What Do Big Players Know That You Don't About ROI?
International business players today need to prepare for tomorrow. Internet technologies are a large part of any global business operations, and companies need to be able to collaborate with employees, customers, suppliers, and partners across multiple geographies and in multiple languages.
Unless the very substance of a company's products, services, and daily functions are managed now to adapt to the changing climate of international business - they will find it difficult, costly, and often impossible to sustain any global presence in the future.
The ROI
A global content management strategy provides a competitive edge through faster time to market and greater customer responsiveness, as well as increased market opportunities and profitability. Managing your content lowers the cost of entry into new markets by reusing and repurposing information while keeping its integrity. Studies have shown that targeting content increases the ability to attract and retain local audiences, and enhances loyalty among existing customers.
A common characteristic of many major organisations that are considered top eBusiness players - such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco - is their level of support for multilingual sites. These companies have multiple Internet sites and support many different languages. With their commitment to multilingual, globalised content, these companies reap the benefits of extending their enterprises by first organising content internally for global exposure, then using it to effectively target appropriate markets.
For example Tesco, a UK supermarket, has been able to increase sales by 50% within the last four years by reviving core domestic sales and by aggressively expanding internationally. The cornerstore of its international strategy is exporting culturally customised versions of its marketing for their stores. To offset the costs of localisation, Tesco management has focused on standardising management methodology to achieve global economies of scale.
By implementing an enterprise content management system, companies are not only in the position to manage their international operations as they stand now, but also strategically position themselves to capitalise on the control such a systems provides, so that they may change or alter any process from human resources to marketing, to adapt to the changing climate of international business.
As an example, in 1996 the Sun Microsystems internal audit division reviewed the company's globalisation viability with the conclusion that up to 20 percent of their revenue was at risk because of inadequate efforts to globalise. This resulted in an executive mandate that demanded the inclusion of a global philosophy from planning to execution for all products and services across the enterprise. Processes were not only world-enabled but also integrated.
You Are Your IP
A company's content is the evidence of what it does - the substance of employee's work; what the company uses to sell and service products, help and maintain customers, and collaborate with partners; and is the basis for creating and updating new content within the organisation. Content is your company's public image as well as the backbone for the way you manage your business. Your content is your most valuable Intellectual Property, because it is your knowledge base and your most powerful resource!
Whether it's available on the Internet, company Intranets, through B2B portals, or in a marketing brochure, content can create new opportunities and cement existing ones. In order to capitalise on this invaluable reserve, an Enterprise-wide content management system incorporating the creation, approval, and release of that content must be as predictable and controllable as any other manufacturing process. Without such a system in place, the integrity of the very content that defines and drives an enterprise is at stake.
Companies are now realising that they have a tremendous source of information at their disposal if they can consolidate and retrieve legacy data and make it accessible as needed throughout their enterprise. Existing content - the knowledgebase critical to a company's success - is often not being used, updated, repurposed and made accessible to the people who need it. Lack of a cohesive content management system represents the loss of previous investments and is usually followed by a further investment in the recreation of existing information.
This shows up in departments that traditionally work autonomously from each other, which are not sharing or communicating information successfully, resulting in missed opportunities, wasted time, and inaccuracies. The problem is further amplified by the fact that over the past several years most companies have moved online, which means that current content must make its way to the web as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, most companies are finding that they are recreating this information within different departments such as marketing, sales, technical authors and so on, rather than integrating these authoring processes through a content management solution.
Content Management Solutions
To meet these challenges, companies must first implement a content management solution internally, and then move externally to both sides of the supply and demand chain. The results are efficient and cost effective information processing enterprise-wide, with the following external benefits:
On the supply side, content management is a vital component of Enterprise Resource Planning, Supply Chain Management, and B2B commerce activities. With end-to-end content management capabilities, businesses can integrate with their vendors and suppliers more effectively. This leads to automating transactions and better managing the resources involved in buying, making, and moving products and services globally.
On the service side, content management is vital to Customer Relationship Management (CRM). As CRM becomes an initiative shared across different functions of Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service, the content and processes that drive transactions and manage the customer relationship need to be integrated. With content management, businesses can integrate the different functions that touch the customer from acquisition through to ongoing service.
