Business Benefits
The Business Benefits of Structured Content
Businesses that structure content properly are realizing enormous cost savings, efficiency gains and business benefits.
Impacts on the business fall into two broad categories:
Bottom Line: Cost Saving / Efficiency Gain:
- Drives down the cost of content development and translation by an average of 30-40%
- Increases capacity of information producers to avoid headcount growth
- Reduces wasteful, low level activities for highly trained personnel
- Eliminates unnecessary translated-related costs including desktop publishing which can constitute 20% of a translation expenditure
- Drives down the cost associated with call centers by creating more consistent, correct and updated content for customers seeking information
- Drives down the cost of maintenance for field service personnel who need the latest technical information
Top Line: Business Agility and Revenue Opportunities:
- Drives top line revenue growth by giving organizations the ability to reach global markets faster and by expanding global reach
- Creates higher customer satisfaction through access to more relevant and up-to-date information, leading to repeat buying and greater referenceability
- Empowers the organization to respond more nimbly to changing business conditions, such as the absorption of acquisitions, the opening of a new channel partner, or the need to create a customized flavor of product documentation
Why Structured Content
Structuring content eliminates the problem of writing and translating
the same information over and over again.
Business Benefits
Businesses that structure content properly are realizing enormous cost savings, efficiency gains and business benefits.
Commercial Standards/DITA
To take advantage of the benefits of structured content, most organizations today
are adopting one of the XML standards that have been developed to make adoption easier.
Aerospace/Defense Standards
Standards such as S1000D, MIL-SPEC and ATA iSpec 2200 are being used for civil and defense aviation documentation around the globle.
Custom XML Standards
Before such XML standards were available, organizations had to develop their own XML standard called a “custom DTD.”
Where Do I Start
The adoption of structured authoring is an education process that involves people, process and technology changes.
