Website management best practices for companies--centralized or de-centralized Best answer on the web
whatever is found by then. If nothing is found by end of workday on November 10, then no response needed (my deadline is the morning of November 11). Thanks in advance:
What is the best way to manage a website when there are multiple
business units/channels to work with? Centralized or de-centralized -- which is better and why? What are the pros and cons? How is conflict
managed in both scenarios. And can you give real-life examples of
companies that use the centralized approach or de-centralized
approach?
With centralized management, there are no migration of funds between unit to unit and the flow of the funds will be more consistent and standardized. The people, equipment and data are all centrally managed which leads to efficient use of resources, clear knowledge of users and usage, and consistency of environment. Generally centralized business has high coordination (coordinate purchase volumes, develop/coordinate strategies and systems), low duplication of effort and skills, and the ability to train centrally. This type of management allows you to apply changes that benefit the total organization. Unfortunately the disadvantage is that changes are quite difficult to make and thus is inflexible for new applications. Also the speed and responsiveness are generally slower, and unique product support and expertise are much lower.
With distributed management, people, equipment and data are locally (unit by unit) managed. This allows easy experimentation, simpler user control, and small-scale non-intrusive experimentations are possible. Each unit however will have a higher degree of expertise, fast speed and high responsiveness. This type of management understands unique requirements of each channel/unit and has excellent product development support. Unfortunately, decentralized management leads to poor use of resources and blind knowledge of the users and the usage of funds.
As favoured by all corporations, centralized management (mainly centralized but a hybrid between the two) provides a more stable systematic and controlled environment which is the key to a long company life. There are needs for absolute distributed management in cases such as a different country branch. If the website targets international market, then it is much more advantageous to have national operators in each country (as most companies do). Also, if the website is content based, then most businesses find it more favourable to choose a decentralized model to cover more grounds.
Now I will quote a real life example that covers the advantages and disadvantages of both system. What we have here is an online publication website.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- When implementing a new enterprise-wide content management system (CMS), most businesses assume a decentralized model of authoring.
This devolves the responsibility for creating content back to individual staff members within the business units.
While this is seen as an effective way of reducing costs and increasing involvement, it is not without its challenges and risks.
In practice, neither centralized or decentralized authoring is the single answer to all requirements.
To gain the best business outcomes, it is necessary to use both models where appropriate, with a full understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.
Decentralized authoring
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Content for the intranet or corporate website is 'owned' by a number of different business groups within the organisation. It therefore makes sense to give them the direct responsibility for updating their information.
In this decentralized approach, the authors are scattered throughout different departments, all feeding information into the content management system.
Advantages
Harnesses the efforts of many authors.
Content creation costs and resources are spread more evenly throughout the organisation. Makes the content owners responsible for their own information.
Reduces the need for a large centralized authoring team.
Integrates content creation into the daily activities of the business. May provide more up-to-date content.
There is no one correct answer: both centralized and decentralized authoring have a role to play in an organisation
Disadvantages
Extensive workflow is a pre-requisite.
Large number of users to be trained.
Challenges in motivating staff.
Considerable change management effort required.
Authors must juggle using the CMS with their other responsibilities.
Overall co-ordination is more difficult.
Many workstations to be configured with the CMS software.
Higher licensing costs for CMS software.
Workflow
Comprehensive workflow is critical to the success of the decentralized authoring approach. Using workflow, order can be brought to the writing and publishing process, despite the scattered group of authors.
The most important step of the workflow is the final review and approval. This must be setup so that all published content is vetted against corporate standards.
This is particularly important for content to be published on the corporate website. Incorrect or inappropriate content exposes the business to substantial risks and liability.
Do not underestimate the effort required to setup workflow rules in an enterprise-wide CMS.
Training and change management
If decentralized authoring is to deliver promised benefits, it must be both used and supported by staff.
This is no small challenge when potentially hundreds of users across the business will be creating content.
Considerable resources must therefore be devoted to the establishment of workable processes, and providing sufficient end-user training.
Change management activities will also be necessary to eliminate the natural resistance to change within an organisation. This includes clear communication of the goals of the project, and ongoing updates on progress and issues.
Finally, trust and respect must be established between the owners of the content management system and the authors. Without this, staff will be reluctant to embrace the added responsibility and workload that decentralized authoring required.
