Crimson Life Sciences, a division of TransPerfect, Inc., recently announced that it has been certified by Underwriters Laboratories as compliant with ISO 14971, the “only international standard for risk management for medical devices.” According to UL, “ISO 14971 has become an integral element for satisfying regulatory requirements in most major markets.” Crimson’s certification relates to risk management processes for translating medical device labeling and documentation.
The announcement caught our attention because medical device manufacturing is one of the verticals on the Gilbane globalization practice radar. It’s a huge market in which significant opportunity is spread across the globe. Just one proof point: according to RIC International, “25% of medical devices produced in the US are exported, with diagnostics comprising the largest export sector.” As such, this vertical is generating a significant amount of the demand for solutions that integrate content management and translation process management in a global content life cycle. Which is why it’s of particular interest to us in Gilbane’s globalization practice.
Medical device manufacturers face some of the most rigorous challenges associated with content translation. They must create, translate and publish product support content that describes medical devices, documents proper procedures, complies with global regulations, and enables best practices. The risks associated with poorly translated content are particularly onerous for these companies. Crimson Life Sciences recognized this and went the extra mile have its risk management methodologies for translation validated by an international certification authority.
An important sub-theme here is quality of translated content and translation processes. Today, quality measurement is a mix of science and art (science in the case of industries with established standards such as SAE J2450 in automotive). Crimson’s UL certification is another step towards taking some the mystery out of quality verification.
The issues of multi-lingual content, translation processes, quality, and brand management come together in a case study on GE Healthcare that Gilbane will publish this fall. We’re also working on a white paper that identifies opportunities to insert quality improvements into the global content life cycle. For insight into content-related business issues in medical device manufacturing in the meantime, see our case study on Siemens Medical, and check out the archived webinar we did earlier this summer with Medtronic. We’ll also be covering quality and the global customer experience as the theme of the globalization sessions and keynote at Gilbane Boston 2007.
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 178 of 486)
This category includes editorial and news blog posts related to content management and content strategy. For older, long form reports, papers, and research on these topics see our Resources page.
Content management is a broad topic that refers to the management of unstructured or semi-structured content as a standalone system or a component of another system. Varieties of content management systems (CMS) include: web content management (WCM), enterprise content management (ECM), component content management (CCM), and digital asset management (DAM) systems. Content management systems are also now widely marketed as Digital Experience Management (DEM or DXM, DXP), and Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) systems or platforms, and may include additional marketing technology functions.
Content strategy topics include information architecture, content and information models, content globalization, and localization.
For some historical perspective see:
https://gilbane.com/gilbane-report-vol-8-num-8-what-is-content-management/
Idiom Technologies, Inc. announced that it has named hiSoft, one of China’s largest IT outsourcing services providers and a long-time member of the Idiom LSP Advantage Program, an “Authorized Solutions Provider.” Idiom also named hiSoft to the Platinum tier of its LSP Partner Program, recognizing hiSoft’s deep Idiom WorldServer expertise and its continued commitment to increase the use of modern GMS solutions and globalization best practices within its client base. The two companies will engage in joint marketing, business development, and technology development activities on an on-going basis. As an Idiom Technologies Authorized Solutions Provider, hiSoft will leverage its IT services expertise to create and offer hosted WorldServer GMS services. For each customer, hiSoft will bundle its managed services around a WorldServer license. http://www.idiominc.com
I have said this many times before, and will say again: the world is multilingual, and more and more people are working daily in a multilingual environment. In companies, this multilingual environment is not only about translation, but about working with customers and colleagues whose native language is different from one’s own. That can lead to a lot of miscommunication, and I think that nobody has even started to measure the real costs or missed sales arising from it.
Communication starts with terminology, and that is where I see a lot of needs (and opportunities) for new solutions. Corporate terminology – “that which we call a widget by any other name goes in other companies” – is something that I think benefits from active input from corporate experts. Wikis seem an interesting way to enhance corporate communication, so I emailed with Greg Lloyd, CEO of Traction Software to ask whether he has seen wikis used for handling multilingual issues. He can be reached at grl@tractionsoftware.com.
Traction Software has been in the corporate blog/wiki business since July 2002, and has 250+ corporate customers. According to Greg, Traction’s TeamPage is best described in terms of Doug Engelbart’s NLS/Augment model, re-imagined for the Web (more at Traction Roots | Doug Engelbart.
KP: Do your customers use wikis to handle multilingual issues, such as terminology?
GL: We have an international pharma customer who wanted to provide an interactive online glossary of terms that have specialized meanings. For example, in writing a new drug application, many terms have specialized meanings and interpretations dictated by regulatory authorities in the U.S., Europe and other regions.
At this customer, glossary definitions are usually written by people with specialized experience in new drug applications and similar filings, but the glossaries are intended for working reference by everyone in the company – not limited to those who deliver translations. The company has offices around the world, but most working communication is in English or French. A majority of employees have very good reading knowledge of both languages, but aren’t necessarily aware of some specialized meanings and interpretations – including those which change as new regulations are issued.
We developed a “Glossary skin” to address this need. The Glossary skin is a Traction “skin” or UI presentation layer that in this case, provides a specialized and simplified Glossary view of the underling blog/wiki data stored in the TeamPage Journal. It gives the users versatile tools for handling terminology, such as looking up glossary terms, term definitions, guidance on how to use the term, and the possibility to comment a term or ask questions about it. All terms are in both English and French. Changes and additions can be tracked with standard blog/wiki features, and the users can also subscribe to RSS/Atom feeds on updates. These are just a few of the functionalities of the solution.
