Quantifying the Benefits and High ROI of SDL Knowledge Center

Transcription

1 Quantifying the Benefits and High ROI of SDL Knowledge Center Fall,

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary... 3 Introduction... 5 Overview of SDL Knowledge Center... 5 Research Background... 5 Methodology and Demographics... 5 SDL Interviewee Snapshot... 6 Overall ROI and other Key Findings... 6 Content Development... 7 Content Reuse... 9 Greater Collaboration Publishing Efficiencies Aggregate Cost Savings Translation Customer Support Customer Satisfaction Aggregate ROI Conclusion About Crimson Marketing

3 Executive Summary Customer Experience Management (CEM) Solutions, provided by several software companies including SDL Knowledge Center, enhance experiences throughout the customer lifecycle, including post-sales touchpoints around customer service and support. Crimson Marketing (Crimson) interviewed and researched four global enterprises to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for a specific CEM solution, SDL Knowledge Center, a knowledge management and delivery solution for technical documentation and support content. Among the interviewed companies which had average revenue of $12.5B, the overall ROI achieved by using SDL Knowledge Center over the course of five years was approximately 7 times the cost of the solution, or 687%. Using that data, Crimson extrapolated the following ROI for the following three company sizes: Mid-Size ($0.5B) = 305% Large Enterprise ($12.5B) = 687% Very Large Enterprise ($17.5B) = 961% 1200% 1000% ROI with SDL Knowledge Center 961% 800% 600% 687% 400% 200% 0% 305% $0.50 $12.50 $17.50 Revenue($B) The three largest contributors to these impressive ROI findings were the following: An average savings of 31% in content development costs over 5 years Content reuse went from 3% to 32%, on average, over the course of 5 years Translation/localization savings amounted to $11.5M, or 37% over 5 years In addition to calculating the ROI of SDL Knowledge Center, Crimson also looked at possible cost savings in customer support organizations mainly due to enhancement in customer self service. While no company specifically tracked that data as it related to the use of SDL Knowledge Center, there was a strong feeling that savings were achieved due to enhanced customer self-service. One company embedded help videos using SDL Knowledge Center to enhance support content which resulted in a 20% reduction of support calls over the initial three months. 3

4 Crimson also asked interviewees to quantify increases in customer satisfaction after adopting SDL Knowledge Center. All of the interviewees agreed that SDL Knowledge Center s tools helped improve their customer satisfaction although none could share proprietary measurements such as net promoter scores. However, one interviewee stated that customer satisfaction in the aggregate went up by 15% after the implementation of SDL Knowledge Center. The results of this study show that the companies using SDL Knowledge Center have generated considerable ROI driven by service & support-related efficiencies in content development and translation, and are deriving real benefits in customer self-service support and customer satisfaction. 4

5 Introduction With the groundswell of social and mobile technologies, consumers are empowered to not only make more educated purchasing decisions, but to also publicize their customer experience through reviews and comments that can affect brand image. This shift of power to the consumer incents companies to improve the customer experience throughout the customer lifecycle thus the growth of Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions. CEM is defined as a continuum of cross- and multi-channel business activities executed on an enterprise level to manage business activities across the customer lifecycle. 1 A majority of the business activities managed by CEM are product communication in the form of product marketing collateral, technical documentation, service manuals, etc. These materials all need to be localized, causing enhanced complexities with each additional translated language. This paper will outline the return on investment (ROI) of a specific CEM solution called SDL Knowledge Center (created by SDL). The areas examined include the main content touch points in a company: 1) organizations that create and translate content, 2) customer support organizations and 3) the customers themselves. Overview of SDL Knowledge Center SDL Knowledge Center offers structured content management using a modular content structure to boost reuse of information and streamline content creation processes. This process enables subject matter experts to collaborate in the creation, review and editing of content that can be delivered on multiple devices with analytics that provide personalization and information on content engagement. SDL Knowledge Center uses the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), which is an XML data model for authoring and publishing, 2 and makes use of SDL s strength in multilingual content management and delivery. Research Background For this study, Crimson focused on defining, clarifying, and, where possible, quantifying the benefits of key SDL Knowledge Center capabilities, as experienced or expected by users. An in-depth interview guide and questionnaire was developed from secondary research based on publicly available SDL documentation and data, and past research efforts in this space. Methodology and Demographics With particular emphasis on customer service & support, Crimson researched four companies and their content subject-matter experts involved with the deployment and use of SDL Knowledge Center. (See Table 1 for specific roles). Companies involved were large to very large global enterprises. 1 Aberdeen CSM and Product Communication: Does your Content Speak Consumer, Analyst Insight, June

