Supporting the Business Plan: Do it, Prove it

LavaCon 2012

Mark Lewis

Quark

About Mark Lewis

Content Strategist, DITA Educator at Quark

STC Summit 2012 – 2013 Track Manager– Content Strategy and Design

Past Co-Chair:Oasis DITA for the Web SC

Manager: DITA Metrics group on Linked In

Guest Author

DITA 101 2nd edition“Fundamentals of DITA for Authors and Managers”

By the Rockley Group with Mark Lewis

For sale at LuLu.com

Technical Reviewer

Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy2nd edition

By Ann Rockley & Charles Cooper

For sale at Amazon.com

Author

DITA Metrics 101

Published by The Rockley Group

DITAMetrics101.com

Supporting the Business Plan: Do it, Prove it

LavaCon 2012

Mark Lewis

Quark

Do you have a

strategy?

Details

Details

Reasons to move to XML

Quark’s content goals

Brief definition of content strategy

Prove support corporate goals

Agenda

The Business Case

content reuse

Aligning CS & CG

Emphasis on XML

Translate

No formatting

Multiple formats

No proprietary word proc or page layout

Duplicate content

Reasons for moving to XML

The Big 3

Reduce cost

Formatting

Translation

Increase quality

Streamline the process

Quark’s Goals

Reduce cost

Reuse content

Increase quality

Showcase / Dogfood / Kool-Aid

Quark – Quark

Xpress

In.vision Research – XML Author

Different content goals ,

but same corp goal reduce cost

Halvorson, Kristina; Rach, Melissa (2012-02-10). Content Strategy

for the Web, 2nd Edition (Kindle Locations 524-525). Pearson

Education (US). Kindle Edition.

Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach

Content Strategy for the Web 2ed

Content strategy "Defines how you’re going to use content to meet

your business (or project) goals and satisfy your users’ needs.“

"In summary: Content strategy guides your plans for the creation,

delivery, and governance of content.“

"This defines how an organization (or project) will use content to

achieve its objectives and meet its user needs."

Content Strategy - Defined

Main categories:

Increase revenue

Reduce costs

Process improvement and automation

Risk mitigation

Common Corporate GoalsHandout

Common Corporate Goals

Reduce costs

Reduce development cost

Reduce translation cost

Reduce call center cost

Reduce product returns

Process improvement and automation

Reuse of honed processes

Risk mitigation

Increase quality

Improve governance

Minimize branding damage

Shown CS to Exec

Did you know corp

goals?

Stories?

Resistance?

Increase revenue

Common Corporate Goals

Sales team

Improve prospect engagement

More accurate information

Faster and easier access to information

Reduce learning time

Shorten sales cycles

Reduce time to market

For local products

For translated products

Improve branding

Smartphone

catchup

All

Product enhancement

Increase customer satisfaction

Increase quality

Better access to content

Call center improvement

Improved resources

Reduced response time

Reduced volume

Increase customer retention

More up-to-date information

Prospects read content when: buying,

learning, installing, using

Increase revenue

Common Corporate Goals

Product line expansion

Reuse processes

Reuse existing content

More languages and cultures

Do “user needs” map to corporate goals?

Make sure you and the executive agree what “user’s

needs” mean.

Content Strategy vs. Corporate Goals

Halvorson, Kristina; Rach, Melissa (2012-02-10). Content Strategy

for the Web, 2nd Edition (Kindle Locations 524-525). Pearson

Education (US). Kindle Edition.

Kristina Halvorson

Content Strategy for the Web 2ed

Content strategy "Defines how you’re going to use content to meet

your business (or project) goals and satisfy your users’ needs.“

"In summary: Content strategy guides your plans for the creation,

delivery, and governance of content.“

"This defines how an organization (or project) will use content to

achieve its objectives and meet its user needs."

Content Strategy - Defined

Product enhancement

Increase customer satisfaction

Increase quality

Better access to content

More up-to-date information

Call center improvement

Improved resources

Reduced response time

Reduced volume

Increase customer retention

Prospects read content when: buying,

learning, installing, using

Increase revenue

Common Corporate Goals

Product line expansion

Reuse processes

Reuse existing content

More languages and cultures

Emphasis on

Mobile,

My Content

User Needs maps,

but show exec

which u satisfy

Message to Exec was not in terms of executive goals,

which resulted in…

“Why would I want to spend a bunch of money, just to

make my tech writers’ lives easier?”

Content Strategy vs. Corporate Goals

Does exec know what you are doing?

Does exec know you are supporting corporate goals?

You must speak the executive language

Know the exec’s goals so you can present the right

metrics

Quote: Run your projects/department like a business

Supporting Corporate Goals

Proving Support

My savings trends and ROI data that I could use to communicate with an

executive and prove that I am supporting corporate goals.

Reduce cost

Formatting

Translation

Increase quality

Streamline the process

Quark’s Goals

Reduce cost

Reuse content

Increase quality

Showcase / Dogfood / Kool-Aid

Quark – Quark

Xpress

In.vision Research – XML Author

Supporting Corporate Goals

reduce development cost

reuse content

eliminate formatting costs

eliminate desktop publishing costs

reduced translation cost

reuse (already translated) content

reduced time to market

topic level

project level

reduced time to market for translated products

project level

Corporate Goal

Supporting Metric

Business Case

Reduce development cost

Reuse content

Business Case

Reduce development cost

Eliminate formatting costs

Business Case

Reduce development cost

Eliminate desktop publishing costs

Business Case

Reduce development cost

Reduced translation costs

TMS

Already XLAT

sentences

Business Case

Reduce development cost

Reduced time to market – topic level

Family of similar

products

Without

Reuse

With

Reuse

Business Case

Reduced time to marketProject-level

Without

Reuse

With

Reuse

Business Case

Reduced time to market

Translated

Products

Content Lifecycle

Where are you in the content lifecycle?

Thinking about XML?

Implementing XML?

Doing XML?

Content LifecyclePrediction vs. Actual

RequirementsDesign

Implementation

Development

Maintenance

Time

Prediction Actual

Supporting Corporate Goals

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: The Transformation from Technical

Publications to Information Experience

by

Paul Perrotta

Ben Jackson

Juniper Networks

“Run your business like a business”

What are the corporate goals

What content metrics prove your support of those

corporate goals

Synthesize the metrics you need to prove your

support of the business plan

Summarize: Of your executive list, here’s what we

CAN do with current resources

Summary

Conclusion

Mark Lewis

mlewis@quark.com

Thank You

Questions