The answer was YES.

Out of the 164 people who responded,
54% agreed
35% disagreed
and 11% were not sure

According to Todd Karnig (Director of Global Content Acquisition for HP – more from him later on in this column), HP is probably somewhere in the middle. It has made progress in narrowing the divide, and it is now moving closer and closer to a unified state over time.

This is why LISA hosted its Forum USA 2007 in conjunction with The Gilbane Conference in April. With everyone – whether they created original content, localized it, managed it or distributed it – gathered under the same roof in San Francisco, all of us were able to address the same pressing issue (albeit from different angles) at the same time: Managing Content Globally: Erasing the Gap Between Content Creators and Localizers for Good.

Don’t miss out on all of LISA’s news on standards, new products and new events (Berlin and Antwerp) – you can find all of this information at the end of this column.

According to Deloitte Touche, more than 80% of the world’s largest and most complex companies are not successful in capturing the full returns on their global investments. It estimates that “business process optimization” could increase profits for these companies by 50%. (Deloitte Research, Global Benchmark Study 2005, http://www.deloitte.com)

Managing content globally is crucial to gaining market share and maintaining your brand in your home market and around the world. With a host of new faces and a diversified group of thought leaders, the combined program provided a 360-degree view of what it takes to integrate globalization into an organization’s business processes – the specific people, processes and technologies that are required to ensure success enterprise-wide.

Our three highest-rated ranked presentations by the audience were:

Dr. Nitish Singh, The Next Localization Frontier: Designing Culturally Customized Web Sites
The U.S. will account for less than 58% of total global online sales in 2007.

Curt Porritt, Website Google-ization: Localizing for Search Engines
Translation Memory users beware! Search engines don’t like duplicate content.

Hans Fenstermacher, Authoring for Global Audiences: Closing the Gap Between Authoring and Globalization
Does your content really deserve to exist? If not, kill it!

(If you are a LISA Member, you can download these presentations by logging into the LISA site and then clicking here.)

However, I am going to focus on the presentations given by HP and by VeriSign because they show how far we have come in terms of leveraging web sites to build and support global brands worldwide – and still how far we have to go.

During the first day’s keynote, Global Digital Content Management: Today & the Future, Karnig described in detail how an enterprise as large as HP manages its product information and catalogs across the 100+ markets in which it serves customers. He also provided insight into how his company views the Global Content Management challenge, what it’s doing about it, and its plans for the future. (For more details, read HP on Global Digital Content Management: Today & the Future in this issue.)

According to Karnig, the ‘linear sales experience’ is no longer enough, and it’s not even enough to provide local content in local markets. An increasing number of people are now accessing information worldwide through the web, especially in emerging market countries. Customers now expect to quickly find the content that THEY want, WHEN they want it, AND in the LANGUAGE they want.

Over 65% of HP’s revenues (USD 91 billion) are now generated outside the U.S.

With over 65% of its revenues (USD 91 billion last year) now coming from outside the U.S., it is critically important that HP efficiently drive content – in local language, on time and in compliance with its standards – to its customers. HP has operations in more than 180 countries and produces more than 80,000 products (the number is actually about five times higher at 400,000 when third-party products are included).

In practice, this means that HP must “create once, use many” when it comes to its content. And yet, this is regardless of the fact that it can’t sell a USD 9.95 printer cartridge the same way that it sells a USD 1 million high-end server. Why not? Because its customers don’t shop for them in the same way.

HP’s model for hp.com covers 47 countries, 35 languages, 81 product lines and 1.5 million web pages.

In spite of all of the challenges, HP has accomplished a lot and the ROI has been a big success. The vast majority of products offered through hp.com originate from content hosted in the central repository. And numbers continue to increase significantly each quarter. The model now covers 47 countries, 35 languages, 81 product lines, 1.5 million web pages, more than 145+ direct content subscribers and more than 3,500 content subscribers (CNet is one example of a big win). The number of pages is actually a problem, but for now, it provides a competitive advantage for HP. (For more details on the model, see the presentation.)

