More companies are discovering the benefits of moving research, editorial tasks and other knowledge-based functions offshore. One industry study estimates that by 2010, India alone will provide close to $17 billion in knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services.
In many ways, KPO is a logical extension of the value proposition all companies have sought and achieved through business process outsourcing. And increasing numbers of publishers, media companies, law firms and legal services providers are offshoring selected activities to reap the cost and efficiency benefits.
But choosing a KPO provider also requires companies to look for different attributes than they might look for from a provider of BPO services. In this article, Jan Palmen, vice president of Innodata Isogen’s Publishing Practice, touches on some of the issues companies need to address as they consider moving expertise-based functions offshore.
At its basic level, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) refers to the offshore movement of knowledge-intensive business processes that require specialized domain-based expertise. Tasks that are particularly suited to KPO include value-added services like data search, research and analytics and editorial services like copy editing, abstracting and content creation.
Unlike business process outsourcing, KPO provides domain-based processes and business expertise. To do the job the right, employees must have advanced expertise in a specific subject matter. BPO, on the other hand, is more of a commodity business, one that’s primarily driven by the extension of information technology and other business functions from one region of the world to another.
With its higher training and attrition costs, a KPO-based business faces an entirely different range of challenges and requires all of its workers to possess skills and deliver high quality work.
Universities in developing countries such as the Philippines and India are graduating thousands of qualified lawyers, doctors and scientists. And with technology making it possible to move vast amounts of data across the globe at relatively low cost, it’s now quite cost effective to tap this labor pool.
The primary benefit all companies derive is a sharper internal focus on core competencies so they can deliver greater value to clients. The decision to rely on an experienced KPO provider can serve as a springboard for improving the business in a number of ways. Publishers may find that staff members can spend more time launching new products or revamping existing publications.
Beyond that, companies can obtain a range of substantial benefits by outsourcing selected functions to 
experienced KPO firms. First, they gain access to expertise on a scale that might be too costly — and quite often unattainable — on their own. Western companies are increasingly looking for access to specialized knowledge professionals who command high salaries in developed countries. Given the ongoing pressure to reduce costs in all organizations, few companies can afford to hire and maintain large teams of professionals in these fields. Moreover, many lawyers or scientists in more developed economies would consider themselves overqualifed for some of these research-heavy activities.
For example, an information services provider might not be able to hire a large staff of lawyers to research legal briefs for online publications on its own, but by working with a KPO provider, they can access teams of lawyers, at much lower cost.
In addition, KPO providers are able to absorb peak loads and help organizations improve their overall effectiveness. Outsourcing firms can easily ramp up staffing levels to support peaks in activity and then shift the resources to other projects. That eases project management burdens, since they no longer need to know how many employees to hire in advance of a new project.
Knowledge-based firms and their workforce must be highly skilled at:
There are four things publishers, media companies and legal services providers need to look for in a partner.
One, they need to find a partner that shares their commitment for service levels and quality. Second, the KPO provider needs to have the expertise and patience to help staff overcome their reluctance to sharing knowledge. This needs to be done carefully and with great sensitivity, trust and patience or the knowledge exchange will fall short. Experienced KPO providers are fully aware of the emotional aspects that surround KPO and are equipped to deal with these issues.
The third attribute is to find a provider with an effective recruitment and training program and a proven track record in delivering a quality product.
Finally, they need to be able to scale rapidly and efficiently to meet new demands. For example, publishers need to know if they can perform the full required mix of KPO services. Another thing to consider is whether they rely on their own employees or if they use resources from subcontractors or freelance agencies. An organization with a deep team of in-house subject matter experts will be able to mobilize faster than an organization that has to bring in outside help.
Simon & Schuster is teaming with Innodata Isogen to digitize and convert thousands of backlist titles spanning more than 80 years of publishing history. Among the titles scheduled to be placed on the digital bookshelf are such classics of American literature as "The Story of Philosophy” by Will Durant, “Lost Horizon” by James Hilton, and “Gone With The Wind” by Margaret Mitchell.
In this issue of KNOWLEDGEWISE, Matt Davie, director of Digital Planning & Development for Simon & Schuster, describes the publisher's goals in the digital marketplace.