KP: Do the wiki glossaries integrate with other glossaries or localization tools, such as translation memories?
GL: For the Glossary Wiki there are no special translator tools built in. I believe that general purpose translation tools will likely best be loosely-coupled mashup style. I haven’t seen requests for industry specific glossaries from customers, but I think there may be a business opportunity.
KP: What kind of feedback have you received from your customer? Have there been requests for special functionalities?
GL: The pharma customer is very happy with the result, which is used company-wide. We’ve also demonstrated the Glossary skin to customers in Japan and other countries. Several have expressed interest and are piloting use of the Glossary skin, primarily for developing and delivering specialized glossaries for internal working communication as well as translating deliverables.
The ability for global enterprises to create interactive Glossaries for working communication among employees, suppliers and other stakeholders seems to be getting the most interest. Many global companies use English as a standard for internal communication, but the ability to add comments or questions in other languages is a big plus. The ability to create and delivery interactive Web glossaries in Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. as well as European and other Asian languages is also very useful.
Traction uses UTF-8 Unicode to store, search and deliver content written in any combination of European and Asian alphabets in any blog/wiki space (or in the same page), so a multi-lingual global glossary is easy to deliver and can be simple to author using the standard Web browser interface.
KP: What have been the biggest advantages your customers have received from using a wiki to create a glossary, instead of using a specialized terminology management tool?
GL: The biggest advantages are: 1) Simple access using a Web browser, particularly when the wiki has specialized skin to make the Glossary application work with no training; 2) Simple group editing and history using the the wiki edit model; 3) Simple integration of comments and feedback; 4) Simple, scalable and secure deployment corporate-wide.
KP: Corporate wikis seem to be an interesting way to share information and expertise. Do you see them also being used for translation work?
GL: Yes, I can certainly see how the Glossary skin could be extended to support other wiki per-page translation models. At present the Glossary skin implementation is available to TeamPage customers as a Traction Skin Definition Language (SDL) plug-in. We’ll be packaging it along with its SDL source code as a free plug-in example later this summer. We’ll work with customers and partners to determine how to best provide translation wiki’s powered by Traction TeamPage.
Google has added Sun’s StarOffice to its free Google Pack. This has been expected and is of course targeting Microsoft’s Office suite. Richard MacManus reported it Sunday, and Dan Farber says most of what I would say about it.
Movable Type announced the release of Movable Type 4.0. “This is the biggest release of MT ever, a complete redesign of both the front end information architecture and the back end scaling infrastructure.” Movable Type 4 has a broad set of new capabilities, including: a redesigned user interface, more and better plugins, built in support for OpenID, community features, ability to aggregate content from multiple blogs, new support for standalone pages in addition to blog entries, “content management” features, smarter archiving (e.g., by author), more robust templates, and more. They also announced an upcoming open source version. http://www.movabletype.com/blog/2007/08/presenting-movable-type-40.html, http://www.movabletype.com/
This is just a quick reminder to our Analyst on Demand subscribers that the results of our survey on the usability of commercially available content management solutions will be available in early September. The data will come directly from the feedback of the solution providers’ customers. Vendors covered will include Interwoven, Tridion, Vignette, FatWire, Percussion, RedDot, EMC/Documentum, CrownPeak, Mediasurface, PaperThin, Oracle, Day, Hot Banana, Clickability, Acumium, and others.
We have not heard of an organization that doesn’t.
Content management and translation management each have their own set of process bottlenecks. Put them together and what do you get? An endless migraine, a major headache, a dull pain, and for the very few, a nuisance. Here’s some of the phrases we hear when we talk to our clients about the content and translation lifecycle:
- “Undesired repetition and unpredictable outcomes.”
- “A cost we don’t really have a handle on.”
- “We’d have to survey each workgroup to figure it out.”
- “Redundant, cumbersome, and expensive.”
Hence, the poll of the week. We’re gearing up for the Global Content Management track at Gilbane Boston, November 27-29. Our goal is to spend more time discussing the elimination of process bottlenecks rather than bemoaning their existence.
Help us shape the list for our sessions and discussions in Boston by taking our poll of the week. Got process bottlenecks? We want to know about them.
In recent conversations with several of Gilbane’s Analyst On Demand and Technology Acquisition Advisory clients, I have observed two careless practices that have prevented enterprises from being able to assess both the feature-functionality of their existing WCM applications and their requirements for selecting solutions to replace those applications. Both relate to a lack of documentation.
In the first case, it’s the absence of a master list of the WCM-related applications that have been developed in-house over the years. One company has “about 50” such applications, and geographically-dispersed individuals throughout the enterprise can tell me what some of them are, but no one can refer me to anyone or any system that has the complete listing. Discrete ongoing development projects exist for many of these applications, a few of which live buried deep in departmental silos. Needless to say, the functionality of applications within these silos is known only to a few people, is never re-used in other initiatives, and in fact often gets duplicated by newer siloed projects.
The second shortcoming is the non-documentation of feature-functions within the applications themselves. Even when applications are well known throughout the organization, their complete functionality sets are known to no one. This results in duplicate development, redundant purchases, and negative ROI — although no one knows just how negative.
At a minimum, enterprises should maintain master lists of both their WCM-related applications and the functionality within each one. To make effective use of such documentation, companies should establish effective dissemination processes. Examples range from the inclusion of key individuals in change control board meetings (for companies with predictive-style development methods) to informal cross-functional communication, especially between disparate technology groups, but also between IT and the business units whose requirements drive application development.
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