6 Role/Position Company description Infrastructure Process Manager/ Product Owner Senior Manager, Information Development Director of Global Information Vice President of Support IT Global Technology Firm Global Financial Services Firm Global Technology Firm Global Technology Firm Outsourced infrastructure model, where service manager meets service level agreements Cloud-based, infrastructure managed by SDL Cloud-based, infrastructure managed by SDL Cloud-based, infrastructure managed by SDL Table 1: Interviewee roles and company descriptions Crimson averaged the data provided by all the companies together and normalized where necessary to account for disparities of revenues between interviewed companies. Crimson also extrapolated data from interviews to predict ROI for mid-market companies ($0.5B revenue) and very large enterprises ($17.5B revenue). SDL Interviewee Snapshot The Process Manager for the technology firm manages developer and support content for well over 300 different products in nearly 100 different locales (e.g., a locale could be the French spoken in Canada, which varies slightly from the French spoken in France). The content is reused across multiple platforms, such as paper, website, and on mobile devices. The Senior Manager at the financial service firm is responsible for and uses SDL Knowledge Center for publishing customer user guides. She manages approximately 35 content authors, with over 150 content editors spread out across many different disciplines. The Director of Global Information for the technology firm employs SDL Knowledge Center in the technical documentation group that is the center for documentation across the enterprise, as well as the learning and training group. These groups are tasked with content creation and localization across multiple platforms, similar to the first interviewed technology firm. The Vice President of Support IT for the technology firm used SDL Knowledge Center primarily to help with self-service support for their customers in order to improve their overall customer experience. In particular, their goal was to improve Net Promoter Scores among their customers and reduce phone support costs. Overall ROI and other Key Findings Among the interviewed companies which had average revenue of $12.5B, the overall return on investment achieved by using SDL Knowledge Center over the course of 5 years was approximately 7 times the cost of the solution, or 687%. 6

7 Using that data, Crimson extrapolated the following ROI for the following three company sizes: Mid-Size ($0.5B) = 305% Large Enterprise ($12.5B) = 687% Very Large Enterprise ($17.5B) = 961% The three largest contributors to these impressive ROI findings were the following: Savings of $111M, or 31% of content development costs over 5 years Content reuse went from 3% to 32%, on average, over the course of 5 years Translation/localization savings amounted to 37% over 5 years The remaining sections of this paper will take a closer look at how these efficiencies were achieved, as well as look at other important value propositions for SDL Knowledge Center, some of which are in early stages of adoption. Hence, the full potential impact on ROI, namely efficiencies achieved in customer support organizations and improvements in customer satisfaction, may yet to be achieved. Content Development Developing content at the enterprise level can be quite complex. Interviewees were asked to describe their content development processes, and all of the respondents followed a similar process as pictured below: Create Review Update Publish Content development involves not only authors and editors, but also outside subject matter experts/engineers (technical contributors) needed at points in the process to explain concepts or validate what has been written. The following chart provides a look at the average percentage of time required by each stakeholder in each step of the process. 3 3 Percentages are averages based on primary research interviews 7

8 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 10% 10% 11% 45% 34% 90% 75% 10% 15% Authors Editors Technical Reviewers 10% 30% 60% Technical Contributors Publish Review Update Create Figure 1: Percent time breakdown in content development process by stakeholder type prior to SDL Knowledge Center implementation Source: Crimson Marketing Research, Customer Interviews As expected, the content authors and more technical contributors spend a majority of their time creating and updating, whereas editors and reviewers are mostly involved in the review process. Publishing doesn t take a large percent of time, but is part of the activities of the content authors and editors. The interviewees explained how the use of SDL Knowledge Center created efficiencies at each step of the process. The following chart lays out these efficiencies: 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 11% 7% 8% 11% 9% 9% 9% 10% 40% 30% 84% 70% 9% 13% Authors Editors Technical Reviewers 26% 54% Technical Contributors Efficiency Publish Review Update Create Figure 2: Content Development Process Efficiencies Enabled by SDL Knowledge Center (by Stakeholder Type) Source: Crimson Marketing Research, Customer Interviews 8