Yet, there is something quite big looming on the horizon for companies like HP that have developed their content models for Web 1.0 …

How will the decisions made for the Web 1.0 world stand up to the content management challenges of the interactive world of Web 2.0? What will their tradeoffs mean for the future?

The content model is king.

In summary, Karnig emphasized that the content model is king, but you must be ready to accept compromises and to pay for them in the future as technology and communications shift the playing field. Customers are expecting to receive information in their own language, as fast as possible. The key is to make sure that the information is available and easily accessible. If it’s not, users will find information from other sources about the products they are trying to buy, e.g., through their friends or through blogs. When this happens, a company no longer controls its message online. If companies don’t take the reins, then someone else online will.

The VeriSign Challenge? Evangelize globalization by “making waves.”

In Web Globalization: A VeriSign Case Study, Anna Schlegel (Executive Producer for the Global Web Properties Team at VeriSign) entertained the audience in San Francisco with how she and her team evangelized web globalization by “making waves.” Told by upper management to “just implement something like HP,” make waves they did as they produced multiple web sites in multiple languages with multiple vendors on a limited budget.

VeriSign protects the majority of secure web sites with digital certificates on the internet – this means more than 750,000 web servers, including 93% of the Fortune 500. It operates the largest independently owned SS7 network in the world, routing billions of connections from carrier to carrier – across national boundaries and between protocols. The company monitors 300 million retail transactions and delivers more than 200 million mobile-originated, intercarrier SMS messages and more than 1 million multimedia messages everyday.

In 2003, VeriSign only had four international sites, in addition to its corporate web site, supported by one Global Project Manager. By 2007, it had 16 international sites organized under a centralized global web operation, supported by four language service providers.

But it wasn’t always that way …

When Schlegel arrived in 2004, she was told, “Look at what HP is doing and implement something similar (but with no budget or team!).” She found herself working full-time to evangelize and to gain upper-level executive support in order to obtain the resources to build her team and execute her strategy.

The International Product Commercialization Group was out to tame the “Wild West.”

It took 2-1/2 years, some burnout (the workload and strategic planning during this period were done with just 2 people, 1 vendor and no translation tools) and a lot of hard work to clean everything up. What saved the effort, according to Schlegel, was her joining the IPC (International Product Commercialization) Group. It allowed her to have a voice in creating VeriSign’s global brand in terms of what the company could sell legally. Other IPC members included the Sr. VP of Products and the Sr. VP of Legal, who were out to tame the “Wild West” – VeriSign employees were selling everything they could internationally, regardless of whether they had approval to do so or whether regulatory commitments were being met in the local markets.

Schlegel built her budget dollar by dollar.

Schlegel created a vision and mission statement for international and continuously shared it company-wide at every opportunity. She recruited as many allies as she could throughout the organization, focusing on the Brand Manager (who was key) and in-country personnel. She built her budget dollar by dollar – when she didn’t have headcount, she went for contractor dollars.

However, the metrics now show how VeriSign is maturing vis-à-vis its global web site strategy. Between 2004 and 2006, the number of words processed doubled from 1.1 million to over 2 million. There were no stakeholders in 2003; by 2006, there were 14 major stakeholders actively engaged in the localization process. The number of countries supported jumped from 7 in 2004 to 16 in 2006.

VeriSign.com (the corporate site) now has 5.3 million unique visitors and 30.4 million page views. The international sites, including 10 in Europe/Middle East/Africa and 2 in Latin America, have 557,000 unique visitors and 2.7 million page views. While the corporate site has only experienced a 3% increase in visitors and a 1% increase in page views year-over-year, the increases for the international sites have been 74% and 41%, respectively! (Refer to the slides for details on localized web sites and their direct effect on marketing campaigns.)

Thirty-seven percent of all traffic on VeriSign’s intranet is now generated from international offices, and 34% of the traffic on its sales portal is from outside of the U.S. In terms of lead generation, 308,000 web leads were collected worldwide last year.

Along the way, Schlegel’s team has taken on responsibility for translation as well. And, in parallel, VeriSign’s CEO has realized that the U.S. market is becoming saturated, so this has increased support for what her team is doing. There is a corporate mandate that everyone who has “web” in their job title must now report to Schlegel! This means that she can mandate translation processes, QA processes, etc. and have them executed according to her plan.

