Business benefits

A structured content management and single source document publishing system reduces the cost of content production and maintenance, speeds up publishing processes and allows enterprises to produce the right outputs to meet user needs. To achieve those benefits, content authors need XML authoring tools that make their work easier.

Many enterprises new to structured content authoring make the mistake of throwing writers into the system with off-the-shelf XML authoring tools, only to find that the change to structured content authoring is much more difficult than expected. It is common that some content writers refuse to use newly introduced XML authoring tools.

System managers may attempt to avoid these problems by introducing costly, manual conversion or data rectification processes to deal with content produced by authors who don't use the correct tool or use it incorrectly. Additional training costs are also incurred. In effect, the original business case on which the system was predicated was seriously flawed. It did not include the costs of providing the right tool for content writers and it massively underestimated the costs of training, support and data rectification associated with the original tool choice.

These problems are completely avoidable if early project planning takes proper account of the needs of content authors. For medium to large teams of authors, a customized XML authoring system using XMetaL Author and the Elkera Utilities for XMetaL Author will permit rapid application roll-out and avoid substantial, redundant training, support and data conversion or rectification costs. A pre-configured XML authoring solution for a standard DTD or schema will provide these benefits to even very small authoring teams. In both cases, the additional effort in meeting the needs of content authors is repaid many times over in reduced implementation costs that may not become apparent until attempted system roll-out.

XMetaL Author and the Elkera Utilities for XMetaL Author provide an essential foundation for a successful, cost effective XML based structured content management and single source publishing applications.