9 Across the board, stakeholders at every step in the process are able to do their jobs more efficiently after adopting SDL Knowledge Center. Most notably, authors and technical contributors were creating and updated content 11% more efficiently, while editors and reviewers could save between 7-8% of their time in content review. Content Reuse One of the main drivers of efficiency is greater content reuse made possible by SDL Knowledge Center s modular structure that allows content to be tagged for reuse across platforms. The combined percentage of content reuse among interviewees increased from 3% to 32% over the course of 5 years. The Process Manager of the technology firm explained how content reuse If we couldn t build this content in a modular fashion using SDL Knowledge Center, we d probably have to spend 3 to 4 times our current budget. Process Manager, Technology Firm created savings in her organization. We do over 70,000 publishing jobs a year for over 350 different products. There are many variants to each product where much of the support content doesn t change. If we couldn t build this content in a modular fashion using SDL Knowledge Center, we d probably have to spend 3 to 4 times our current budget. She then illustrated the following graph that shows how costs rise to create support content with each product variant without the ability to easily reuse content. ($M) $12.0 $10.0 $8.0 $6.0 $4.0 No Reuse Reuse $2.0 $0.0 Base Product Variant 1 Variant 2 Variant 3 Variant 4 Figure 3: Illustrative Savings Enabled by Greater Content Reuse Source: SDL Knowledge Center Customer It is easy to see that as product variants increase, the costs of producing content for those variants can explode without the ability to easily reuse content where applicable. The Senior Manager of Information Development at the Financial Services Firm supported this view with her own statistics: As for content creation, what used to take us 2 to 3 days per page now takes us 1 day per page because of content reuse. Updating content is even easier. Before using SDL Knowledge Center, it took us 1.5 days to update 10 different documents with similar information. Now it only takes 5 minutes. 9

10 Greater Collaboration A key driver for reviewing efficiency is the ability to aggregate comments by all stakeholders. The Senior Manager of information content at the financial services firm noted this in particular, who said, Our authors can save a lot of time by not having to aggregate comments made by the many different content contributors, and everyone else saves time by being able to see all the changes/comments that are made. Before using SDL Knowledge Center, it took us 1.5 days to update 10 different documents with similar information. Now it only takes 5 minutes. Senior Manager of Information Development, Financial Services Firm Publishing Efficiencies The modular structure of building content also creates benefits in publishing. The Director of Global Information at the technology firm explained it best in this quote: Publishing could often be time consuming because one language would fit a certain way on a page, whereas another could take up a lot more space, forcing us to waste time reconfiguring the document. This step has now been removed because of using structured language and process automation within SDL Knowledge Center. The Senior Manager of Information Development at the financial services firm echoed that sentiment, noting that publishing times have been reduced to a half a day from a whole day for approximately 50% of their content thanks to the combination of structured content, templates, and automated publishing. Aggregate Cost Savings These efficiencies added up to significant cost savings. Averaging the responses of all four interviewees, the aforementioned cumulative efficiencies reduced the time spent creating content by over 31% for a savings of $111M over 5 years for a typical large enterprise. Translation Although translation and localization are parts of content development, Crimson separates them out because of the dramatic cost savings noted by interviewees in this area. The average savings in translation among interviewees was 37% over five years. This large savings correlates both with increased content reuse and with the fact that SDL offers strong language translation and localization solutions that are bundled into SDL Knowledge Center and many of its customers were originally attracted to SDL because of these services. We expanded the number of languages offered from 30 to 90 over the course of 5 years, which was achievable because we reduce our translation costs by 80% over that same period. Process Manager of the Global Technology Firm Cutting translation costs often result in companies being able to expand the number of languages covered. This sentiment is affirmed by the Process Manager of the technology firm: We expanded the number of languages offered from 30 to 90 over the course of 5 years, which was achievable because we reduce our translation costs by 80% over that same period. 10

