Category: Content management & strategy (Page 142 of 481)

Second in a series of interviews with sponsors of Gilbane’s 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices into Global Content Value Chains.

We spoke with Joan Lasselle, President of Lasselle Ramsay. Lasselle Ramsay is a service provider that designs solutions for content and learning that align how users work with the information needed to achieve business results. We talked with Joan about her company, why they supported the research, and what surprised her about the results.

Gilbane: How does your company support the value chain for global product content? (i.e., what does your company do?) 

Lasselle: Lasselle Ramsay is a professional service provider, not a reseller or technology integrator. We focus on helping companies develop new product content. Our work spans the value chain, ranging from engineering (at the point of origin), to technical marketing and technical documentation, to learning organizations and support teams. We also look at the extended value chain, which includes partners, suppliers (like translation service providers), and customers.

We encourage our clients to operate in both the strategic and tactical domains, providing them with a strategic vision, and helping implement an infrastructure that can deliver structured and unstructured multilingual content.

Gilbane: Why did you choose to sponsor the Gilbane research?

Lasselle: One of our goals as a service provider is to add value at each stage across the chain. This research study enables us to discover and share the experience and perspective of industry leaders with Lasselle Ramsay clients. We chose this particular study because of the in-depth research, as well as Gilbane’s domain expertise and independence.

Gilbane: What, in your opinion, is the most relevant/compelling/interesting result reported in the study?

Lasselle: Gilbane’s report sheds light on two key issues that our clients face: the need to address content within the context of larger business trends [referred to as megatrends in the study], and the importance of process improvements. First, companies today are challenged repeatedly to address adverse economic pressures at the same time they respond to the megatrends, such as the evolving basis of competitive advantage. The report makes clear that companies must take measures to address these megatrends in their content practices, or risk being left behind. Even in the face of negative economics and an endless and escalating flood of new data, they cannot sit back and wait. Second, the report illustrates how organizations can benefit from improving cross-functional processes. In many companies, for example, engineering and tech pubs each have their own authoring, content management, translation, and publishing, and neither group shares any processes or tools. What a lost opportunity! Just think of how much they could lower costs and speed time to market if they coordinated processes and collaborated on process improvements.

For insights into the megatrends that are shaping content globalization practices, see “Market Context” on page 9 of the report. You can also read about how Lasselle Ramsay contributed to global content value chain development at Hewlett-Packard. Download the study for free.

We are ramping up for our annual Boston conference, and the program is mostly complete. Our tagline this year is “Content, Collaboration & Customers”, and as usual, we’ll be discussing a wide range of related topics and covering all the important trends. Four areas we are paying extra attention too are:

Managing enterprise social content. This should not be a surprise. The increasing use of social software in business and government environments for both internal and customer communications means more content, of a different kind, to be managed.

Managing enterprise mobile content. Smartphones are replacing noteboooks and desktops as clients  for many enterprise applications, and complementing them for even more. Mobile is another enterprise channel with unique content requirements.

SharePoint & Office 2010 and web content management. As the SharePoint surge continues with the upcoming release of 2010, early signs point to increased emphasis on web content management and integration between WCM, Office and SharePoint. How will this affect the content management market?

E-government & transparency. We are seeing a lot of activity here among both state and federal agencies, and there are special content management challenges that in many (most?) projects mean integrating new technologies and practices (e.g., social software) with established information management approaches (e.g., XML, XBRL).

Stay tuned for updates, or follow the conference on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gilbaneboston.

First in a series of interviews with sponsors of Gilbane’s 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices into Global Content Value Chains.

Recently we had an opportunity to catch up with Suzanne Mescan, Vice President of Marketing for Vasont Systems. Vasont is a leading provider of component content management systems built upon XML standards. Suzanne spoke with us about the global content value chain (GCVC) and important findings from the research.

The research for Gilbane’s 2009 study on Multilingual Product Content: Transforming Traditional Practices Into Global Content Value Chains was supported by seven companies with proven track records in content globalization. Their technologies and services are used by market-leading companies to create competitive advantage with multilingual content.

One of the goals of this blog is to provide buyers and adopters with a variety of perspectives on content globalization strategies, practices, and solutions. The Multilingual Product Content study is authored from our own analyst perspective, drawing on the results of research. The user perspective is captured in the profiles included in the report; they describe the global content value chains deployed at Adobe, BMW Motorrad, Cisco Systems, HP, Mercury Marine, and New York City Department of Education.

To bring the solution supplier perspective into the mix, over the next month or so we’ll publish a series of brief interviews with study sponsors Acrolinx, Jonckers, Lasselle-Ramsay, LinguaLinx, STAR Group, Systran, and Vasont Systems. A representative from each company answers three questions:

1. What role does your company play in the global content value chain?
2. Why did you elect to sponsor Gilbane’s research?
3. What was the most compelling or interesting result to come out of the research?

Readers will be able to comment on the interviews and ask questions of the supplier. We’ll post answers that are appropriate for sharing.

Our first interview with Suzanne Mescan from Vasont will be published next week.