Friday, April 28, 2006

"Outsource English Language Content"

Outsource English Language Content

If you have not discovered the great opportunity of outsourcing your content development requirements to India, then read this! Don’t even think about outsourcing English content development to any other offshore place. India is a whole different story- Here you can find huge talent pool with speaking and reading in English for decades with a rich history of English literature, screenwriting and other English writing.
India is not just full of brilliant software engineers but brilliant writers as well - of all styles, areas of expertise and ideas. In India there are published novelists, PhDs in English Literature, technical writers, poets, editors, prize winning journalist, instructional designers, textbook writers, published scientists, technology writers and on and on.
For example we may be embarking on a project to interview American businessmen to capture their life story as an autobiography. This will require 20 hours of phone interviews. Then indian writers will create a book along the lines of Jack Welch’s biography. This is just one example of the areas of outsourcing. There are so many areas of content development that can be outsourced.

"Publishing Business "

How to Make Publishing Business that Will Last

Unfortunately, most new newsletters and magazines perish quickly because their publishers fail to build a healthy and profitable reader relationship. Sometimes the expected audience doesn't exist in the first place

The secret to launching a publication that will last is to focus on building long-term relationships with your customers.

There are six steps to creating a long-lived business:
1.Finding the right audience
2.Creating a good product that suits your audience
3.Building a viable publishing operation or Business
4.Converting casual readers into regulars,
5.Establishing profitable, long-term relationships with key advertisers
6.Developing profitable new products and services for your loyal readers and advertisers

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

"Why Content Management Fails"

So many of the companies I’ve spoken to lately have complained about the content on their Web sites. They say it’s woefully out of date, growing out of control, and generally a complete mess. Almost unanimously, these companies have chosen to solve the problem by handing it to their IT departments.

“Find a way to manage content,” they demand, “and don’t break the bank doing it!” Companies swallow the enterprise software pitch of decentralization. They think that by distributing content creation they’re empowering business units to manage their own areas of the site. They do this hoping that the units can satisfy audience needs without requesting IT help for every little site change.

The CMS Myth
The idea is enticing. Empowered departments of a big enterprise, all publishing content directly to their customers through standard templates. The site continues to grow, but in a controlled way. And these business units have complete control of what is and isn’t online.

Sounds good, but just try putting it into practice. In a report published last year, Jupiter Research uncovered some startling findings. “Of just under 100 companies … only 27 percent of companies surveyed planned to continue using their Web content management systems as they do now.”

So why do these CMS projects almost always fail?

People Problems
I’ve spoken to a number of Web teams that have used a CMS with varying levels of success. One problem I heard repeatedly was that the project worked fine, but nobody used the software once it was available. I call this the Stupid User Argument, and it’s a favorite of IT departments. The techies did their jobs, after all: They diligently gathered requirements, scoped out the solution, carefully selected a vendor, and managed the project to a mostly on-time and on-budget conclusion.

So how come nobody actually uses these systems once they’re in place? The answer is easy: People don’t like to change the way they work, particularly knowledge workers.

Knowledge workers spend years building strategies to accomplish their jobs, practices that likely date back to study skills acquired during their education. So changing those processes — no matter how valid the provided technical solution — is nearly impossible. Users will rebel, even after substantial training.

To have any chance of success, a content management project must follow the same user-centered design practices as any other project. Task analysis, rapid prototyping, usability testing — all of these methods are crucial to a CMS rollout. It’s foolhardy to unveil a mammoth, nine-month project to an unsuspecting user community and expect adoption.

But there is a larger issue at play. Even the most thoughtful projects may be misguided. Over and over I’ve heard the same complaint about these projects, “Turns out, after all the budget and time we spent, we really didn’t need a content management system at all. We just needed some editors.”

Editorial Process
Content management is not a technology problem. If you’re having trouble managing the content on your Web site, it’s because you have an editorial process problem. Your public-facing Web site is a publication. Treat it like one.

If you’re not in the business of producing publications, you won’t be able to do better by plugging in a technology and crossing your fingers. Rather, solve the problem with people. Here’s why:

All publications require editorial expertise. Few companies are publishing companies; most provide other kinds of goods and services. Yet over the last few years, every company has found that it must build and maintain what is essentially a constantly updated publication: a corporate Web site. Publishing is a skill set that most organizations have never needed, but one that’s integral to producing a quality site.
To succeed, you must separate content and process from software. Serving a Web site is a technology issue, so IT should manage it, right? Wrong. Would you let the printing press operator be involved in your editorial process? Of course not.
Put editors in charge. You need an editorial staff in place to make the content on your site as interesting and consistent as it can be. That staff may just be one executive editor, but nothing should go online without that person’s approval. As your Web strategy grows, so too should that staff.
How It Works
Set up a process something like this: An editor manages all content on the site. Give that editor a staff of writers to send out into your business units. These writers act like reporters in the field, working on stories that they submit to a copy desk.

