Multimodal Strategy
InfoTrends’ Maziarka, adds that these days companies also need to realize that the creation and delivery of content are inextricably linked. “Content creators need to understand that the content has to be used across a number of platforms such as the Internet, DVDs and smaller devices such as cell phones,” says Maziarka. “It’s incorrect to think of the cell phone as just another Website. It requires different navigation, and one has to be conscious of creating verbose content.”
He suggests that companies consider moving toward a single source or repository so that a technical manual is repurposed for the Web, repurposed again for DVD and repurposed yet again for a PDA or cell phone.
The offshore content companies such as Innodata Isogen have made it their business to develop these content repositories. In the television and film production business, however, the process is a little different. Dean Thompson, President of OMI Business Communications says that his company will frequently work with a producer or production company in other parts of the world. OMI produces Internet, DVD and video content for the large corporations such as American Express. “There are advantages with working with people in local markets,” he says. “There are issues around localization.” For example, stylistically, television programming and graphics tastes vary by region, so it’s helpful to work with local producers in that region. Asia, for example, tends to favor brighter colors, while Europe favors duller ones. However, OMI always sends one of its own people from its head office in New York. “British production companies tend to be the easiest for us to work with but we always send one of our own people to oversee the production.
There seems little doubt that cities like London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles will retain their positions as the major hubs for content creation, but we are certainly beginning to see these functions traveling to other parts of the world. And why not? Surely it makes more sense to write a story in Scotland or create a video game in India, and ship the bits electronically back to the U.S.A., than it does to manufacture a pullover in China, pack it in a container and drag it 3,000 miles across the ocean.
The bottomline remains that corporations should go beyond cost arbitrage to re-engineer the content-production process, mitigate risk by dispersing the creative regions geographically and re-design the technology. That way, a long-term benefit can be achieved.
10 ACTIONABLE IDEAS
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Hire reputed companies. Companies that are handing sensitive intellectual property should employ proper security measures. For example, workstations should not have USB ports, DVD drives or Internet connections
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Choose content carefully. Content production is most effectively outsourced when it does not require regional or cultural knowledge. For instance, medical technicians and computer programmers are working with the same basic set of data
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Know what you want. Companies should develop a clear idea of exactly what sort of content they want and what the content is supposed to achieve
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Indemnify the company from plagiarism
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Outline a content-production procedure. Who gives the final approval? How often should the content be updated and so on
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Develop a content-production style guide
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Break down the production process into its individual parts; analyze the process and see if any of the stages can be reduced or eliminated
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Mitigate risk by spreading the production process across a number of campuses
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Assess the skills at the offshore campus, and try and remediate those skills by education or in-house training
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Be aware that often content and delivery mechanisms are inextricably linked.
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