Acrolinx Conference 2013 - "Acrolinx Essentials" - Experis

Acrolinx Essentials

Presented by

PG Bartlett, SVP of Product Management, Acrolinx

Jennifer DeAngelo, Authoring SME, Experis

June 26, 2013

#acroconf2013 @Experis_GCS @JenDeAngelo512

Experis | Tuesday, July 02, 2013 2

Acrolinx Conference 2013 – Acrolinx Essentials


Agenda:

• Who’s using Acrolinx and why

• Key steps to set up Acrolinx

• How authors experience Acrolinx

• Building a business case for your management



Target Markets

• Large organizations

• Large amounts of content; critical to:

– Pre-sales: generating revenue

– Post-sales: enabling self-service

• Competitive market, budget pressures

• Multinational authors

• Multinational customers

Who uses Acrolinx & Why?




Target Industries

• Software

• High-tech

• Machinery

• Aerospace & Defense

• Automotive

• Medical Devices




Some Acrolinx Customers

Medical Software Aerospace High Tech

Industrial & Engineering




Target Buyers – traditionally…

• Localization: cleaner source language:

– Time & cost savings

– Enables machine translation

• Techdocs: automate proofreading

– Time to market, cost savings, productivity

– Compliance: e.g., Simplified Technical English for A&D




Target Buyers – emerging…

• Marketing

– “Grab eyeballs” – optimize for findability (SEO)

– “Grab hearts & minds” – humanize your content




Case Study

Situation

Solution

Results




Case Study

Situation

Solution

Results

Errors




Case Study

Situation

Solution

Results

Rewrites




Case Study

Situation

Solution

Results




Results of an Acrolinx Implementation

• Acrolinx software installed on:

– Your server(s)

– Your users’ desktops

• Spelling, grammar & style configured to your requirements

• Terminology database with your key words & phrases

• Training for all roles

• Quality reports (baseline & incremental)




How About DIY Setup?

• No - you need specialized skills to:

–Modify style rules

• Customize style and grammar

–Set up terminology in Acrolinx

–Train users




Step #1: Identify Roles

• Document who will be your:

– Project Sponsor

– Project Manager

– Terminologist

– Linguistic Administrator (“ling admin”)

– Server Administrator

– Writers & editors




Project Sponsor

• Role

– Approves commitment to project – typically director or VP

– Understands business reasons for project

• Activities

– Participates in kickoff meeting

– Participates in acceptance meeting




Project Manager

• Skills

– Ideally has formal PM background (e.g., PMI)

– Knows importance of schedule, scope & costs

– Knows importance of avoiding “scope creep”

• Activities

– Monitors project schedule

– Monitors & controls risks

– Coordinates your resources

– Communicates, communicates, communicates

– Participates in every milestone meeting

– Available for daily involvement in project

Tip: this role can be

outsourced – which

may work better for

you.




Terminologist

• Skills

– Typically editor or writer

• Activities

– “Validates” terminology – enters terms, creates links from

“preferred” terms to “deprecated” terms

– Needed for 10-20 hours per week during project

– Must be available to manage ongoing terminology changes

– Can serve as Linguistic Administrator too

Tip: give authority to

at most 3 people to

avoid deadlock &

delays.




Linguistic Administrator

• Skills

– Typically an editor

– Knows corporate style guide(s)

– Should understand grammatical syntax

• Activities

– Works with writers to test rules

– Organizes feedback on rules (working with project manager)

– Makes requests for customizing rules

– Can serve as Terminologist too

Tip: role of linguistic

administrator can be

outsourced.




Server Administrator • Skills

– Typically IT person familiar with servers

– Could be database administrator, but not required to be

• Activities

– Installs software on server and desktops

– Handles updates to software & configuration files during

implementation

– Performs software upgrades

– Should be different than Linguistic Administrator or Terminologist

Tip: role of server

administrator is the

least time-consuming

role.




Step #2: Know Your Goal

• What are your goals for using Acrolinx?

• Do your users know the goals, too?

• Have you defined what success looks like?




Identify Requirements & Business Objectives

• Roles

– Key stakeholders within your organization

– Acrolinx sales team – initially

– Acrolinx Professional Services (PS) – later on

• Activities

– Discussions with your team

• Results

– Implementation team understands your requirements,

which is needed so they can provide guidance and

assess feasibility & scope

Tip: Make sure

discussions are

sufficiently detailed.




Step #3: Collaborate & Communicate! • Kick-Off meeting:

– Activities

• Review

– Roles & responsibilities

– Phases & milestones

– Business objectives

– Project objectives

• Discuss potential risks

– Results

• Everyone understands

– How the project supports the business objectives

– Level of effort required for success

– What Acrolinx does (and doesn’t do)

Tip: If people are

missing, risk

increases.

Tip: Need to

differentiate between

terminology and

linguistic rules.




