Calling on the best and the brightest minds in business, the LISA Forum Europe kicked off the week by focusing on the needs of clients with a highly interactive Global Content Management Seminar, moderated by experienced CMS (Content Management System) and GCMS (Global Content Management System) clients. The seminar was designed for clients investigating the best CMS or GCMS systems and/or third-party partnerships that respond to their global needs.

 

 

It was clear from the presentations, as well as the hallway discussions, that content is indeed coming to be recognized as a strategic asset at the corporate level. In order to elevate content to a strategic asset and thereby streamline global workflow, it is becoming clear to all parties involved that standards are key and that the implementation of best practices is the only path to implementing all of the change that is required. And often to their surprise, organizations are discovering that brand protection is even more important than cost savings over the long-term.

Standards continue to push their way to the forefront for several reasons. According to IBM, standard interfaces and workflow processes are the only way to ensure that globalization services suppliers remain resilient around the world and around the clock to take on jobs at a moment’s notice. HP has learned that change management has made standards imperative. For companies such as Canon and Whirlpool, standards are what allow them to implement global content management systems. There aren’t very many companies that have established a globalization function, but those who have now understand that it cannot succeed without applying standards at the same time.

Standards may be even more important for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), since they allow companies to implement the solutions they need with standard components, thus reducing costs. On the supply side, standards are the only thing that will allow SMEs to join together to provide services in order to survive.

Myra Hunt, Acting Head of BBC World Service New Media, opened the Forum by addressing the issue of managing global content in real time. For the last five years, the BBC World Service has been developing multilingual content management systems (CMS) to run and support their “always on” news sites at BBC Worldservice.com: 43 multilingual web sites that run the gamut from radio sites to 24-hour news operations. These are high traffic sites with a rapid churn of content, which must be available all the time to news hungry users. The BBC World Service has developed systems in-house, using open source standards, and is now reaping the benefits. Their CMS systems allow them to produce and distribute images, text and audio extremely efficiently, thus enabling them to maximize their reach and ROI.

Ted Speroni, General Manager, hp.com Europe for Hewlett-Packard described in detail the realities of the “Content Chaos” that is costing many companies their profit margins. HP now recognizes content as a critical company asset and a key business driver in its overall eBusiness program.

When the transition began at HP about a year ago, there were 500 sites on 300 different hosting platforms with 250 web site services covering 160+ countries! The Worldwide Global Operations Group was formed to provide the backend services to elevate the level of doing business from a country to a regional/world level, thus doing away with the marketing groups attached to each business unit and/or country.

There was just one catch: the group would have to do it with 70% less budget and make it transparent to HP’s customers. They did it by creating a solution called “EZ-Content” to provide XML content online through a subscription service to Partners. Speroni confirmed that the CMS implementation was the key to the overall cost reduction. The trick now is to keep the plane flying while, at the same time, continuing to make a substantial investment in infrastructure.

Dr. Brian O’Donovan, Senior Development Manager at the IBM Dublin Software Lab, explained how to prepare for On-Demand, the next phase in e-business. He described an “on-demand enterprise” as being one whose business processes - integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers - can respond with speed to any customer demand, market opportunity or external threat. However, just as nobody flips a switch to become an e-business, the migration to on-demand will occur over time as well.

According to O’Donovan, an “on-demand GILT services provider” is responsive in real time, able to take on a job at a moment’s notice and able to weather the spikes in demand with flexible staffing models. It employs variable cost structures and business processes through minimal overheads enabled by its own on-demand suppliers. And it focuses on what’s core and differentiating by understanding its niche and aiming to be the best at it.

Curtis Tuckey, Director of the Voice Laboratory at Oracle Corporation, described the very real and exciting opportunities for voice-enabled applications and explained why globalization is a driving factor in their adoption. Mobility and the Internet have changed the rules in the development, deployment and marketing of voice applications in the new global voice market. The creation of voice XML has revolutionized the development of voice applications and allowed them to be accessible to the masses. There are only a handful of voice technology providers who have attempted to create globalized solutions, and Oracle is one of them.

