Content Conversion Done Right Saves More Than Money
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Can you significantly reduce your conversion costs – by 25% or more – without sacrificing quality? The answer is a resounding yes, and this webinar will review the proven methods and best practices for achieving that goal.
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Content Conversion Done Right Saves More Than Money
- 1. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.comwww.dclab.com Content Conversion Done Right Saves More Than Money Analyze|Optimize|Automate|Review Greg Fagan, Sales Director, Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL)
- 2. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com 2 Valuable Content Transformed • Document Digitization • XML and HTML Conversion • eBook Production • Hosted Solutions • Big Data Automation • Conversion Management • Editorial Services • Harmonizer
- 3. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com 3 Experience the DCL Difference DCL blends years of conversion experience with cutting-edge technology and the infrastructure to make the process easy and efficient. • World-Class Services • Leading-Edge Technology • Unparalleled Infrastructure • US-Based Management • Complex-Content Expertise • 24/7 Online Project Tracking • Automated Quality Control • Global Capabilities
- 4. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com We Serve a Very Broad Client Base . . . 4
- 5. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com 5 . . . Spanning All Industries • Aerospace • Associations • Defense • Distribution • Education • Financial • Government • Libraries • Life Sciences • Manufacturing • Medical • Museums • Periodicals • Professional • Publishing • Reference • Research • Societies • Software • STM • Technology • Telecommunications • Universities • Utilities
- 6. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • Ask the right questions up front: – What is the end goal? – What is the best format to achieve that goal? – Do we have the required expertise on content formats (XML, DITA, etc.) and conversion technologies in house? – Do we have customized automation tools to scale up? – Can we manage the QA process on the back end? 6 Step 1: Analyze – There are no shortcuts!
- 7. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • Identify your internal strengths and capabilities • Determine where you need help • Choose the right vendor – one who works not just for you, but WITH you • The right vendor is your partner and will help you with the analysis phase 7 You’ll Need a Partner
- 8. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • Garbage in, garbage out – a hackneyed phrase but so true for content conversion • Clean up your content • Eliminating redundancies and errors saves time and money • Whether you take this on yourself or entrust it to your vendor, DO NOT skip this step 8 Step 2: Optimize
- 9. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • Determine reuse potential for ROI calculation • Easily combine disparate documents into a single document set • Clean up typographical errors • Reduce size of content set to reduce overall costs (conversion, translation, etc.) • Metrics on reuse potential • Make future updates easier and more efficient 9 Harmonizer™ - DCL’s Analysis and Cleanup Tool
- 10. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • The more manual your process, the greater the likelihood of errors and inconsistences • Build an automated process that is both repeatable and scalable • Refine and configure…Refine and configure…Refine and configure… 10 Step 3: Automate
- 11. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • Requires little to no manual intervention • Can scale up quickly and easily • Can handle all content types identified during analysis phase 11 What Defines a Good Process?
- 12. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com Step 4: QA Review • Even a well-planned, well-executed conversion needs a thorough quality check • QA is built into DCL’s process – no additional cost • Automated and manual processes • Lack of or minimal QA results in expensive and time- consuming rework • Thorough QA saves time, money, and headaches 12
- 13. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com 13 Analysis of client requirements Optimization (Harmonizer) Conversion specification and sample Automation software and process set-up Conversion QA Production tracking throughout Result = savings
- 14. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com Case Study 1 • University Press chose a low-cost vendor for conversion project • Quality and timeliness of work was poor • Had to devote unbudgeted resources to QA • Clean-up and rework costs were nearly as much as conversion cost • Time to market slowed by 2 years • Have now approached DCL 14
- 15. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com Case Study 2 • Professional society needed to convert 250K pages of legacy content • Low-cost vendor didn’t deliver desired quality or needed throughput • Turned to DCL and project was completed in 8 weeks, with a high degree of satisfaction 15
- 16. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • Your content is your number one asset • Conversion is not a commodity – doing it cost-effectively requires careful planning, sufficient resources, repeatable processes, and thorough follow-through • Choose your vendor(s) wisely • A good vendor should invest time with you on the front end to understand your end goals and put the right processes in place 16 Key Takeaways
- 17. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • There is a cost to do-it-yourself conversion – don’t go it alone • There are also hidden costs to conversion done on the cheap (clean-up, staff time, management time, etc.) • The most expensive conversion you will ever do is one that doesn’t produce the desired outcome • Choosing a high-quality vendor who works with you to get it right the first time saves you money 17 Key Takeaways (cont.)