Simon & Schuster has been digitizing its books in since we began publishing eBooks in 1999. S&S initiated other digitization projects with its print on demand efforts and when we entered the search-inside programs offered by select retailers and search engines. Simple disaster recovery needs have been a part of publishing for years.
For many of our books that only exist in paper form, our author’s intellectual property has been at risk of loss due to fire, flood or simple deterioration and decay over time. Several factors converged to make a broad digitization effort appealing and beneficial to our authors and the consumers who buy our books:
Perhaps most importantly, we know the digital and online marketplace uncovers new publishing and distribution opportunities (and risks) every day. Our ability to respond quickly to those opportunities depends on having all of our content in a robust and flexible digital form.
It is important for S&S to offer consumers as broad a selection of digitized titles as possible. To that end, we selected both recently published and perennial bestsellers as well as deep backlist with low, but consistent, demand. We prioritized titles based on several factors including backlist sales numbers, “long tail” consumer interest (based on search engine traffic and backorder volume from retailers and distributors) and unexercised eBook publishing rights. We also took into account certain risks to the rich and varied backlist we offer that warranted pushing titles to the front of the line – including waning inventory availability and other factors.
In prior years, the challenge with creating and storing our books digitally was the variety of proprietary file formats in which our books were created. Those formats limited our ability to digitally repurpose those files without significant effort. Advances in digital book file formats that are more universally accepted and malleable lowered the risk that we would create unusable digital files.
A digital book is only as good as the source materials from which it is created. For many of our deep backlist titles published long before the digital age, we face the challenge of obtaining the highest quality printed book from which will create our digital files. Time and inadequate storage can compromise even the most well preserved printed book. Fortunately, our own warehouses contain thousands of high quality books from our backlist and our retailing partners serve as a valuable secondary source of pristine copies of older or very rare books that S&S has published since it opened its doors in 1924.
Our digitization effort is designed to allow our thousands of authors and their reading audience the greatest flexibility to connect to one another, be it through a printed book, an eBook, a downloadable audiobook, over the web, or through their cell phone or PDA. Having our books in flexible digital format provides one of the foundations for that effort. We intend and anticipate that other publishing opportunities will present themselves and our digital content will be a valuable and powerful tool to take advantage of those opportunities.
Simon & Schuster has always been a leader in the digital publishing space. From offering one of the largest eBook libraries of any trade publisher to transitioning thousands of books into a print-on-demand production workflow, we strongly believe in supporting digital content distribution in all its forms. For some consumers, digital versions of our products are their main format in which they prefer to read our books while many others will always prefer printed books. In the end, consumers and not publishers will determine the adoption of digital content. As a publisher, we must be ready to publish in whatever format the consumer demands, whenever they demand it.
We are monitoring several measures of success of our digitization efforts. Digital sales and incremental revenue are but one metric we are tracking for this project. We are also analyzing other less tangible benefits that will result from this effort, including more successful online marketing campaigns, protecting the intellectual property of our authors and illustrators and maintaining our position as a leading digital publisher.
The British Library has selected Innodata Isogen as its development partner for its Publisher Digitization Service. This new service offers a "one-stop-shop" for publishers who digitize and publish archive material from journal collections.
Under the agreement, Innodata Isogen will provide data conversion, including XML mark-up and enrichment, to British Library customers. In addition, Innodata Isogen will provide, where needed, content-related consulting services to customers of the digitization program. Innodata Isogen and the British Library will jointly promote the program.
Mat Pfleger, the British Library's head of Sales & Marketing said: "By partnering with Innodata Isogen we can offer the publishing industry an end-to-end content sourcing and digitization solution that can save time and money, while removing the logistical and content sourcing frustrations associated with archive and conversion programs. Our strength in content and primary digitization, coupled with Innodata Isogen’s knowledge, technological expertise and production capabilities, can deliver a real benefit for publishers embarking on digitization programs."