Staff will not make time to write content, unless you give them a reason to do so
Finding time
Perhaps the greatest challenge facing decentralized authoring is the lack of available time.
Staff already have a full-time workload with their normal activities. Authoring is then an additional activity, on top of their existing responsibilities.
Unless management provides staff with sufficient time and resources, it is unreasonable to expect them to shoulder this additional work for an extended period of time.
The danger is that content creation will then slowly 'wither away'. If this happens, the CMS as a whole will fail.
To avoid this, explicitly include content creation in the job descriptions for staff, and provide sufficient time for them to do their authoring well. This should also be assessed as part of their normal performance review.
Centralized authoring
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This involves setting up a dedicated team to create new content, and manage the publishing process. This team consists of the following roles:
technical writers
editors
journalists
indexers
subject matter experts
There is close liaison between the team and the business groups that 'own' the content. In this way, the content team acts as a 'service group' for the rest of the organisation.
All information that is published by the team is reviewed and signed off by the business, to ensure accuracy and relevance.
Techwriters know how to write, subject matter experts know the business: you will need both
Advantages
Team skills ensure very high quality content.
Simplified project management.
Ensures that resources are available for even large jobs.
Allows development of large, complex and highly structured material.
Provides a central location for feedback.
Ensures global consistency, and extensive cross-linking.
Supports continual improvement.
Ensures accountability for changes.
Reduces the need for powerful and costly IT solutions (such as workflow). Provides a 'driving force' behind content updating.
Disadvantages
Centralized team requires full-team staff and resources.
Can form a bottleneck to updates, if not efficient and responsive.
Updating is separated from business owners.
Relies on processes to notify the team of changes.
Ties with the business
A centralized authoring team cannot work in isolation from the rest of the organisation if it is to meet business needs.
Close links and communication channels must be forged between the centralized group and the content owners.
If the content is to be kept up to date, mechanisms must be put in place to notify the team of changes or updates.
If these notifications are to be sustained in the long-term, they must be incorporated into the standard business processes.
Workflow
While the ease of coordinating a single centralized team reduces the need for a workflow system, it still has much to offer.
With all first-draft material being written by the central team, workflow manages business review and final sign- off.
The workflow system sends the revised content back to the content owners, before routing it through final editing and any legal sign-off.
If there are a limited number of content owners, it is possible to avoid the cost of a full workflow system, and implement manual processes instead.
Professional standards
If the centralized team is to deliver value to the business, it must conform to the highest professional standards.
This includes:
Documented style guides for authoring, indexing and linking.
Rigorous project management and change control.
Full audit trail of changes.
Comprehensive process for editing, reviewing and authorising updates. A centralized team is only as valuable as the professional standards it meets
Guidelines for selecting a model
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This section outlines some broad guidelines for when to use decentralized or centralized authoring.
Use Decentralized authoring when:
Content is already created as a normal part of daily activities (eg. business documents). Information is for internal use only.
Frequent updates must be made.
Quality of information is not critical.
Staff have the time available to prepare and write content.
Select an authoring model to meet your business needs
Use Centralized authoring when:
Information is very complex, or highly structured.
There are legal issues surrounding the release of the information.
Information is commercially-sensitive.
A very high writing standard is required.
The information must be 'distilled' from many different sources into a brief format. Overall structure and consistency is required.
Content is to be published externally.
Case studies
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This section outlines typical business situations, and appropriate authoring solutions. These are only generalisations, however: draw your own conclusions based on your specific business requirements.
Intranet
By definition, intranet content will only be read by internal staff. It is therefore more important that the information is comprehensive and up-to-date, rather than being perfectly written or structured.
For this reason, much of the intranet content can be created using a decentralized model. This supports rapid turnaround, and allows each section of the intranet to be directly managed by the business owner.
There is still, however, a requirement for a central 'intranet team', who is responsible for the overall management of the intranet.
This team should consist of:
technical writers or editors
professional indexer or librarian
information architect
web designer
technical staff and developers
graphic artist
They are responsible for tasks such as:
creating the intranet style guide
managing indexing and searching
ensuring consistency across all sections of the intranet
editing key content for clarity
developing page layouts and designs
overall information architecture
managing linking between topics
ongoing intranet development and improvement
systems administration tasks
Your corporate website brings as many risks as it does rewards
Internet
The corporate website is one of the most visible faces of the organisation. Any information published to it exposes the business to a certain level of risk, whether it be an incorrect price, or legal liability for misleading information.