The stories are then compared against editorial and corporate style guides, producing consistent, professional content. That content goes to your legal and marketing departments for approval if necessary. Only then does it go online.

Once you have a proven and smooth editorial process in place, and have a strong team managing that content, you can start to think about making them more efficient with technology. Outline your process, sit down with CMS vendors and say, “Look, here are the steps that we have in place to create and maintain our content. Here are the tools we use to do our jobs. None of this is going to change. Can you help us be more efficient and effective?”

You’re running the conversation, not them. Ignore their pitches for fantastic new features; those are just frosting. You need to get things done, and they need to prove their expensive software can do it.

A Sound Strategy
This is more than just a way to manage content, it’s the beginning of a content strategy — a plan for how your site will respond to your customers, inform them, and help them make decisions that will ultimately increase their loyalty to you and your site.

And frankly, I could not care less what system you use to publish it.

Sourceadapt

"Why Content Management Fails"

So many of the companies I’ve spoken to lately have complained about the content on their Web sites. They say it’s woefully out of date, growing out of control, and generally a complete mess. Almost unanimously, these companies have chosen to solve the problem by handing it to their IT departments.

“Find a way to manage content,” they demand, “and don’t break the bank doing it!” Companies swallow the enterprise software pitch of decentralization. They think that by distributing content creation they’re empowering business units to manage their own areas of the site. They do this hoping that the units can satisfy audience needs without requesting IT help for every little site change.

The CMS Myth
The idea is enticing. Empowered departments of a big enterprise, all publishing content directly to their customers through standard templates. The site continues to grow, but in a controlled way. And these business units have complete control of what is and isn’t online.

Sounds good, but just try putting it into practice. In a report published last year, Jupiter Research uncovered some startling findings. “Of just under 100 companies … only 27 percent of companies surveyed planned to continue using their Web content management systems as they do now.”

So why do these CMS projects almost always fail?

People Problems
I’ve spoken to a number of Web teams that have used a CMS with varying levels of success. One problem I heard repeatedly was that the project worked fine, but nobody used the software once it was available. I call this the Stupid User Argument, and it’s a favorite of IT departments. The techies did their jobs, after all: They diligently gathered requirements, scoped out the solution, carefully selected a vendor, and managed the project to a mostly on-time and on-budget conclusion.

So how come nobody actually uses these systems once they’re in place? The answer is easy: People don’t like to change the way they work, particularly knowledge workers.

Knowledge workers spend years building strategies to accomplish their jobs, practices that likely date back to study skills acquired during their education. So changing those processes — no matter how valid the provided technical solution — is nearly impossible. Users will rebel, even after substantial training.

To have any chance of success, a content management project must follow the same user-centered design practices as any other project. Task analysis, rapid prototyping, usability testing — all of these methods are crucial to a CMS rollout. It’s foolhardy to unveil a mammoth, nine-month project to an unsuspecting user community and expect adoption.

But there is a larger issue at play. Even the most thoughtful projects may be misguided. Over and over I’ve heard the same complaint about these projects, “Turns out, after all the budget and time we spent, we really didn’t need a content management system at all. We just needed some editors.”

Editorial Process
Content management is not a technology problem. If you’re having trouble managing the content on your Web site, it’s because you have an editorial process problem. Your public-facing Web site is a publication. Treat it like one.

If you’re not in the business of producing publications, you won’t be able to do better by plugging in a technology and crossing your fingers. Rather, solve the problem with people. Here’s why:

All publications require editorial expertise. Few companies are publishing companies; most provide other kinds of goods and services. Yet over the last few years, every company has found that it must build and maintain what is essentially a constantly updated publication: a corporate Web site. Publishing is a skill set that most organizations have never needed, but one that’s integral to producing a quality site.
To succeed, you must separate content and process from software. Serving a Web site is a technology issue, so IT should manage it, right? Wrong. Would you let the printing press operator be involved in your editorial process? Of course not.
Put editors in charge. You need an editorial staff in place to make the content on your site as interesting and consistent as it can be. That staff may just be one executive editor, but nothing should go online without that person’s approval. As your Web strategy grows, so too should that staff.
How It Works
Set up a process something like this: An editor manages all content on the site. Give that editor a staff of writers to send out into your business units. These writers act like reporters in the field, working on stories that they submit to a copy desk.

The stories are then compared against editorial and corporate style guides, producing consistent, professional content. That content goes to your legal and marketing departments for approval if necessary. Only then does it go online.

Once you have a proven and smooth editorial process in place, and have a strong team managing that content, you can start to think about making them more efficient with technology. Outline your process, sit down with CMS vendors and say, “Look, here are the steps that we have in place to create and maintain our content. Here are the tools we use to do our jobs. None of this is going to change. Can you help us be more efficient and effective?”