11 Customer Support In preparation for customer interviews, there was a general consensus that SDL Knowledge Center has an effect on reducing the costs of customer support calls by making self-service support much easier to provide and to scale. The solution not only makes content easier to find over multiple platforms, but it offers tools that provide smart, interactive content tailored to customer s needs. Essentially if customers can find the support information they need easily, they won t need to call a customer support representative. Companies that deployed SDL Knowledge Center in their support organizations confirmed this hypothesis. Interviewees believed that the use of SDL Knowledge Center was correlated to decreased customer service requests, but didn t have the tools to collect, track, or measure exact results. The Director of Global Information at the technology firm explained the complexities of this measurement in the following quote: Our Company has entire groups associated with reducing customer service calls, because it can be a very expensive cost to an enterprise. We don t have the tools to measure how our use of SDL Knowledge Center affects the overall rate of calls, but we recently used SDL Knowledge Center to create video content that we hoped would make it easier for the customer to fix their own problems, and we noticed a 20% reduction of calls over three months. According to the Association of Support Professional, enterprises typically spend 7% of revenue on technical support, and that around 15% of employees at these companies deal with technical support. 4 Approximately seventy-five percent (75%) of that support staff provide direct phone or support to customers. Using those numbers, Crimson estimated that an enterprise with $12.5B in revenues may spend around $900M annually on technical support. A reduction of calls by an annual low single digit percentage could reduce annual support costs up to $100M or more over 5 years. So while many customers are inexperienced in measuring their ability to deflect customer support calls/tickets, the potential savings achieved through leveraging SDL Knowledge Center to enhance self-service support is potentially very large. Customer Satisfaction We recently used SDL Knowledge Center to create video content that we hoped would make it easier for the customer to fix their own problems, and we noticed a 20% reduction of calls over three months. Director of Global Information, Technology Firm SDL Knowledge Center ultimately helps manage the customer experience. Although the ROI for this solution can be measured most in greater efficiencies in content development for post-sale support, increasing customer satisfaction by providing useful documentation along the entire customer lifecycle is very important to the top line, as it supports customer retention and thus repeated sales. The following chart shows this paradigm shift enabled by CEM solutions such as SDL Knowledge Center. 4 Source: 11

12 Figure 4: New CEM paradigm shift Source: BCG, research commissioned by SDL All of the interviewees agreed that SDL Knowledge Center s tools helped improve customer satisfaction. According to the Process Manager at the technology firm, Responsive websites and better FAQs improve customer satisfaction by knowing the language preferences of the customer, the customer s preferred device, These tools improved our customer satisfaction scores by 15% after implementation. Process Manager of the Technology Firm and the specific content delivered on that device. These tools improved our customer satisfaction scores by 15% after implementation. The Director of Global Information at the technology firm agreed, saying We ve been getting a lot of great feedback directly from customers, which has enabled us to quickly make changes to enhance the customer experience. 12

13 Aggregate ROI In determining the return on investment over five years to a customer purchasing the SDL Knowledge Center solution, Crimson looked at the license cost as well as the support costs over five years. They also factored in the cost to migrate all appropriate data into SDL Knowledge Center, which wouldn t be a recurring cost. These aggregate costs taken in association with the cost savings of content development and translation alone amounts to a potential ROI of up to 687% over the course of five years for a large enterprise a very compelling argument for investing in SDL Knowledge Center. Additionally, Crimson calculated that Mid-market companies (with $500 million in revenue) could realize an estimated overall benefit over 300% (or 3X) in five years, and that very large enterprises (with $17.5 billion in revenue) could achieve a 961% ROI, shown below: Mid-Size ($0.5B) = 305% Large Enterprise ($12.5B) = 687% Very Large Enterprise ($17.5B) = 961% 1200% ROI with Knowledge Center 1000% 961% 800% 600% 687% 400% 200% 0% 305% $0.50 $12.50 $17.50 Revenue($B) Conclusion The large ROI of SDL Knowledge Center derived through in-depth customer interviews shows that efficiencies in content development driven by content reuse, as well as efficiencies in translation, make the solution a strong vehicle for cost savings and/or enhanced production. Additionally, there was a strong indication that the use of SDL Knowledge Center will reduce customer support call/ volumes by enhancing customer self-service, and that a company s top line may improve with increase customer satisfaction due to SDL Knowledge Center s facilitation of attentive, targeted, and well-timed documentation throughout the customer lifecycle. 13

14 About Crimson Marketing We Enhance Marketing Performance Crimson is a technology marketing firm. Our clients include Adobe, Cisco, Dell, ebay, Hitachi, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, SDL, Seagate, Symantec, Verizon, and others. We are experts in the marketing of technology solutions. For more information, contact: Todd Keleher tkeleher@crimsonmarketing.com Crimson Marketing (650)