How corporate Australia battles information overload

By David Braue, ZDNet Australia

26 June 2006 02:48 PM

Tags: storage area network, cms, government, european union, emc, jetstar, case study, cio

	Introduction
	Jetstar CIO Stephen Tame explains why information management is critical to the airline.
	Family Court of Australia Information management officer Paul Taylor recounts the overhaul of FCoA's paper-based records management system.
	Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority How Virginia Orr led the charge for a massive digital document and information repository.
	Count Wealth With profits well into the millions, IT lead Stephen Aguilera-Mendoza decided it was time for some (document) spring cleaning.
	MBF Online manager Michael Valaris on why content management is crucial to the success on any business.

Editor: Fran Foo
Copy Editor: Stephen Turner
Design: Melissa Siu

MBF invests in content insurance

Corporate Web sites are big business, but they can be a big headache if they're not managed correctly. Insurance company MBF has found significant relief from a new content management system that has smoothed the movement of content to internal and external Web sites. David Braue explains how.

It wasn't too long ago that corporate Web sites were mainly static advertisements that reinforced a company's brand but provided little outward value to consumers.

Those days, however, are well and truly over for companies like health, life and travel insurance provider MBF, which has seen its online site become an increasingly important channel for customer contacts and information dissemination. The company's site receives around 80,000 unique visitors monthly and more than one million visitors annually, and is now credited with handling 30 percent of MBF's new sales.

Befitting the site's increased profile, MBF has over the past 18 months been working to implement a more structured, efficient mechanism for the production and updating of its online content.

The project, which centres around a far-reaching implementation of the Vignette content management system (CMS), sees content managed by a five-person team that handles both the publishing of information online, and liaises with the various business units responsible for the content and approval of online materials.

MBF's content team has been intimately involved with the Vignette implementation and customisations that link the online content with other parts of the company's business processes. That has positioned the system as a key driver for growth at MBF, for which Web site features such as interactive quotes are an easy way of informing customers and capturing potential new leads.

-We're using Vignette from a content perspective, to capture [sales] leads and pass that through to an application process that will then be used to convert those to actionable information," says Michael Valaris, online sales manager for the e-business team at MBF. -The Web site is one of our three main sales channels."

Better content control The incentive for the move to Vignette came after content producers ran into ongoing problems with the previous environment. To work around deficiencies in the system, content was often being copied from the CMS and pasted into separate Web design software to tailor it to design requirements and workflow processes.

MBF recognised that it needed a new platform that would combine robust content versioning, distribution and workflow with full-featured production capabilities. With its new CMS in place, MBF has been able to improve management of content on both its Web site and intranet, which has been positioned as a frequently updated repository of corporate knowledge.

The company's content engineers maintain around 500 different content objects, although these are mixed and matched into around 2,000 different pages - confirming the value of reusable objects within an online environment based on the need for accurate information.

Rather than having to maintain concurrency between objects in different parts of the business, the object-oriented approach allows the content designers to maintain each element just once -- and then mix and match them as necessary. That capability is essential given the detailed legal specifics of much of the online content, which involves detailed policy documents and guidelines.

Being able to update one document that affects the site in many areas at the one time is an obvious advantage not only in terms of turnaround, but also from the legal perspective.

Michael Valaris, MBF

-Being able to update one document that affects the site in many areas at the one time is an obvious advantage not only in terms of turnaround, but also from the legal perspective," says Valaris. -If there are any discrepancies, we need to push [updates] out as soon as possible. Being able to version is a big advantage, as is being able to roll back content through releases and process it again."

Building a new workflow MBF's single-source content structure has significantly improved the company's ability to ensure accuracy, and demonstrate its content governance.

Meeting those requirements has also been easier by using the system to revise and finalise content by the system's 20-odd users spread through select business units.

Although the Vignette workflow engine is still being gradually implemented, direct access to in-production content allowed legal representatives to access that information and make any changes necessary for signoff -- a review that is essential for every piece of content put online. Because the Web site carries legal weight, accuracy is particularly important when changes are made -- as in the company's annual Regulatory Review, when the pricing and makeup of every single product is reviewed and associated online information is updated.

Centralised content approval is a major improvement over the previous system, which was fragmented and difficult to manage, but having the content and approvals available throughout the organisation has freed up those logjams and sped the process of developing, publishing and revising content.

-The growth in the amount of content we were putting onto the site had increased dramatically," says Tony Nguyen, e-business manager with MBF. -Everyone wants to get a system that would be more centrally focused."

-While content was always controlled centrally in the past, this system has allowed us to keep that control as well as distribute that information. We have a broader workflow system so everyone is able to sign off on the content and bring it to the market as quickly as possible. Taking the opportunity to identify the internal signoff processes correctly was critical to moving the business forward."

With both the intranet and Web site now well and truly established in the new system, payback has been measured in several ways. Licensing fees in the new environment are lower, but the biggest benefit has come from -efficiency with content," says Nguyen. This efficiency stems from the redesigned information architecture, its extensibility to other types of information, and the improvements in process control that the system has delivered.

MBF is now working to strengthen its workflow capabilities, and tighten back-end links between the CMS and other systems across the organisation. -A lot of our functionality is through J2EE, and we have a lot of code that will allow us to capture data [from other systems] and run through" into the CMS, says Valaris. As these capabilities progressively come online, the system's profile as a key custodian of MBF's corporate knowledge will continue to grow.