Currently, Schlegel and her team are in the midst of deploying a GCMS to replace the old system based on email, with full approval from the top. Looking towards the future, they face the following challenges:

• Contained English, i.e., engaging writers to reduce content
• Ongoing evangelization and localization training
• Maintaining a focus on tiered countries
• Expanding in Asia
• Maintaining a concentration on quality
• Training their vendors to find issues and to fix them
• Allowing a bit more customization to the corporate template at the local level
• Doing more with less (their budget was recently cut quite a bit, in spite of the fact that VeriSign is doing well, traffic is high and sales are increasing)

For details on specific lessons learned along the way and how centralized web site localization builds the VeriSign brand, please refer to Schlegel’s presentation.

If you are a LISA Member, you can access all presentations (including one by Sun Microsystems about the new implementation for their international web presence), along with the Forum Overview and detailed writeups for each session by logging into the LISA site and then clicking here. Please contact admin@lisa.org to find out how to access the presentation slides if you are not a LISA Member.

If you are interested in the Gilbane Conference program, click here for detailed program descriptions and here for the presentations themselves.

LISA Standards Announcements

TMX Announcements

TMX 2.0 was released for public comment on March 28 this year, and comments will be accepted through June 1 at tmx2@lisa.org. We are especially interested in comments related to (1) implementation and (2) feedback from tools developers and current users of TMX. For more information and to view the specification, please visit the TMX home page.

For tips on how to reuse translated content based on LISA’s Translation Memory eXchange (TMX) standard, read XML in Localization: Reuse Translations with TM and TMX, by OSCAR Member and Heartsome Holdings XML Specialist, Rodolfo Raya.

TBX and TBX-Lite Announcements

LISA has entered into a licensing agreement with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to submit its Term-Base eXchange (TBX) standard for adoption as an ISO standard under ISO fast-track ballot procedures. This will result in a higher adoption rate for the standard and increased awareness of the need to manage terminology effectively. For details, click here. The version submitted to ISO is available on-line in XHTML format.

The LISA Terminology SIG has released a data category proposal for TBX-Lite for public comment. The document is available for public download on the SIG’s home page.

GMX Announcements

GMX-V was adopted by OSCAR as an official standard for the globalization industry on February 26 this year. It provides a variety of statistics related to word and character counts that can be used to precisely quantify the amount of text (of various types) in a document. While GMX-V was designed with localization tasks in mind, it may be used in any field where precise, standardized quantification of text is needed. You can download the standard by visiting the GMX home page.

ISO/TC 37 Announcements

ISO/TC 37, the International Organisation for Standardization's Technical Committee dealing with the standardization of principles and methods for "Terminology and other language and content resources," is conducting a survey for user group analysis. To participate, click here.

New Publications from LISA

If you’re a LISA Corporate or Sponsor Member, all LISA publications are now free. You can browse by visiting the LISA site and choosing the Publications & Tools pulldown menu.

The new LISA Globalization Industry Primer is now available in Arabic, English, Russian and Simplified and Traditional Chinese as a free download here. Use the LISA Primer to educate people involved with globalization initiatives within your organization and with your service and business partners. It will enable them to quickly understand how international business is changing and what these changes will mean to their companies’ worldwide operations.

Watch your mailboxes over the next ten days for the release of LISA's 2007 Best International Web Support Sites Awards Book and a totally new publication on best practice for outsourcing software QA.

And if you haven’t participated in the LISA Globalization Professionals Salary Survey, please click here. The data is always up-to-date and always live.

LISA Will Be in Berlin and Antwerp – Special Packages Available

Join us for the LISA Forum Europe in Berlin from October 22-26. Our theme will be Building Global Teams Locally: Outsourcing, European Integration and Globalization. For information on special packages, please click here.

From December 10-12, LISA and the Lessius Hogeschool in Antwerp will host a unique Forum, Teaching Localisation for Global Business Readiness. The Forum will bring together localisation professionals from academia and industry seeking to improve career development and training in today's localization industry. Click here for more information.

Enjoy!