Single sourcing
Description
In traditional publishing, content is often trapped in format-specific files. To update a product specification, a writer might have to open a Word document (for the manual), a CMS (for the website) and a layout file (for the brochure) to make the same change three times. This process is slow, expensive and prone to error.
Single sourcing solves this by separating content from its presentation. Instead of writing "documents," authors create modular structured content components (such as a safety warning or a technical description) stored in a Component Content Management System (CCMS). These components are format-neutral. When it is time to publish, the system dynamically assembles the components and applies the correct styling for the target output – whether that is a PDF, an HTML5 help center, a mobile app or a chatbot response. This approach is closely related to the COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere) principle. However, single sourcing goes deeper than just publishing to multiple channels; it enables conditional publishing. From a single source component, an organization can generate different variations of a document for different audiences (e.g. "User" vs "Admin") or regions, simply by applying metadata filters at the time of publishing. For global enterprises, single sourcing is the key to scalability. It dramatically reduces translation costs because only the unique source component needs to be translated.
Example use cases
- Technical documentation: Generating installation guides, user manuals and quick-start cards from the same set of DITA topics.
- Compliance: Updating a safety warning in the source repository and having it instantly reflect across all product labeling.
- Marketing: Pushing consistent product descriptions to e-commerce sites, mobile apps and printed catalogs simultaneously.
- Field service: Delivering context-specific troubleshooting steps to technicians’ mobile devices drawn from the master service manual.
- Training: Reusing technical documentation components to build training modules, ensuring alignment between what is taught and documented.
Key benefits
RWS perspective
RWS champions single sourcing as the foundation of the intelligent enterprise. Through Tridion, we provide the structured content backbone that makes single sourcing possible at scale.
We help organizations move away from document-centric workflows to a component-based model. By combining Tridion Docs for structured authoring with Tridion Sites for web delivery, we enable a true "create once" ecosystem. Our Human + Technology approach ensures that while the system handles the complexity of reuse and dependencies, human authors retain control over the quality and structure of the source. This turns content from a static expense into a dynamic asset that drives global understanding and operational excellence.