EMERGING MARKETS

What changed in organizational content operations, both on the customer and the provider end? What is business intelligence, and how it can be effectively applied to improve your content operations? What are some of the challenges and pitfalls that, if addressed in the process, are easy to avoid? And how can business intelligence be applied to emerging markets around the globe?

Example of a modern business intelligence dashboard. Source: Loquell

Agility and multiple content flows

Agility is one of the key demands placed on modern business operations. Businesses are no longer able to rely on traditional models of content creation and dissemination. Instead, they need to be able to move and adapt quickly to changing circumstances in order to remain competitive, protecting revenue and margins. This is especially true in content operations, where multiple content flows run in parallel that need to be managed and optimized simultaneously and often need to converge at the same point to support the placement of a particular product or service in short time windows.

Using agile processes in content operations, or ContentOps, businesses can create and deliver content faster than ever before. To achieve this goal, processes are defined end-to-end but are broken down into smaller, more manageable components, allowing them to run simultaneously. The result, however, is an increase in the number of steps that need to be coordinated, requiring effective workflow management and ongoing monitoring and optimization. The net result, however, is faster and more efficient delivery.

The need for better visibility and control over the content creation and delivery process is where business intelligence comes in. With multiple content flows and an ever-increasing amount of data being generated, businesses need business intelligence to be able to make sense of this data and use it to make informed decisions. In addition, business intelligence can also be applied to measuring content consumption to allow tuning content to the audience’s needs. This data and the insight derived from it enable informed decisions. It is what separates leaders from followers and (below) average performance from superior performance.

The role of business intelligence (BI)

Business intelligence refers to the processes and tools that businesses use to collect, analyze, and interpret data from various sources. By doing so, they gain insights into their operations and make informed decisions. This is especially important in the localization and content industry, where organizations typically have multiple (parallel) content flows that provide an abundance of data points but ultimately also want to better understand which type of content meets customer needs and is accessed the most.

Business intelligence can help businesses to create efficiency in their content operations, but can also assist in better understanding content usage, the audience, and their content consumption patterns and needs. By analyzing data on user behavior, businesses can gain insights into what types of content are resonating with their audience and which are not. They can then use this information to optimize their content creation process, ensuring they are creating the right types of content for their audience. Additionally, business intelligence can help businesses to identify inefficiencies in their workflows. By analyzing data on the time it takes to complete various tasks, wait times, and the associated cost, businesses can identify bottlenecks in their workflows and make changes to optimize processes. This can help to deliver better and more relevant content faster and more efficiently, while shortening delivery times and reducing costs.

Common pitfalls: what to watch out for?

It is easy to get blinded by beautiful, important-looking graphs and diagrams provided by modern business intelligence solutions. They can look wonderful while at the same time delivering reports based upon stale data and data from unclear and poorly classified origins. This is the first common pitfall when starting from what looks like the most visually appealing solution rather than asking the tough questions first. Putting in place a basic business intelligence solution does not have to be highly complex or expensive, but it requires establishing what initial insight you require and what sources will deliver the most high-quality, relevant, and timely data. Having a clear definition of the data you are looking at is essential. Take word count as an example in a localization use case. Which word count are we looking at? Gross or net? Is it an estimate the customer provided or is it the volume the TMS provides? There are many more such questions but understanding exactly what you are looking at and how recent data is before you derive reports from it is critical to success.

The second point to look out for is that implementing a business intelligence solution is an iterative process and that once you stop tuning your BI system you can probably conclude that it is not used anymore, or nobody is asking the tough questions. When implementing BI solutions, you typically start with a basic set of data sources and questions, gain insights and get answers to these questions which in return spawn new questions and so forth. This is the power of BI in that it provides you with insight but ideally keeps you and your team challenging the status quo and improving on an ongoing basis. Do not aim to build the proverbial rocket ship from the outset! The third key pitfall is underestimating the need for integration. You may well start with a single data source, but since content operations span multiple systems and platforms, establishing an end-to-end view typically over time will require you to tap into multiple data sources. As soon as you tap into multiple sources, however, establishing a clear taxonomy and transforming and normalizing data is essential to avoid comparing apples with pears. Finally, ensuring that there is a clear chain of custody, so you can always, if needed, trace data back to its source, is essential.

If these challenges sound daunting, don’t despair. With a bit of common sense, a pragmatic approach, and the right partner, putting in a basic BI solution that can assist you in optimizing your workflow does not need to be a major undertaking.

Emerging markets and SMBs have more to gain

While the need for business intelligence is universal, there are some differences between large established organizations on the one hand and small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) as well as emerging markets on the other. Large, established organizations typically have more complex operational processes and (legacy) systems in place placing more red tape on deploying yet another solution. Smaller organizations and organizations in emerging markets, however, generally operate less structured and have fewer systems, making it easier to implement a business intelligence system. In these cases, business intelligence can be even more important, as it can be deployed more easily, can evolve in an agile manner, and can help businesses to gain visibility into their operations more quickly. This in return allows them to gain the required insight and differentiate themselves from the competition.

Putting it all together

Business intelligence is a powerful tool if implemented well. But while in use in most large organizations globally in a range of business disciplines, it is hardly used in enterprise content workflows or the content industry. This is clearly a missed chance. While a business intelligence implementation may seem daunting, and you will likely be told that it is expensive and complex, don’t let yourself be discouraged. The key to success is to start with a well-defined set of business or operational questions and a limited number of data sources to keep things simple, create success, and evolve from there in an agile fashion. Like any IT system, don’t think that you can build, and they will come, but work in a team and in a concerted effort to help ensure that everyone is vested in the success of the BI solution and shares in the success. Evolve it from there in pragmatic steps and you will find that business intelligence is a powerful tool in your toolbox that can help you set yourself and your organization apart from the crowd.