With the growth of e-commerce, the need for quality control processes has become even greater.
While a decentralized authoring model may be used to create the first-draft content, all material must pass through rigorous editing, review and sign-off.
With some pages drawing information from many different business units, there is value in using a centralized team for the more complex authoring tasks.
Either way, a centralized team must mange the website as a whole. Their responsibilities include those listed for the intranet team, plus:
Ensuring corporate branding is maintained.
Meeting marketing and advertising goals.
Ensuring a universally high standard of writing across the site.
Ensuring the website is usable.
Managing site structure, architecture and linking.
While a content management system can do much to streamline the maintenance of a corporate website, it will only succeed if due attention is given to quality control issues.
Business documents
The many thousands of business documents created every year within an organisation present a clear case for decentralized authoring.
These documents include reports, plans, technical notes, and the like. They are produced using desktop applications (such as Word, Excel, etc), and must be easily published to the intranet.
By establishing a simple import process, staff can self-publish their material into the CMS. In some cases, the workflow may be as simple as obtaining appropriate sign-off from the staff person's team leader or manager.
The only danger is that intranet users will become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available.
To avoid this, ensure that all content is appropriately indexed, and that a comprehensive site structure allows effective browsing and searching.
The easier it is to publish content to the intranet, the harder it is for users to find it
Complex manuals
There normally exists within a large organisation several very large documents, such as policy and procedures manuals.
These capture the core of the business' knowledge, and are complex and highly structured.
With business decisions and advice to customers being made based on these documents, it is critical that they are both accurate and comprehensive.
Updating the documents is no easy task, and issues of information architecture and usability must be addressed.
For these reasons, such manuals should be managed by a central team of professional writers. Working closely with subject matter experts, this team can ensure that documentation challenges are met and overcome.
Conclusion
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Centralized and decentralized authoring both have their strengths and weaknesses. The first step to building a successful CMS solution is understanding these issues, and how they impact on your business requirements.
Only then can an efficient, cost-effective and viable solution be designed. Within a large organisation, this will consist of a hybrid of both centralized and decentralized authoring.
In this way, the quality control of a centralized team can be supported by the wide-spread resources of decentralized authors.
Source, The Intranet Journal, Auther James Robertson (c) 2002
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I hope this answer has helped; feel free to ask for any clarification. Thanks,
Tox-ga
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sun Microsystems; Sun originally had a decentralized management model but as the company grew, the management decided to implement a uniform system and changed itself to a more centralized management model.
Sun was originally a niche company making engineering workstations. In the late 1980s, Sun began to enter the multiuser server market, offering its products as departmental and network servers. By the mid-1990’s, it was also trying to sell higher end servers for enterprise applications and the emerging web server market. As the company grew, the senior management decided that Sun needed to develop corporate IT systems to be able to manage itself as one whole company. It also lacked knowledge of the enterprise market into which it was trying to sell its high-end servers. So Sun decided to develop its own enterprise systems running on Sun servers to improve its internal information systems and to gain the experienced needed to sell and support hardware in the enterprise market. The effort to run Sun on Sun was hobbled by management problems: creating some kind of centralized management structure to pull together the decentralized business units and requiring them to cooperate in developing the enterprise IT systems. In 1996, Ed Zander took over as Sun’s first COO, restructured Sun to have more central management control, and started SunPeak, a project aimed at creating a complete enterprise information system running on Sun hardware. This effort was expensive and difficult, requiring the company to distribute its Oracle ERP systems across multiple servers and do a lot of custom work to make it operational. However, Sun sees the cost as justified by the experience and understanding gained.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Lets take another example, ATI Technologies; this company incorporates both structures. Originally ATI Technologies had a simple centralized management structure when it was merely a national level company; however they reconstructed their management model with their expansion: "A step-by-step approach allows you to expand slowly and carefully. In this way you have multiple regions and economies to rely upon. With expansion to a global model, the question of whether you should have a centralized management structure versus a decentralized one arises. Again, there are no set answers. For ATI, we have taken the best of both approaches, where our engineering research and design teams are centralized but our marketing is decentralized. In this way we maintain order in the development of products but allow country managers to have control over local marketing programs. " --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following is Unilever's experience in changing its management to a centralized one. Centralized entrepreneurship allows firms to develop processes quickly through improved communication (Prahalad & Doz, 1987). These formal entrepreneurial efforts usually target internationally viable products, which may or may not be appropriate for specific local markets. Conversely, companies using localized R&D processes can achieve greater responsiveness to local market needs. Yet, because the resulting products have to be tailored to particular local markets they may lack international appeal. Unilever's experience offers an interesting illustration of this dilemma.
