The incredible growth of B2B e-commerce and the increasing demand for content management applications to complement online business initiatives are creating tremendous opportunities for developers. GartnerGroup is predicting that B2B e-commerce will grow to $7.29 trillion by 2004 and that 80% of application-to-application traffic passing over public networks will be in XML by 2003.

While many online businesses now recognize the need for content management to complement e-commerce programs, several crucial aspects need to be considered in order to provide an effective XML-based application.

XML and E-Commerce
Why e-commerce needs XML
XML has the unique ability to represent any kind of data, including document information, configuration files, and transaction and accounting data. As a result, it's regarded by hundreds of leading software developers as the lingua franca of the next-generation Web. Hundreds and eventually thousands of programs will use XML syntax to represent and exchange data of all kinds.

The dawn of e-commerce initiatives saw online businesses simply putting up a line-item catalog and a few Web pages in an attempt to sell to online customers. The problem with this approach is that customers are given only enough information to purchase a product they've already selected, creating an environment in which customers have to make decisions based on limited content and data. They can become confused and aggravated to the point where they make no purchases at all - or worse, take their business to a competitor's site.

Further along in the evolution of e-commerce, online businesses recognized the customer's growing need for more information. In a rush to provide it, many companies ended up with content that's irrelevant, stale, difficult to navigate, and unable to leverage the power of Web systems. Often, online customers are put in direct contact with salespeople, further destroying the quick and convenient concept of one-stop, self-service online shopping.

When XML was first introduced, the initial focus centered on its use in exchanging transactional data between business partners. With the introduction of XML to e-commerce initiatives, the door was opened to create an effective and complete solution. XML makes it technically possible to deliver high volumes of information on the Web while automatically filtering irrelevant information based on the needs and profile of each individual customer. XML also makes it possible for an online system to provide multiple ways to navigate information, unlike most current web applications that limit navigation to a single path.

Online businesses, however, must continue to interact with customers through other media, including printed catalogs, CD-ROM-based catalogs, telephone support, and face-to-face interactions. This creates the need for a single trusted source that can feed information to all output media in a highly automated fashion. The implementation of this complete system is made faster, easier, and more cost-efficient with an XML-based content management system, which can be less expensive to maintain and increases the efficiency of Web masters.

Why Online Businesses Are Using
XML-Based Content Management
There are numerous strategic advantages that e-businesses look to maximize when implementing an effective content management application. The main reasoning, however, is based on sustaining an advantage by building a better Web site than the competition's. Effective online businesses are those that provide both pre- and postsale Web-based customer support so that online customers have all the information they need at their fingertips at any point before, during, and after the sale. By providing the right information and thorough support, online businesses greatly increase the chances of successfully completing online sales and lowering the cost of customer care.

Thoughts for Developers
Information is Key
Information is clearly a vital part of e-commerce success, as customers who know more about a product are more likely to make a purchase. To effectively inform customers, online businesses need to provide content that's rich, accurate, complete, personalized, and easy to navigate. Therefore, online businesses have a distinct need for an effective content management application that creates a user-friendly Web experience. With this system, prospects can quickly and easily make informed buying decisions, become customers, and return to the site.

An effective online shopping experience is made possible by offering many links within the content to e-commerce actions, such as alternative selections, parts lists, recommended add-ons, and shopping carts. It's also valuable to filter content so that it's relevant to user needs, including giving each customer control over what's displayed, what sequence the information is displayed in, and how it looks on the screen. The point is to make the online customer as close to 100% self-servicing as possible.

Analyze the Content
XML systems provide a unique ability to automate the manipulation of content at a very granular level, down to an individual word or cell in a table, but only if this is planned for. The most popular use of this capability has been to automatically apply a consistent style to documents, but other, more important capabilities exist, such as personalizing the content by changing the hyperlinking in a document and filtering the content to match the user's profile. Merging business data is another capability, such as merging the rich content required for product selection with line-item data (such as price and availability) for online marketplaces, and also merging information about products customers have purchased within the service documentation for customer self-service applications.

It's important for developers to recognize and select from these opportunities and make execution plans, possibly using a phased approach to achieve quick results that strike a balance between complexity and utility.