Oracle estimates the global market for business applications to be around 10 billion USD, with about half from the U.S., 3 USD billion from EMEA and 2 billion USD from Asia. Since it delivers almost all applications in thirty languages to 130+ offices around the world and considers voice just another way of delivering these applications, globalization is critical to Oracle. There are additional challenges in the areas of standards (there aren’t many) and localization (voice has issues beyond text-based translation) that must be addressed, and Oracle is doing so.

More than 1.2 billion people speak languages that use bi-directional (bidi) scripts. Israel Gidali, Globalization Manager at the Globalization Center of Competency in Israel, and Ahmed Talaat, Globalization Development Manager in IBM Egypt, described the technical challenges posed by these scripts, along with the market opportunities in the Arabic-speaking world and Israel.

There are more than eighteen Arabic-speaking countries with a total population of 294 million. However, the cultures are different so the markets must be approached at a country level. The year-over-year growth from 2002 to 2003 is positive throughout the region for the IT market, e.g., Egypt and Kuwait are both at 5%. Approximately 2 billion USD worth of contracts was signed in 2003 alone for software, hardware, data communications, telecommunications and IT Services.

More importantly perhaps, every country in the region has implemented strong programs to encourage the placing of PCs with Internet connectivity in every home, e.g., Internet access is free in Egypt. To complement this, there are tax incentive programs and education initiatives at all levels.

Israel continues to be a hotbed for R&D (research and development) and entrepreneurial activities. It still has one of the most highly educated workforces in the world, a history of creating premier companies and a tremendous concentration of technology leaders. The largest IBM research facility outside of the U.S. is located in Haifa. The market penetration rate for PCs is at 43% (similar to the U.S.); at 42% for Internet connectivity (similar to Sweden); and at 70% for mobile phones (similar to Finland).

Most important of all is that the regional conflict has no impact on business operations. Israel has extensive commercial ties with the global community. Its high-quality, dedicated employees come at a lower cost than in other comparable locations. There are also generous R&D grants and tax breaks available.

There were several case studies in which companies shared how they had streamlined their global workflow through implementing global content management systems. Peter Wilms van Kersbergen, Business Improvement Manager at Medtronic B.V., described how his company learned that content re-use is the key and that processes should be integrated and standardized prior to automation. After considerable analysis and globalization consultancy, Medtronic opted to develop MAPS, an internal solution with the flexibility to automatically compose and translate varying "re-use levels" in ten languages. Medtronic is now positive that it followed the right path when it designed its system to support an integrated process of authoring, translation and composition.

In another case study, Charles Farimoyo, General Manager, Technology Solutions for Canon Europe, emphasized that it is always consulting maturity that delivers a solution, not the technical savvy. Farimoyo, along with Ken McDougall, VP Strategic Business for SDL International, shared how Canon Europe’s Web Self-service Solution (CEWSS) was developed to reduce the number of help desk calls. It is a multilingual “self-help” portal for consumer queries and support requests arriving at the Customer Support Help Desk for office automation products.

The company's knowledge-based system involves integration with a specialist knowledge-based infrastructure for the authoring and management of source material, together with XML-based automation of the workflow for translation management. The whole process from authoring to delivery of updated multilingual content now takes place without any further systems involvement from Canon.

To date, Canon Europe has realized a reduction in content translation turnaround time and overhead. It now enjoys improved time-to-market and an increased customer ability to resolve problems proactively. It can also protect its brand through translation assets that are stored and reused on an ongoing basis for all material.

Whirlpool Europe implemented a five-year plan in conjunction with its strategic partner, Logos Group, to re-engineer its workflow for the management, coordination, origination, translation, publishing and printing of "Instruction for Use" publications that compliment its entire product range. A highly traditional craft approach to documentation was reinvented using web-based technology and centralized data management solutions. The benefits of streamlining the entire process were demonstrable in promoting customer satisfaction, reducing production timescales, increasing economies of scale, improving communication/data flow and decreasing all associated costs. As a critical component, user information was transformed from liability to asset, adding true value to the Whirlpool brand.