Moving That Content at Internet Speed
For global companies seeking new opportunities and a competitive edge, the Internet is an expanding marketplace. Analysts estimate that the number of web pages companies need to manage will grow at a staggering rate of 200 percent per year. Global 2000 companies are finding themselves managing hundreds of thousands of pages, and struggling to ensure that published content is accurate, dependable, and trusted. This task cannot be executed manually - particularly when coupled with the need to manage content across multiple boundaries and cultures.
As the Internet has evolved from a storehouse of information to a vehicle for conducting business, content is no longer static. Companies need systems that go beyond just cataloguing and filing documents designed for one purpose by one author. They need to manage content that is complex and often developed by multiple authors in multiple languages. This requires systems that can reuse, repurpose, and assemble content on the fly to meet Internet speeds. Now content must be personalised for specific audiences and transformed for any number of destinations, including multiple devices and multiple sites.
The complexity and size of content ranges anywhere from an icon on a screen, a press release, or product details - to discussion documents or manuals for building and maintaining products. This represents your knowledge base, your terminology, and ultimately your intellectual property. In a B2B environment, the website is often the first influence on customers and potential investors. Websites are key support centres for public relations, branding, marketing and revenue generating efforts. Delays in posting new content can result in the release of incorrect information, missed opportunities, customer frustration and ultimately a loss in revenue.
Knowledge and Understanding
According to the IDC, by the year 2005 less than 25% of web users will live in the United States and according to some estimates, as early as 2003 nearly 70% of all users on the web will speak little or no English. Yet 90% of all eCommerce sites are written only in English for English-speaking audiences. IDC studies have proved that a vast majority of website visitors prefer to read and interact in their native language and will stay twice as long and be four times more likely to make a purchase from a site that speaks their language.
IDC further reports that a large percentage of companies are still doing little or nothing to reach out to global audiences through multilingual web content. This is partly because software capable of meeting these requirements has only recently come on the market. Perhaps even more importantly, those companies that have tried to manage their web content for local audiences in more than one language have met significant barriers and daunting challenges - of which content translation is only one hurdle.
Though translation is typically the first issue considered in globalising website and/or product, the reality is that translation is only part of the hurdle. Companies must consider the larger context: localisation awareness across the organisation. However even those companies who are localising products, still aren't localising content. For instance, a survey done by LISA, Geomarkets, and SMP Marketing entitled "US Technology Globalisation Survey 2001," found that even though IT companies in the US are localising software and hardware to meet country-specific requirements, the support systems for those products and its users aren't visible or available in the local language let alone on their company's website. Meaning - they have a product they can distribute in other markets, the website to give them global exposure, but are not always managing the content they need to sell or support that product internationally!
Localising Content
Just being on the Internet doesn't make you global. Truly global website must know how to leverage localised content - content that is translated into various major languages and adapted for specific regions or geographies. Beyond translation, localisation may also include cultural, economic, legal, and linguistic considerations. Localisation content may mean stating prices in local currency, meeting varying tax requirements, being sensitive to cultural and social customs (both in text and graphics), and adhering to local and regional laws. Customers whose names contain accented characters and whose zip codes are different from those on the site, must be able to have access to information, or they will not come back to buy.
For example while using cartoon characters may enhance product sales in Japan where icons are popular marketing tools, it may diminish product integrity in other markets. Even colours have different meanings depending on the country. For instance a person dressed in all white to a Western audience may be associated with a doctor or nurse and therefore cleanliness and service - while white is the colour of mourning in Japan. Up until now more and more companies are understanding the need for translated and localised content not only on their websites, but within the very content which supports that website such as manuals, product information, etc. However, for most companies, the idea of translating and localising volumes of content in multiple languages for various mediums is perceived to be a too costly and time consuming a task.
Managing global content effectively, means being able to manage translation and localisation projects more effectively at a lower cost by beginning with the right content. For example, content originally authored in English may be translated into French to reach French-speaking audiences and then may still need to be localised for France, Canada, and Switzerland to account for such differences as currency, regulations, and nearest distributors. Translated content such as product descriptions and graphics may be repurposed to support multilingual sites at a lower cost.
Facing these complex issues in advance by designing your global image, supporting content management systems and processes to carry that image from the beginning, can provide time and cost savings as you move into each new market. Enterprise Content Management incorporating focused localisation expertise will provide an immediate return on investment as new markets are opened.
LISA events, website, and newsletters provide localisation professionals and global business players the opportunity to network and review new technologies, systems, and processes to streamline their workflow and produce further savings and greater benefits enterprise-wide. From authoring to website implementation, managed multi-lingual content is key to the any company's global business strategy.
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