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 Im

pact

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 CustomersAerospace Medical

Industrial

Software High Tech

Follow-Up

Contact info: pg.bartlett@acrolinx.com

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

Thank You!PG Bartlettpg.bartlett@acrolinx.com