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Have Publishers Embraced Content Standards?

by Barry Bealer    Jul 2005

As the content industry continues to move off the printed page and into digital delivery, content standards have emerged so that publishers can both acquire and distribute content more effectively. This need extends not only to internal platforms, but also includes exchanging content with clients and partners in an ever more competitive landscape.

Content standards are vital to the continued relevance of publishers' content. While often time consuming and expensive to implement, those who embrace standards and participate in the standard-setting process will continue to capitalize on opportunities and deliver "must-have" information to their customers. Those who ignore the need to standardize their content or are too slow to implement standards risk falling too far behind the competitive curve to sustain a viable business model in an ever-increasing digital world.

One challenge that publishers continue to face in determining how and when to implement standards is balancing the need to slow down and evaluate evolving standards specifications with the need to drive revenue growth and cost-cutting measures. In a recent article in the SIIA's Upgrade Magazine, Ken Ficara, director of content and information strategy for Dow Jones, states what I believe is exactly the dilemma in the industry: "Most publishers don't have the time, energy, or interest to sort out the many overlapping standards or decide which they should use."

Understanding the complex standards that impact our industry can be an onerous job. In this month's article, "A Brief Guide to Content Technology Standards," my colleague Ed Stevenson provides a brief overview of the many standards that are currently being developed and deployed. His article is a great primer, but the only way to really understand and implement a content standard is to get involved in a standards working group. Unfortunately, this takes time, and publishers' technical resources are already stretched to nearly the breaking point as it is.

So I pose this question to those of you too busy to dedicate time to a standards working group: How much time and money would your organization save, or how much more revenue could you drive, if your content were in an industry standard format? If your answer is "very little," then don't invest the time. Otherwise, you should be making the case to management to spend the time to be involved in defining and then implementing content standards.

We have worked with many publishers who previously missed revenue opportunities because of the expense associated with massaging their content so that it could be delivered to a new partner. Their inability to quickly and cost-effectively provide their content in a standard format prohibited them from aligning themselves in key strategic relationships, not only foregoing revenue opportunities but also enabling their competitors to gain an advantage.

Some publishers resort to developing "one off" conversion scripts to meet short-term opportunities, but fail to look at the long-term implications. Worse yet, these "one off" conversion scripts often become part of a production workflow, a tendency of many publishers whose IT staffs are overwhelmed with projects and cannot dedicate the resources required to standardize content.

A final challenge for publishers is explaining to senior executives why it is strategically crucial that time and money be spent on adopting and implementing content standards within their organization. Providing a bridge between the technical hype surrounding a standard and the business implications of implementing it is both an art and a science. Executives understand return on investment, payback period, and new revenue opportunities. Technicians understand bytes, style sheets, and data tags. The publisher needs to articulate the benefits of content standardization in clear, concise, "dollar figures." Couched in those terms, it should be crystal clear that investing in the migration of content into an industry standard is an easy decision.

So, have publisher's embraced content standards? Most have embraced the concept, but not the actual standards. Many publishers continue to maintain proprietary formats, waiting until a business driver is identified to justify the conversion expense. Without a tangible cost savings or revenue opportunity, some publishers will wait too long to find the appropriate time to adopt an industry standard content format. By then, I'm afraid, the cost of standardization will be much more severe.