webinar3: building the business case for content optimization
TRANSCRIPT
Building the Business Case for Content Optimization
Third of our series: “Your Content, Only Better”
October 4, 2012PG Bartlett, Acrolinx
You’re Here Because:
You produce a lot of content Your content is vital
– Pre-sales – generates revenue– Post-sales – enables self-service
Your budget is under pressure Your market is competitive Your team is international Your market is global
Agenda
Benefits of content optimization Tying into your organization’s strategic objectives Calculating your ROI Presenting your case About Acrolinx
“When a Japanese manufacturer was asked by his North American counterpart, "What is the best language in which to do business?" the man responded: "My customer's language.”
– Leonard I. Sweet
http://www.thinkexist.com
Business Cases Have Two Foundations
Strategic fit Quantifiable value
Tie to Your Organization’s Strategic Goal
Geographical expansion Faster product cycles Lower costs
Greater customer satisfaction
Better customer support
Higher productivity
…
Lower translation costs Faster editing & translation Lower editing, support &
translation costs Higher content quality, more
understandable & consistent Improved findability &
comprehension Less work for SMEs, editors,
reviewers & translators …
Tying Language Improvements to Strategy
Plain language improve reader comprehension improve customer satisfaction & first-time fix rates
One voice improve branding consistency support transition to “solutions” provider
Localization costs (human & machine) reduce cost and time expand geographically
Compliance reduce legal risk limit negative publicity improve brand image
Search improve search results increase revenue, improve customer satisfaction
IX = Information eXperience
Typical Benefits of Content Optimization
Customer-Facing (Strategic) 100% increase in web
traffic 30% improvement in
readability Increased customer
satisfaction Higher revenue
Internal Process 10% cost benefit in
authoring 60% cost benefit in editing 15% cost benefit in
translation Lower support costs Faster time to market
Hidden Impacts of Content Problems
Internally-facing issues– Content rework later in the development cycle?– Costly editorial and technical review processes?– Higher translation costs?– Excessive support calls?
Customer-facing issues– Purchases that don’t happen?– Product returns from frustrated customers?– Negative customer reviews?
Early Corrections Save Costs
$1 – Specification
$5 – Writing
$20 – Editing
$50 – Technical Review
$100 – Pre-production/QA
$500 (per language) – Distribution
The earlier you catch a mistake, the less it costs to fix.
What Quantifiable Benefits Can You Expect?
Localization yields greatest “hard” savings– Typically significant budget item– Savings come from:
• Phase 1: 2-5% word reduction, 10% fewer issues to resolve• Phase 2: reused sentences
“Soft” savings in editing– Editors re-deployed to higher-value work, i.e., improving accuracy
“Soft” savings in authoring– Built-in guidance reduces training time– Authors find more of their own errors; faster & easier than fixing errors
caught downstream by editors (or customers) Time-to-market savings
– Difficult to quantify, highly dependent on your situation
Let’s consider the “hard” savings
This Excel file will be posted on acrolinx.com along with these slides.
Cost BenefitsVersion 2012-10-01 Annual Benefit
Enter data only in cells marked like this: Enter data here
Authoring cost improvement $25,000 Authoring costs $500,000 Improvement expected (%) 5.0%
Editing cost improvement $50,000 Editing costs $100,000 Improvement expected (%) 50.0%
Translation cost improvement $18,000 Translation budget (annual) $150,000 Improvement expected (%) 12.0%
Total Annual Cost Benefit $93,000Total Annual Opportunity Benefit $125,000
Total Annual Benefit $218,000
Authoring payroll = number of authors times the average fully loaded cost. Savings come from relieving authors from looking up terminology or style guidelines.
Editing payroll = number of editors times the average fully loaded costs. If editors are part-time, then adjust the payroll cost down accordingly.
If the translation budget is unknown, then consider deriving it by multiplying the number of words created each year times the number of languages times the cost per word (25 cents?).
And now the “soft” savingsOpportunity BenefitsVersion 2012-10-01 Annual Benefit
Enter data only in cells marked like this: Enter data here
Customer Retention $62,500 Annual revenue ($millions) $250 Gross margin (%) 5% Improvement expected (%) 0.5%
Customer Acquisition $62,500 Annual revenue ($millions) $250 Gross margin (%) 5% Improvement expected (%) 0.5%
Improved Time-to-Market $0 Annual revenue ($millions) $250 Gross margin (%) 5% Improvement expected (days) 0 Portion of product revenue affected (%) 20%
Regulatory Penalty Avoidance $0Litigation Cost Avoidance $0
Total Annual Opportunity Benefit $125,000Total Annual Cost Benefit $93,000
Total Annual Benefit $218,000
This reflects improvements in customer satisfaction because you produce content that ranks higher in search results and is easier to understand.
This reflects improvements in acquiring new customers because you produce content that ranks higher in search results and is easier to understand.
This reflects reductions in time-to-market thanks to reducing documentation & localization time. (Many companies will experience zero impact here because documentation never delays the product release.)
Few companies will see impacts in these areas, which reflect reductions in regulatory and legal penalties by producing fewer documentation errors.
Presenting Your Case
How content problems hinder achievement of your organization’s strategic objectives
Impact of technical content on your customers Impact of technical content on your organization How your proposed project will:
– Improve your content– Support your organization’s strategy
Quantitative business case Third-party credibility
– List other organizations already optimizing their content– Analyst commentary (see next two slides)
“Borrow” from our slides!
How is your world changing?
Content creation moving upstream to engineers, support people, help desk?
Content creation increasingly performed by non-native speakers (perhaps created offshore or outsourced)?
Content required in more languages? Content increasingly consumed by non-native speakers? Tighter schedules? Lean/agile development processes?
How recent are these changes? How much impact is felt today? How much more impact is still to come? How can you get ready now?
Impact of Content Automation Technologies
Process Impact (Efficiency & Disruption)
Cus
tom
er I
mpa
ct
Content Management
Content Optimization Structured
Authoring
“Language Afterthought Syndrome” (LAS)
From Gilbane: LAS is “a pattern of treating language requirements as secondary considerations within content strategies and solutions.”
“Companies leak money and opportunity by failing to address language issues as integral to end-to-end solutions rather than ancillary post-processes.”
http://gilbane.com/globalization/2009/09/suffering_from_language_afterthought_syndrome.html
LAS Symptoms
“Painful time-to-market delays” “Pesky inefficiencies due to redundant translations” “Content that should be reusable, but isn’t” “High customer support costs due to mediocre quality of translated
content” “Time and money to retrofit translated content to meet compliance
requirements” “Maxed-out language capacity, constrained by unscalable
globalization infrastructures” “Multichannel customer communications that are inconsistent and
out of synch” “Mysterious localization and translation costs”http://gilbane.com/globalization/2009/09/suffering_from_language_afterthought_syndrome.html
Acrolinx Overview
Acrolinx Overview
Technology developed by Acrolinx team at German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Spun off in 2002 to develop software that helps write better content
Privately owned Berlin headquarters, offices in U.S. &
Japan Available in English, Chinese, German,
Japanese, French, Swedish
How Does it Work?
Set up rules & terms
Set up users & systems
Acrolinx works within editing
tools
Everyone can access terms
Managers can view status &
results
Acrolinx checks content against rules & terms
Some Acrolinx Customers
Aerospace Medical
Industrial
Software High Tech
Follow-Up
Contact info: [email protected]
Next & last webinar of this series:– “Planning for a Successful Implementation of Content
Optimization”– October 25– Register at: http://www.acrolinx.com (link will be live soon)
Recording, slides & spreadsheet will be posted soon at http://www.acrolinx.com/webinars_en.html