"We’re proud to have been selected as the British Library’s development partner," said Jack Abuhoff, CEO and chairman of Innodata Isogen. "With more than 388 miles of shelves, holding 150 million items, the British Library is able to greatly assist publishers in finding and digitizing materials. We can then convert this digitized data into web-ready formats at massive scales and build searchable XML repositories. Taken together, this represents a unique solution to publishers needing to create full digital archives."
The British Library devised the Publisher Digitization Service to help publishers leverage a major untapped asset – their backfiles. A recent study commissioned by the British Library found that 20 to 25% of the material downloaded from STM publishers’ platforms are at least five years old. However, many publishers face a huge hurdle when they attempt to digitize those backfiles – they don’t have access to the original content. Some academic and scientific publishers have had to source as much as 75% of their archival content from third parties before it could be digitized.
With its vast serial collections, the British Library can help publishers avoid this problem, while also saving them the costs of shipping the material to another location.
Innodata Isogen has published a new white paper that spotlights how technical writing teams can meet the dual challenge of creating accurate and effective customer documentation while also reducing costs and improving time to market.
The white paper "Technical Writing: Reducing Costs Drives Competitive Advantage for Savvy Companies" discusses three steps technical writing teams can take to achieve competitive gain: identify areas for cost cutting, speed time to market and establish more efficient workflows.
Innodata Isogen also hosted two webinars on the topic. The first webinar, "Technical Writing: Reducing Costs Drives Competitive Advantage for Savvy Companies" focused on how technical writing teams can become a source of competitive advantage and raise their profile within the organization. The webinar featured Mary Mercer, an Innodata Isogen project manager and Paul Ballard from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators.
The second webinar: "Web 2.0: Understanding the Semantic Web and its Impact on Technical Communication," featured Scott Abel from the Content Wrangler as well as Ms. Mercer. This webinar discussed how Semantic Web technologies are changing the way technical communications teams create, maintain and deliver technical information.
To read the white paper and listen to a replay of the webinars, visit:
http://www.innodata-isogen.com/knowledge_center/technical_writing
Although the XHTML 2 specification is a work in progress, it appears to offer an edge over XHTML 1 as a viable format to create and store content, rather than just deliver it to browsers. People who do large- or small-scale publishing can already start to take advantage of the editorial format to serve as the central schema for a single-source publishing system.
In this article on IBM Developer Works, Bob DuCharme, a solutions architect for Innodata Isogen, writes about the state of XHTML, what’s new with the specification and what it will take before it becomes a viable standard for creating and storing content.
Link to Bob DuCharme’s full story
Innodata Isogen has hired new practice leaders to spearhead initiatives in its top sectors.
When the first F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, rolls off the production line and delivers in 2010, it will feature a full array of sophisticated military technology.
Pilots and technicians operating and maintaining the F-35 will be supported by Joint-Service Technical Data (JTD) Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals (IETM) authored in a highly sophisticated technical documentation system. The Virtually Integrated System for Technical Data Authoring Tool Suite (VISTA) was a collaborative developmental effort between Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. and Innodata Isogen.
Lockheed Martin leads a task force of aerospace and defense companies in developing variants of the F-35 for the three U.S. Armed Forces branches, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, along with eight allied countries, including Great Britain, the Netherlands and Italy.
The F-35 VISTA Authoring Tool Suite integrates management workflows, digital asset management tools, user interfaces and a host of supporting applications. The technical documentation system uses the XML format to provide data for pilots and maintainence personnel.
It provides collaborative remote authoring capabilities to support F-35 team members including Northrop Grumman, Pratt and Whitney and key team partners near the Fort Worth LM AERO facility. Data is delivered via the Autonomic Logistics Information System for worldwide distribution to the end-user in a web-enabled environment.
While most of the F-35s share common features, each F-35 configuration, military branch or international partner will require unique technical data support. The F-35 VISTA delivers configuration-specific data to end users on demand at the point of use.
Innodata Isogen and Lockheed Martin jointly developed an integrated workflow application that allows end users authors and engineers to create data, incorporate links, make editorial changes and publish content for the F-35 IETMs.
Innodata Isogen has been ranked as one of the top companies in content and documentation management services by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals. IAOP recognizes leading service providers that have demonstrated the highest levels of ability and achievement throughout the industry.