- 18. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com • Analysis + Optimization + Automation + Review = Savings • Following the steps and processes outlined here will reduce your conversion costs, increase your speed to market, free up critical resources, and help you avoid headaches 18 End Result
- 19. Confidential & Proprietarywww.dclab.com 19 Q&A Greg Fagan Sales Director, Data Conversion Laboratory (908) 723-1884 gfagan@dclab.com @dclaboratory
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon, everyone! Thanks for joining us for this webinar. Today we’re going to talk about how to significantly cut your conversion costs, be it for legacy content or new content. I’m Greg Fagan, and I’m the Sales Director for the publishing and financial industries at DCL.
- Just some quick background information on DCL. We’re content conversion experts. We take content in any format you might have it and convert it to reusable formats for digital output such as XML, SGML, HTML5, DITA, and EPUB. We not only convert your content, but we can enrich it to make it more discoverable, usable, and deliverable to any output format or device. Aside from conversion, we offer a suite of services, including hosting, editorial services, project management, and Harmonizer, our proprietary software solution, which I’ll discuss further ahead.
- Our deep experience, sophisticated infrastructure, and ferocious commitment to quality are what set us apart from the pack.
- We serve a broad range of clients. Myriad large, global companies from many different sectors entrust their content to us.
- And our clients span a wide array of industries, which speaks to our familiarity and fluency with lots of different XML schemas.
- Any successful conversion project will require careful and thorough analysis up front. Like any other project, you must know what your end goals are and then plot the surest course for achieving them. Ask the critical questions and invest the time and resources into gathering all the requirements before moving ahead.
- Every organization has its own strengths and capabilities, but very few have everything they need to handle a large conversion project on their own. More than likely, you’ll need a partner to manage the areas that aren’t your strong suit, be it automation, cleanup, QA – wherever you have gaps. Spend time identifying your strengths and capabilities so that you know which parts of the project can be handled internally and which parts you should outsource. Then choose a vendor who complements your capabilities. The best vendors can help you identify critical issues and set strategy at the earliest stages of the project.
- The next step is to optimize your content by cleaning eliminating redundancies and errors BEFORE conversion. Garbage in, garbage out is a cliché for sure, but a useful one for content conversion. Optimizing your content is critical to cost reduction, so whether you do it yourself or outsource it to a vendor, do not skip this step.
- Harmonizer is DCL’s proprietary software solution to identify and eliminate redundant content from even the largest document collections. It’s a great tool for content optimization, and its benefits are numerous. It can be a key part of your plan to reduce conversion costs.
- In order to realize significant savings on any large-scale conversion, automation is essential. Manual processes are labor-intensive and result in too many errors. You need a repeatable process that scales up easily. And along the way, you must refine and configure your process until it is light-out and flawless. A good vendor will implement such a process and iterate with you to continually refine and configure it.
- An effective automated process requires little to no manual intervention, scales up easily, and can handle all the different content types that were identified during the analysis phase. The more automated the process, the more cost-effective it will be.
- When you work with DCL, we work with our own offshore partners to keep your conversion costs down. But we add critical steps to our process that you don’t get when you go directly offshore. The steps contained in the green boxes illustrate these additional services, which are essential to any successful conversion project. A thorough analysis considers not only content type but poses questions about who the users are, how they will interact with the content, which platforms and devices they will access it from, etc. Our Harmonizer software can reduce the size of your content set, eliminate redundancies, and find errors BEFORE conversion. Our automation software provides a scalable and repeatable process, which is far more efficient than throwing bodies at a project to do extensive rekeying. Our offshore vendors use our proprietary automation tools. Our QA is done by our US-based project teams. Absent this step, you would have to handle the QA internally, which involves substantial staff and management time, and the converted content you would be checking would not have been analyzed at the front end nor run through a customized automation process. We also give our clients access to our production tracking system, so that they can see the current status and due dates for upcoming milestones. All of these services lead to well-structured, error-free deliverables. Clean-up and rework, which can lead to cost overruns of nearly 100%, are eliminated. All things considered, DCL’s holistic approach to conversion SAVES you money.