of information available on their website could be improved.
The top three areas for improvement seem to be more detailed content, more up to date information and greater interactivity for customers.
Despite the industry-wide consensus of limited knowledge of XML technologies, the majority believe that XML can help them realise these improvements.
63% believe that XML can help in providing more up to date and personalised information more quickly.
A further 56% believe it can streamline the process of making this information available to external parties
Over half of the manufacturers interviewed agreed that the problem lies in the disparity between the information that is available within an organisation internally and what external parties have access to on the web.
Key findings revealed that 72 % of manufacturers plan to use XML in the next three years to compliment their e-business strategies.
However, 71 % of those interviewed rated their knowledge of XML technologies available as 'poor' or 'very poor'.
One of the most popular e-business initiatives reported for the year ahead is to get product catalogues on-line. Of those interviewed, 56% already have product catalogues on-line, 37% have engineering information and 34% have other product and technical information.
Main UK findings:
88% of respondents thought that improvements could be made to the level of product information they had available on their website
Of the 64 % of respondents who have product catalogues on-line the main issues faced in maintaing them were; the scale of information to be updated (26%), constantly changing information (17%) and the time taken to maintain them (11%)
65 % of respondents agreed that XML could help to bridge the content gap, despite the fact that only 23 % currently use XML technologies
86 % perceived one of the benefits of XML to be the time saved updating and changing information. A further 83% said it could allow them to revise and publish from a single source of content. Whilst 81% of respondents reported that XML could provide more detailed content.
42% of respondents rated their knowledge of XML technologies available as 'very poor' with a further 27% reporting their knowledge as 'poor'
Only 6 % of respondents reported that they will definetley not be using XML technologies in the next three years
23% reported their key area for ebusiness improvement for the next year was to get catalogues on-line, whilst 15 % were focusing on on-line purchasing capabilities.
Respondents main reasons for not using XML to date are
don't know enough about it (29%),
haven't needed it yet (25 %)
have other priorities (15%).
www.arbortext.com
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