Step #4: Decide on Governance

• Governance Decisions: standards, optimization, & analytics




Spelling:

• Dictionary

• Spelling Rules

• Terminology




Grammar Rules:

Agreement

Word order

Word confusion

Typos

Hyphenation

Part of Speech

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=uXuza46Hbv7raM&tbnid=oTrWHrp9dVW5DM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://winus.spfldcol.edu/arts103/bestof/arts103-11/time/timemanagement/creditstime.html&ei=0XXIUbzoBYvBywGn04GQCg&bvm=bv.48293060,d.aWc&psig=AFQjCNG0wXgzbs5BcxbLfRUUF8ff9LxmmQ&ust=1372178049963534




Style Rules:

• Readability

• Informality

• Liveliness

• Scanability

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=fOvFLwRnrRARsM&tbnid=RuDr7OFKLIphzM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.vapromag.co.uk/editing-a-document-in-microsoft-word-part-2-easy-styling/&ei=4nfIUbiOKKiSyQHDyYDQBQ&bvm=bv.48293060,d.aWc&psig=AFQjCNHg4oyxfQ95JsJautUO8afRUi5vIQ&ust=1372178666267530

How Authors Experience Acrolinx


Global Content Solutions



Demonstration Review

• Author

– Opens existing document in Word

– Runs Acrolinx check

– Reacts to errors & recommendations

– Comments on existing term

• Terminologist

– Receives comment on existing term

• Author

– Views report

– Submits new term

• Bottom line

– Not just a checking engine

– Also a management system with collaboration and reporting

Building a Business Case




Business Cases Have Two Foundations



Tie to Your Organization’s Strategic Goal

• Higher revenue; better

customer support

• Greater customer

satisfaction

• Geographical expansion

• Faster product cycles

• Lower costs, higher

productivity

• …

• Better findability & readability

• Higher content quality, more

understandable & consistent

• Lower translation costs

• Faster editing & translation

• Less work for SMEs, editors,

reviewers & translators

• …




IX = Information eXperience



Typical Benefits of Content Optimization

Customer-Facing (Strategic)

• 100% increase in web traffic

• 30% improvement in

readability

• Increased customer

satisfaction

• Higher revenue

Internal Process

• 10% cost benefit in authoring

• 60% cost benefit in editing

• 15% cost benefit in

translation

• Lower support costs

• Faster time to market




Hidden Impacts of Content Problems

• Internally-facing issues

– Content rework later in the development cycle?

– Costly editorial and technical review processes?

– Higher translation costs?

– Excessive support calls?

• Customer-facing issues

– Purchases that don’t happen?

– Product returns from frustrated customers?

– Negative customer reviews?




Early Corrections Save Costs

$1 – Specification

$5 – Writing

$20 – Editing

$50 – Technical Review

$100 – Pre-production/QA

$500 (per language) – Distribution

The earlier you catch

a mistake, the less it

costs to fix.




What Quantifiable Benefits Can You Expect?

• Localization yields greatest “hard” savings

– Typically significant budget item

– Savings come from:

• Phase 1: 2-5% word reduction, 10% fewer issues to resolve

• Phase 2: reused sentences

• “Soft” savings in editing

– Editors re-deployed to higher-value work, i.e., improving accuracy

• “Soft” savings in authoring

– Built-in guidance reduces training time

– Authors find more of their own errors; faster & easier than fixing errors caught downstream by editors (or customers)

• Time-to-market savings

– Difficult to quantify, highly dependent on your situation




ROI Spreadsheet

• http://www2.acrolinx.com/l/8582/nx-ROI-calculator-example-

xlsx/8s7h6

Cost BenefitsVersion 2012-10-01 Annual Benefit

Enter data only in cells marked like this: Enter data here

Authoring cost improvement $25,000

Authoring costs $500,000

Improvement expected (%) 5.0%

Editing cost improvement $50,000

Editing costs $100,000


Translation cost improvement $18,000

Translation budget (annual) $150,000


Total Annual Cost Benefit $93,000

Total Annual Opportunity Benefit $125,000

Total Annual Benefit $218,000

Authoring payroll = number of authors times the average fully

loaded cost. Savings come from relieving authors from

looking up terminology or style guidelines.

Editing payroll = number of editors times the average fully

loaded costs. If editors are part-time, then adjust the payroll

cost down accordingly.

If the translation budget is unknown, then consider deriving it

by multiplying the number of words created each year times

the number of languages times the cost per word (25 cents?).

http://www2.acrolinx.com/l/8582/nx-ROI-calculator-example-xlsx/8s7h6













Presenting Your Case

• How content problems hinder achievement of your organization’s

strategic objectives

• Impact of your content on your customers & your organization

• How your proposed project will:

– Improve your content

– Support your organization’s strategy

• Quantitative business case

• Third-party credibility

– List other organizations already optimizing their content

– Analyst commentary

• “Borrow” from our slides!

Questions?




Contact Us:

PG Bartlett

Acrolinx

[email protected]

Jennifer DeAngelo

Experis

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Thank you!

Acrolinx Conference 2013 - "Acrolinx Essentials" - Experis

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Transcript of Acrolinx Conference 2013 - "Acrolinx Essentials" - Experis