Where Will the Content Come From?
When developing an XML-based content management application, developers need to consider the content supply. Will it be created fresh as XML, or is there already a wealth of information in legacy documents that could be reutilized? Who owns and manages the legacy content? How readily can it be converted into XML for the greatest utility? What challenges and what value does the new system provide, and how will developers migrate to it?

One of the greatest challenges of developing this type of application is the conversion of existing content to a useful form. A low-end approach to this challenge would be to capture existing content as is and just add metadata at a document level. Another approach is to convert the content to XML in a highly granular form so the content itself can be componentized, automated, and reused. If developers consider these questions and challenges, they're one step closer to creating an application that can truly add value to B2B e-commerce initiatives.

Analyzing Reuse Strategies
XML-based content management enables the modularization and reuse of content - store once, reuse many times. But the granular nature of XML sometimes leads to confusion about the right level of content modularization that should be managed. is it at the division level, such as a chapter; at a subdivision level, such as a procedure; at each and every individual element level; or is it a mixture of these levels? For rich-content (versus data-oriented) XML systems, the developer must consider not only the technical issues, such as performance versus capabilities, but the contextual ones as well: Does it make sense to allow a user to reuse an individual paragraph in a new document context? If the paragraph is modified for one context, will the revision be appropriate in a different context?

Thinking Beyond the Technology
Developing an effective content management application for e-commerce means you're solving not only technical problems, but also other enterprise and organizational glitches. When adopting a new technology, such as content management, organizations continually struggle between the conflict of achieving improvement and minimizing the impact on the organization. The greater the improvement desired, the greater the change that must be made. Bigger changes, however, typically lead to an extensive cost, both in human terms and in technology purchases.

One of the toughest challenges organizations face when adopting an XML-based content management system is resolving the inherent conflict between obtaining the greatest possible competitive advantage and minimizing the changes to existing processes. For example, in most organizations, separate groups are responsible for printed content and Web content. Further, there are often many groups responsible for different types of content; marketing may be responsible for content to support product selection decisions, while service or engineering is responsible for content to support customer self-service. Creating a single trusted source of content that can automatically drive printed and Web output requires changes to every one of these groups, which is a difficult act to pull off internally.

When developing an XML-based content management application, it's important to consider all the potential problems businesses may face when implementing it. Creating an application that's easy to adopt and simple to use, and completely integrates traditional information processes with new e-business functions, will allow businesses to get the most out of it.

Potential Developer Hiccups
Developers face numerous challenges with any application, and XML-based content management applications are no exception. Three points developers should consider and expect during the process are:

1. Legacy content: Legacy content is always more inconsistent in file format and style than expected. This will make its reuse in an XML-based system more difficult, but still cost effective.
2. Integrating information: Integrating, reusing, and repurposing information at and from multiple locations and business units is challenging. Managing hyperlinking in this environment requires careful analysis and planning; developers probably won't catch all the problems at first, so plan on a phased implementation.
3. All systems are not created equal: Managing the editorial content process, particularly for complex information such as a manufacturer's installation and service documents, is very different from managing just the Web delivery portion of the system. Currently, few content management applications can effectively accomplish both, and most systems require additional partner products to reach this level of service.

Looking Ahead
The Potential of XML and Content Management Applications
In the long history and strange twists and turns of standards development, XML clearly stands out for its elegance and simplicity.

In terms of its use within content management applications, XML holds the potential for reducing the friction of information flow within an organization and across supply chains to the point where all interactions can take place at maximum possible speed. When considering e-commerce, for instance, even before a customer starts purchasing a new product, the nature and level of his or her interest could be instantly communicated across the entire supply chain so every link can be ready to respond to changes in customer demand.

XML enables the seamless sharing of all kinds of information. Most initial uses of XML have focused on sharing transactional and accounting data, but this is expanding to include intellectual data, which opens up vast opportunities for automating parts of the creation, management, assembly, and delivery of intellectual content. With automation comes speed, which allows for accuracy, efficiency, faster product development, quicker implementation, and timely system repairs and improvements.

With B2B e-commerce growing at breakneck speed, and with organizations depending more on content management to drive online initiatives, the future couldn't be brighter for developers. In the complex and confusing e-commerce arena, applications that are easy to implement and use, and that support the ultimate goal of total customer satisfaction through complete self-service and interaction, will be the ones that ultimately drive e-business, thus opening the door to endless developer success.