Understanding and Communicating the Financial Impact of XML & DITA

Understanding and Communicating the 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

6 – 10 languages

11 – 20 languages

21 – 30 languages

31+ languages

The Ripple Effect How 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 Effect How 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%

Step Two: Translate Impact of the Right Translation Workflow

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

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)