Determining the value of your content

A key challenge to connecting content is determining exactly what is useful and what is not.

The truth is this – the vast majority of information produced by the enterprise has little residual value to the enterprise.

The highest value content, or intellectual assets, are those that format, drive, guide or inspire the majority of information produced by employees. This "core asset set" may evolve and change over time, but it still sets the standards that define business value. The core set is the foundation for most content that is produced. Due to the critical nature of this set, and because it's generally small (relative to all content produced) the best way to manage these assets is manually as it must be continually refined and validated. However, once an inventory is complete, updating and evolving consumes little resources as it becomes self perpetuating if managed in the right kind of system.

The fresher the asset, the greater the value

New content produced from the core set is at its zenith in value the moment it is completed. Bottom line: the best work is always the most recent. As newer and newer content is produced, the value of the predecessor continually diminishes until it is reduced to archival status.

The real challenge at this stage is the location of the content, as the fresher it is, the closer it resides to the authoring mechanism. Thus, the very best content often lives in the least accessible places, the desktops and laptops of the creators. Making the freshest content widely and painlessly accessible is the real challenge, for both the system and the culture.

Archived content provides infrequent value

This is where search engines and content/KM management systems can be useful (though questionable in proportion to their cost), by automatically indexing and cataloging information stored throughout the infrastructure. Sure you'll have to sift through a lot of junk, but eventually you will find what you think you need. Odds are, however, if you didn't find it in the first two tiers, it's probably not all that valuable anyway – certainly not in proportion to the cost of the time wasted finding it.