Pierre Cadieux, CEO and Founder of i18N, Inc. did a superb job of explaining the entire document creation, localization and publication workflow process and highlighting the applicable standards at each step. He demonstrated that there is translatable content throughout the enterprise and explained how content management systems permit the user to define the deployment of content throughout the workflow process. In this context, GMS and CMS systems must work together for the user to derive maximum benefits. And lest we lose sight of the real goal, Cadieux reminded us that humans, not the steps or the tools, are the critical components to this process.

In a rough and tumble session with passionately held opinions, Kim Harris, Managing Director of Text & Form Software-Lokalisierung, used historical business data and current trends for localization service providers to illustrate the industry consolidation that has taken place over the past five years. This has been caused in part by the economic climate, along with business trends of smaller service providers (SPs).

Harris showed how only 3% out of the 15-20% growth in revenues experienced by the largest localization service providers from 1998-2002 was organic, i.e., almost all of the growth was due to acquisition. Based on survey results, she illustrated how consolidation had affected SLVs… drastically! Since 2001, most SLVs have not even made a profit before taxes.

Based on her research, Harris has come to the following conclusions. The localization industry is now resizing internally and becoming less fragmented. It is maturing through the consolidation that is an inevitable result in any industry. Clients have more options in terms of localization solutions due to diversification, and this choice is healthy. Big MLVs are shifting from the SME supplier model to a freelancer model to retain their profit margins. SMEs are finding new ways to compete by using their strengths jointly. Standards and standardization will become more significant in order to allow small companies to join together to provide services.

Bringing together all of the trends to make sense out of them were two excellent panels. In a presentation on how to build a corporate globalization program from the grass roots up, EMC (Dan Kuperstein and Chris Hedley), HP (Alison Toon), and Medtronic (Peter Wilms van Kersbergen) described how they pulled it off. All three companies advised against treating globalization as a special issue… it’s a business issue requiring business decisions just as any other. They painted an extremely realistic picture of what it means to set up a globalization program, including the challenges and very tangible rewards that come from doing so.

Globalization has to be in the boardroom and on the agenda. In order to gain access, you must positively, absolutely have an “angel,” a “sponsor,” a “benefactor’ – whatever you want to call it, you must have one in the boardroom. The second critical step is to build an actionable and ROI-focused business case with checklists for implementing the globalization function (perfecting an “elevator pitch” for use with executives doesn’t hurt either, according to Kuperstein!). If you cannot execute successfully on these two items, you are out of the game and doomed to failure.

The second panel that tied everything together for Forum attendees covered best practices. Cathyann Swindlehurst, Globalization Consultant with Cygnet International, Inc. and Venturi Partners, provided a succinct overview of the concept to set the stage. In simple terms, a best practice is a way to communicate to business the value of what you do and what it costs them if you don’t do it. By definition, best practices are what companies depend on for maximum efficiency and results. Whether gained by experience or through the example of others, best practices are often transferable across companies and even entire industries. For a good practice to become a best practice, though, it must be documented, communicated, understood and shared.

This concept is now being applied to Web globalization through the EEEL (Excellence in European eContent Localization) Project, an eContent Program funded by the European Commission. Rose Lockwood, Director of Research for Bowne Global Solutions, described how EEEL is the flagship eContent project addressing the production, use and distribution of European digital content to promote linguistic and cultural diversity on global networks. It’s a consortium of localization companies whose members have expert knowledge of strategies, methods and best practices for global content publishing.

The project is backed up with fieldwork to validate assumptions and published case studies. Jonathan Sage, Project Director for eContent Localization with IBM Business Consulting Services, demoed ELMA, a maturity assessment model and scoring system to implement the model, developed as a web services prototype by IBM.

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There were many other excellent presentations, case studies and workshops that space does not allow us to cover here. Please contact admin@lisa.org to find out how to access the presentation slides.