Organizations were evaluated on such criteria as financial health, growth rates, customer experience, depth and breadth of competencies, employee selection and training and management capabilities.
The Global Outsourcing 100 includes sub-lists for the top outsourcing providers in financial services, customer relationship management and financial and document management. Innodata Isogen achieved honors in the document management category of the 2007 Global Outsourcing 100 rankings.
If patrons can’t find the book they want on New York Public Library’s shelves, they now may have it custom printed by the newly installed Espresso Print On Demand machine. The POD machine has access to about 2.5 million titles through Google, Open Content Alliance and other sources. The Espresso Machine can print, align, mill, glue and bind two books simultaneously in less than seven minutes, including full-color laminated covers. It prints in any language and can accommodate right-to-left texts by putting the spine on the right, according to On Demand Books LLC, which makes the machine.
Additional Espresso units are to be installed by this fall at New Orleans Public Library, University of Alberta (Canada) campus bookstore, Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt., and the Open Content Alliance in San Francisco. Beta versions are already in operation at the World Bank Infoshop in Washington, D.C., the National Library of Alexandria, Egypt.
The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers compared eBook strategies with an eye to the future at the recent STM publishers’ Book 2.01 Seminar in London. Among the highlights of the seminar was a presentation by Ellen de Groot, Senior Product Manager for Books on ScienceDirect, on how Elsevier was catching up after a slow start to its books strategy. She noted that Elsevier is considering adding abstracts of its book chapters to Scopus. Also, James Gray, CEO and President, Ingram Digital Group, cited a need for experimentation and a wide variety of concurrent publisher strategies.
Mobile access to the Web is gaining on PC-based Internet usage, according to a recent study by Telephia and comScore. Some 5.7 million people (or 19 percent of the total population) in the U.K. used a mobile device to access the Web during January 2007 compared with the 30 million people age 15 or older who accessed the Web from a home- or work-based PC. The study reflects slightly more interest in mobile usage there than in the U.S., where 30 million (or 17 percent) used mobile devices vs. 176 million using PCs to access the Web.
U.K. mobile Web users under 35 years of age account for 67 percent of the audience, compared with only 46 percent in that age bracket in the U.S. Most popular destinations on both sides of the Atlantic are Yahoo!, MSN and Google. Telephia and comScore anticipate further inroads by mobile units as phone performance improves, Web sites optimize content for small screens and information providers fine tune their fees for use.
The National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information and MyiLibrary, a market leader in eBook aggregation, have partnered to launch eBook Loans, an innovative electronic twist on the traditional library-interlending model. With the click of a mouse, eBook Loans offer instant access to tens of thousands of electronic books from major scholarly publishers, including Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Blackwell and Springer.
The college library is moving into the dorm room, according to studies at the University of Wales, where 11,500 students are visiting the library less, but downloading more. The number of books being borrowed has plunged to about 400,000 a year, compared with over one million in prior years. Between August 2005 and July 2006, people downloaded 600,000 full text articles from electronic journals, accounting for the difference in library activity. A poll at the University showed that people were three times more likely to seek information on the Internet first.
Ontopia and Bouvet have announced that Bouvet has acquired all shares of Ontopia. Bouvet, a Norwegian consulting firm, and Ontopia have had a close partnership for many years, the company said. Both firms expect the merger to strengthen their positions in Topic Map technology.
Reuters has acquired ClearForest Ltd. in a bid to strengthen its advanced search capabilities. Reuters plans to retain and continue to work with the existing management team and their highly skilled workforces in the US and Israel.
Fractal:Edge is listed as a "Cool Vendor" in a research report by Gartner. The report names leaders in analytics, business intelligence and corporate performance management. A key element in business intelligence is producing software that is easy to use, according to Gartner. Fractal’s advanced visualization software creates Fractal Maps that represent key performance indicators in large, complex or fast-moving information.
Dec 2 - Dec 4, 2008
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SIIA Information Industry Summit
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KNOWLEDGEWISE, a report on content and knowledge management trends, knowledge services and publishing technologies from the work process and technology experts at Innodata Isogen.
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