Recently by Mary Laplante

Gilbane’s 2009 research on multilingual content indicates that global companies are making steady progress towards overcoming language afterthought syndrome – a pattern of treating language requirements as secondary considerations within their content strategies and solutions. This presentation delivers insight into how market-leading companies are adopting content globalization strategies, practices, and infrastructures that position language requirements as integral to end-to-end solutions rather than as ancillary post-processes. The session is designed for content and language professionals and managers who need to know how to bring capabilities like automated translation management, terminology management, multilingual multichannel publishing, and global content management into the mainstream. Takeaways include data and case studies that can be used in business cases to move language requirements out of the back room once and for all.

Localization World Silicon Valley, 20-22 October, Santa Clara Convention Center

For Immediate Release

Pioneering Research Describes Transformation of Technical Communications Practices to Align More Closely With Global Business Objectives

Cambridge, MA, July 28 -- Gilbane Group, Inc., the analyst and consulting firm focused on content technologies and their application to high-value business solutions, today announced the publication of its latest research, Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value Chains.

 The report is backed by in-depth qualitative research on how global businesses are creating, managing, and publishing multilingual product content. The study extends Gilbane's 2008 research on multilingual business communications with a close look at the strategies, practices, and infrastructures specific to product content.

 The research clearly shows a pervasive enterprise requirement for product content initiatives to tangibly improve global customer experience. Respondents from a mix of technical documentation, customer support, localization/translation, and training departments indicate that "global-ready technology architectures" are the second most often cited ROI factor to meet the directive. All respondents view single-sourcing strategies and self-help customer support applications as the two most important initiatives to align product content with global business objectives.

 "Successful business cases for product content globalization address top-line issues relevant to corporate business goals while tackling bottom-line process improvements that will deliver cost savings," commented Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group, and program lead for Multilingual Product Content. "Our research shows that while multilingual content technologies are clearly ROI enablers, other factors influence sustainable results. Cross-departmental collaboration and overarching business processes, cited as essential improvements by 70% and 82% of respondents respectively, are critical to transforming traditional practices."

 Multilingual Product Content is the first substantive report on the state of end-to-end product content globalization practices from multiple perspectives. "Gilbane's latest research continues to show both language and content professionals how the well-managed intersection of their domains is becoming best practice," said Donna Parrish, Editor, MultiLingual magazine. "With practical insights and real experiences in the profiles, this study will serve as a valuable guide for organizations delivering technical documentation, training, and customer support in international markets."

 The report covers business and operational issues, including the evolving role of service providers as strategic partners; trends in authoring for quality at the source, content management and translation management integration, machine translation, and terminology management; and progress towards developing metrics for measuring the business impact of multilingual content. Profiles of leading practioners in high tech, manufacturing, automotive, and public sector/education are featured in the study.

 Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value Chains is available as a free download from the Gilbane Group website at http://gilbane.com. The report is also available from study sponsors Acrolinx, Jonckers, Lasselle-Ramsay, LinguaLinx, STAR Group, Systran, and Vasont Systems.

About Gilbane Group

Gilbane Group, Inc., is an analyst and consulting firm that has been writing and consulting about the strategic use of information technologies since 1987. We have helped organizations of all sizes from a wide variety of industries and governments. We work with the entire community of stakeholders including investors, enterprise buyers of IT, technology suppliers, and other analyst firms. We have organized over 70 educational conferences in North America and Europe. Our next event  if Gilbane Boston, 1-3 December 2009, http://gilbaneboston.com. Information about our newsletter, reports, white papers, case studies, and blogs is available at http://gilbane.com. Follow Gilbane Group on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gilbane.

Contact:
Gilbane Group, Inc.
Ralph Marto, +1.617.497.0443 xt 117
ralph@gilbane.com

June 17, 11:00 am ET

The challenges facing FICO, a leading supplier of decision management analytics, applications and tools, will sound familiar to global organizations: the need to streamline product and content development lifecycles, support global expansion with accurate and timely localization and translation processes, and satisfy customers worldwide with consistent, quality experience. What makes FICO’s story unique is its strategic and proactive approach to addressing them.

With a successful business case based on reuse as a “first principle,” FICO is building an enterprise content infrastructure that includes XML and DITA, component content management, translation memory and terminology management, and automated publishing. Learn how FICO is aligning global content practices with the company’s business goals and objectives. If you need to spark that “aha!” moment within your organization, you won’t want to miss this webinar event. Topics:

• Reuse as the tipping point: the synergies of component approaches to product and content development
• Implementing an end-to-end global information strategy
• The value of content agility in FICO’s global business strategy

Speakers:

• Leonor Ciarlone, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group
• Carroll Rotkel, Director, Product Documentation, FICO
• Howard Schwartz, Ph.D., VP Content Management, SDL Trisoft

Registration is open. Sponsored by SDL.

