understanding and communicating the financial impact of xml & dita

© 2006 JustSystems Inc.

Understanding and Communicatingthe Financial Impact of XML & DITA

Amber Swope

October 19, 2007


Introduction

• Amber Swope– Principal Consultant, JustSystems, Inc. – 18+ years of experience in the industry at multiple

companies of varying sizes and industries– Supported information developers producing DITA

content in Rational group at IBM– Author of numerous papers/presentations on

information development and information architecture


Agenda

• Introduction

• The Ripple Effect

• Building your case– Step One: Choose and Evangelize Information Model

– Step Two: Translate Impact of Right Translation Workflow

– Step Three: Calculate Measurable ROI

– Step Four: Select Technology Partners Who Facilitate ROI


Polling

How many languages do you translate your content into?

• Only use 1 language

• 2 – 5 languages




• 31+ languages


The Ripple EffectHow Global Targets Inflate Content Volume

Market Expansion Scenario:

BestBet DVD Players Expands Sales to Five European Countries

* 5 new countries requires 5 times the amount of work in creating, translating and delivering all the information necessary to support sales, marketing and service activities


The Ripple EffectHow Global Targets Inflate Content Volume

• Adapting to a much larger mandate also requires the need to understand and communicate the implications, limitations and suitability of:


Polling

How familiar are you with DITA?

• First time learning about it

• Somewhat familiar, heard about it

• Familiar with it or researching

• Very knowledgeable

• Already implemented


Step One: Choose and Evangelize your Information Model

DITA: Darwin Information Typing Architecture

• XML-based technology foundation that controls and manages creation, translation, workflow, and publishing of content

• Popular information model in today’s global, multi-channel environment

• Breaks down and structures info into reusable modules

• Identifies relationships between info ‘topics’ and ‘maps’

Eliminates redundancy of effort


* Organizations save 40-70% or more in documentation and localization costs



Example:

• A manufacturing company recently adopted DITA after a global expansion required translation to 14 new languages

• During pilot project (which encompassed just one set of documentation), the company measured savings of more than $225,000 within the first three months

• Today the company produces dozens of documentation sets in more than 20 languages



Polling

How are you currently translating your documents?

• I currently translate by whole documents

• I have adopted an XML strategy to translate documents in parts

• I’m not sure

• Not applicable


• Traditionally, TM tools send entire documents through translation process – including already translated content

• Also need to find best point to translate along the content lifecycle– If too early: Waste– If too late: Jeopardize deadlines

• BUT – When topic-by-topic vs. whole documents:

DITA introduces Flexibility

Step Two: Translate Impact of the Right Translation Workflow



Consider the following scenario:

Product Guide 125 pre-existing topics

+ 75 new topics

= 200 topics

Without DITA With DITA

200 topics for translation

Several thousand dollars to proof & match topics that have not

changed

75 topics for translation

Since 125 are easily reused, costs reduced by over 60%



Savings at Every Step: Global Content Creation with DITA


Polling

What metrics do you currently track?• Number of hours authors actually write per week• Number of hours to write a topic or page• Number of hours to write a topic by type• Number of hours to review a topic• Number of hours to translate a topic• Number of test/review a deliverable• Number of days per language to translate

deliverables per product for a release


Step Three: Calculate Measurable ROI



Also consider the following factors which impact explicit costs:

• Direct labor hours per page

• Cost per art file

• % of content rewritten before release of First Edition (revision / churn rate)

• % of new content in future revisions / variants (carry-forward reuse rate)

• Number of expected future product revisions / variants

• % chance to reuse content from this document across other products

• % chance to reuse content from this document across other documents for this product

• Current reuse rate achieved on iterations (before)

• Number of output formats

• Cost for file pre- and post-processing

• DTP cost per translated document



* The same document that cost $6,000 per language to translate with a whole-document, non-TM approach will cost approximately $1,000 per language using DITA



Now consider:

10 documents delivered in 10 languages

• Annual savings of $500,000 on just one documentation set

Under Old Method With DITA strategy and TM

Annual Translation costs

$600,000

(10 documents x 10 languages x $6,000 per language)

Annual Translation costs

$100,000

(10 documents x 10 languages x $1000 per language)


Step Four: Select Technology Partners Who Facilitate ROI

• Unified content development environment (UCDE) contains multiple applications

• Applications must integrate to provide seamless workflow


Step Four: Content Authoring

• Provides intuitive GUI for authoring topics

• Provides ability to organize topics with DITA maps

• Supports creating relationship tables

• Validates DITA topics

• Has a customizable GUI

• Able to integrate with other applications in UCDE


Step Four: Content Storage

• CMS – workflow and metadata support (aids in reuse)

• Source Control – file integrity support


Step Four: Content Publishing

• Generates DITA topics into deliverables

• Server and desktop support


Step Four: Content Translation

• Manages translation workflow

• Manages translation memory (TM)


Summary

• Understand how translation affects content development and production

• Build your case for moving to DITA– Step One: Choose and Evangelize Information

Model

– Step Two: Translate Impact of Right Translation Workflow

– Step Three: Calculate Measurable ROI

– Step Four: Select Technology Partners Who Facilitate ROI


Resources

• http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users

• http://dita.xml.org

• http://na.justsystems.com– White papers– Webinars– Flash demonstrations

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