As one of the world's largest food manufacturers, Unilever offers a wide variety of branded products in nearly every country around the world (Christensen, 1998). A decade or so ago, the company consisted of literally hundreds of organizationally distinct operating companies, where most of these units had been acquired at various points in time. Whereas these business units historically had pursued product development and branding strategies independently, Unilever was anxious to move to a more centralized management model, aiming to leverage its fixed investments in brands, new product development and manufacturing capability across multiple, even global markets, without sacrificing local responsiveness.
To balance its local strength with its global operations, Unilever introduced several processes and procedures hoping to focus its innovations on developing international brands, rather than locally-oriented products. For example, the company formed different groups that were responsible for particular innovations. These groups spanned geographic boundaries with contributors from multiple countries. The first effort made under the new structure was the development of Krona. Krona was intended to be a global substitute for butter and margarine, which at the time had a serious image problem in some countries because of health reasons. To develop Krona into an international brand, Unilever used Germany as its primary test market and employed the feedback it received from that market to improve the physical product, packaging, and marketing activities. While test markets in Germany were successful, Krona was not as successful in other national markets, probably because of differences in local tastes. Upon reviewing the results of the Krona introduction, Unilever's centralized innovation processes may not have considered or comprehend these differences.
As the Unilever example makes clear, centralizing innovation at the firm's HQ can have important advantages and shortcomings. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Companies seeking to foster entrepreneurship need to create a system of communication that allows them to learn from their existing local markets and guide the decision making process. This ongoing informal dialog between HQ and individual subsidiaries can also help managers decide where it is best to locate and support different entrepreneurial initiates. HQ can harmonize and integrate these initiatives and link them to the firm's strategy. An organization that has learned this lesson well is Glen Raven Mills Inc. of North Carolina.
With textile operations dating back to the Civil War, Glen Raven is considered by many to be the most "innovative and forward thinking" firm in the textile industry (McCurry et al, 2000). Though textiles have not historically been viewed as an innovative industry, growing international competition has forced some companies to vigorously pursue innovation. In recent years, like many other companies, Glen Raven has seen its operations affected by NAFTA and rising international competition. In response, Glen Raven has increased its international operations, while it has worked hard to strengthen its domestic market. Glen Raven has transformed itself from a run-of-the-mill textile company into a global marketer, wholesaler, and transportation company that can efficiently move means-of-production around the globe. The company saw entrepreneurial activities as the major source of its product and process innovations. These innovations have also served as the cornerstone of international expansion. Currently, Glen Raven operates 30 offshore marketing, sales, manufacturing and customer service facilities, including offices in China, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and Central and South America. To further encourage entrepreneurship throughout its international operations, the company holds each operating unit responsible for incubating ideas and products. These units have benefited from both formal and informal entrepreneurial activities in creating new products or developing new business ideas. Glen Raven has also reinforced these entrepreneurial efforts with strong capital investments to improve its technology as a way of leveraging its competitive advantages.
Source: Shaker A. Zahra, Department of Management
J. Mack Robinson College of Business
Georgia State University
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The owners' desire to have centralized or decentralized management will greatly influence the decision as to the appropriate business structure. In general terms, centralized management means that the owners of the enterprise relinquish control over management to one or a group of persons. Where decentralized management exists, the owners of the enterprise retain management authority. As a general rule, corporations and limited partnerships provide for centralized management through the board of directors of the corporation or the general partner of the limited partnership. By contrast, general partnerships typically have decentralized management, with all partners participating in management. Limited liability companies and business trusts may, depending on the terms of their organizational documents, provide for either centralized or decentralized management.
Here's an interesting article related to the evolution of a company's management. http://www.ils.unc.edu/daniel/405/Greiner.pdf
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