April 21, 11:00 am ET

A solid strategy for weathering any economic storm is to forcus on finding and serving your most profitable customers. In any region, in any language, across all interactions. How can global enterprises tune their content practices to support this new laser focus on audience engagement and align their processes with corporate strategic objectives?

• Market factors influencing global content management practices.
• Real-world approaches to meeting audience demand for multilingual content, based on Gilbane research and SDL customer solutions.
• Establishing a roadmap for enhancing global content practices to align them more closely with customer experience initiatives.

Registration is open. Sponsored by SDL.

1. Leveraging WCM to increase revenue
2. How WCM decreases operational costs
3. Best practices for generating ROI metrics
4. Beyond ROI: the silver bullet that always works

Updated April 9: Download the new Gilbane white paper.

Updated April 9, 2009: View the recorded webinar.

January 27, 2009, 2:00 pm ET

When customer experience becomes increasingly important even as budgets are tightening, the SaaS value proposition--faster time to results, reduced dependency on IT resources, predictable costs--can be especially compelling. If your organization wants or needs to move ahead with web business initiatives in today's uncertain economic climate, you're probably investigating software-as-a-service solutions for web content management.

But SaaS WCM is fundamentally different from licensing software (open source or proprietary) and installing it on your own servers. Which means the process of evaluating solutions is different. It's not all apples when SaaS is on the short list, but rather apples and oranges.This webinar explores the implications for technology acquisition. How do you make a business case that enables your organization to fairly evaluate all options and make the best decision for the business?

Join us in a lively discussion with Robert Carroll from Clickability. Register today. Presented by Gilbane. Sponsored by Clickability. Based on a new Gilbane Beacon entitled Communicating SaaS WCM Value.

We travel to the Windy City on January 21 for the next event in SDL's series on global information management. Speakers from Fair Isaac and Garmin will share their experiences with creating, translating, managing and publishing multilingual content. Gilbane's kick-off presentation looks at trends and best practices emerging from our research on how companies are aligning multilingual content practices with business goals and objectives.

Registration is open to anyone with an interest in managing content for global audiences.

January 15, 2009, 12:00 noon ET

Worldwide economies are undergoing tremendous change. New markets emerge. Developing markets continue to take shape. Established markets wait for stability. Smart global organizations see the Web as a constant in the midst of all this change. It's the most efficient and effective channel for reaching prospects and communicating with customers. Delivering the very best web experience is now a mandate for attracting, engaging, and retaining customers. As a result, web experience management (WEM) matters now more than ever.

Learn how global companies are using WEM to achieve business goals. The panel discusses strategies for centralized multi-site management, personalized content and promotions, and multilingual web communications. Speakers:

• Christoph Schacher, Head of New Media, Wienerberger AG
• Brendan Sullivan, Product Manager, Portals, Elsevier, e-Education Products
• Loren Weinberg, VP Marketing and Product Management, FatWire

The webinar discussion draws on the Gilbane white paper entitled Engage Me! Web Experience Management as the New Business Imperative.

Register today. Moderated by Gilbane Group. Hosted by FatWire.

November 3, 1:00 pm ET

XML and structured content, by themselves, don't solve business problems. Their true value lies in what's possible once content is structured. The right standards frameworks (such as DITA and S1000D), processes, and technologies can advance XML-based business solutions that enable companies to realize value. Component content management (CCM) is proving to be fundamental in scenarios for success.

This webinar is online panel discussion of "threes":

• three companies in


• three industries using CCM for


• three different high-value content applications from


• three perspectives: customer, technology supplier, and industry analyst.

You'll hear about business drivers behind CCM, how CCM is deployed, benefits, and lessons learned. Featured speakers are Mark Tiegs, Team Lead, Documentation Systems and Support, Research in Motion; Karen Moser, Manager, Documentation and Localization Services, Research in Motion; Kevin Duffy, XyEnterprise President and CEO; and Bill Trippe from Gilbane.

Register and attend the webinar, and you'll be among the first to read the new white paper on Component Content Management: How True CCM Technology Drives the Most Compelling Content Initiatives. Moderated by Gilbane Group. Hosted by XyEnterprise.

Thursday, October 23, 2:00 pm ET

Third in a series of webinars on developing a strategic roadmap for structured content

Featured speakers from the first two webinars on the ROI Blueprint discuss how structured content can bring real innovation to business applications throughout the enterprise.

Participants are:

• Geoff Bock, Gilbane Group


• Eric Severson, Flatirons Solutions


• Bruce Sharpe, JustSystems


• Dale Waldt, aXtive Minds

Registration is open. Recordings of previous webinars are available if you want to get up to speed on the larger discussion of enterprise value of structured content. Moderated by Gilbane Group. Sponsored by JustSystems.