Example used throughout this book

In this book, we'll assume we are rolling out Alfresco throughout a consulting firm. Professional services firms make great examples because they tend to generate a variety of different documents. The other reason is that document and content management is usually a big challenge, which is the core to the business. But the examples should be applicable to any business that generates a significant amount of documents.

The example firm, SomeCo, wants to leverage document and content management throughout the organization to make it easier to find important information, streamline certain business processes, and secure sensitive documents.

SomeCo's company organization is pretty standard. It consists of operations, sales, human resources, marketing, and finance/legal. Examples of the different types of content each department is concerned with are shown in the following table:

Department	Example document types	Format and process notes
Finance/legal	Client proposals for project work Statements of work Master services agreements Non-disclosure agreements	Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF. Several iterations between the firm and the client before a final version is completed. Some documents may require internal review and approval.
Marketing	Case studies Whitepapers Marketing plans Marketing slicks/promotional material	Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe PDF, and Adobe Flash. Mostly single-author content. Some content may come from third parties. Some content may need to be published on the website.
Human resources	Job postings Resumes Interview feedback Offer letters Employee profiles /Biographies Project reviews Annual reviews	Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, and HTML. Single-author content with consumers being spread throughout the company. Some content formats are unpredictable (such as resumes). Some are very standard and could be templatized (such as offer letters). With the exception of job postings, none of this content should go near the Web. Some content needs strict internal permissions.
Sales	Forecast Presentations Proformas	Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. Some business process and automated document-handling possibilities such as forecast. Searchability of presentations is important.
Operations	Methodology Utilization reports Status reports	All Microsoft Office formats. Some opportunity for integration into enterprise systems such as time tracking and project management.

Examples throughout the rest of the book will show how Alfresco can be implemented and customized to meet the needs of the various organizations within SomeCo. During a real implementation, time would be spent gathering requirements, selecting the appropriate components to integrate with the solution, finalizing architecture, and structuring the project. There are plenty of other books and resources that discuss how to roll out content management across an enterprise and others that cover project methodologies. So none of that will be covered here.