You’re running the conversation, not them. Ignore their pitches for fantastic new features; those are just frosting. You need to get things done, and they need to prove their expensive software can do it.

A Sound Strategy
This is more than just a way to manage content, it’s the beginning of a content strategy — a plan for how your site will respond to your customers, inform them, and help them make decisions that will ultimately increase their loyalty to you and your site.

And frankly, I could not care less what system you use to publish it.
Views & Source from:adptive path , Jeffrey Veen

Monday, April 24, 2006

Attention to Content Deployment

If you are putting a new website or new area of your site under content management. The templates have been built, content has been entered, but there’s just one last thing you have to do: Deploy the new site -- text, images, script, etc. -- from your staging and development environment to production. And going forward you'll have to do it every time you add or modify content. Increasingly, organizations seek to separate content management, or the "development environment" from content delivery, or the "production environment." Under this approach editors and content contributors work in a staging or development environment which then publishes the content to a production environment. There are many advantages to this approach, but also some new challenges introduced, including the entire process of content deployment.

Attention to Content Deployment

If you are putting a new website or new area of your site under content management. The templates have been built, content has been entered, but there’s just one last thing you have to do: Deploy the new site -- text, images, script, etc. -- from your staging and development environment to production. And going forward you'll have to do it every time you add or modify content. Increasingly, organizations seek to separate content management, or the "development environment" from content delivery, or the "production environment." Under this approach editors and content contributors work in a staging or development environment which then publishes the content to a production environment. There are many advantages to this approach, but also some new challenges introduced, including the entire process of content deployment.

Attention to Content Deployment

If you are putting a new website or new area of your site under content management. The templates have been built, content has been entered, but there’s just one last thing you have to do: Deploy the new site -- text, images, script, etc. -- from your staging and development environment to production. And going forward you'll have to do it every time you add or modify content. Increasingly, organizations seek to separate content management, or the "development environment" from content delivery, or the "production environment." Under this approach editors and content contributors work in a staging or development environment which then publishes the content to a production environment. There are many advantages to this approach, but also some new challenges introduced, including the entire process of content deployment.

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Offshoring and Outsourcing conference

12th - 15th June 2006Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, Amsterdam

Conference on How to gain maximum benefit from offshore and /or outsourced development with real-world examples of best practice.

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Offshore Software Development and Offshoring costs

Offshore Software Development and Offshoring costs
On study of Software development companies found that, In today's majority trends for software development is do offshore software development, but continuously growing prices and building far-flung software developer team is given a new challenges.
Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, 2006-03-20 (IndiaPRwire.com) -- Last year surveyed of Sand Hill Group executives from about fifty software development companies and found that Offshoring software development has become accepted preparation. Approximately 85% of software companies said they use offshore developers, a growing from about sixty three percent two years before.

Co-founder of Sand Hill Group M.R. Rangaswami said, "software development companies are done an offshore not just a testing and maintenance but they are more dependent on Offshoring than ever before."

He said many software development companies projected especially lower costs by engage offshore software developers. In spite of this, those companies found that prices were about forty percent cheaper when all factor were integrated.

Offshore companies are previously taking action to superior prices and shortages in skill-levels in well-entrenched offshore centers like Bangalore, India, he said. To meet request, less-utilize centers in Indian cities, such as Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune will prove new offshore development competence and keep prices from growing promptly, he predicted.

India maintains a benefit over other offshore locations such as China, in important part because Indians' competence with English, he said.

Recently surveyed of 744 Software companies said, One-third of them are currently involve with outsourcing projects, forty three percent are evaluating outsourcing providers and twenty four percent are planning to Outsourcing or they didn't know what's their outsourcing plans are.

More than half of the defendant that are outsourcing said they did not reduce arrangement in their last outsourcing assignment.

In fact, Seventy percent said they chose a US-based contributor. Just twenty two percent went offshore. Another three percent reported that they have invested in Mexico and Canada.

And not the entire separated organism whose post was eliminated where thrown out onto the street. According to survey, most likely 22.6% of replace employees either transferred somewhere in the firm or were able to get a job with the new service contributor.

Survey said that, the most widely found motive for outsourcing was achieving access in information technology resources occupied internally, followed by releasing up internal resources.

Other motive respondents provided for offshore outsourcing included achieving access to high-quality resources, progress a project, improving business center and decrease time to market. Overall, the progress toward Offshoring is forcing software development companies to get better their processes for organizing circulated teams.

Most software development companies use offshore software development, they will need to more closely integrate their circulated development groups to stand apart from competitors.

Source: IndiaPR wire

DR Zakir Hussain

DR Zakir

DR Zakir

DR Zakir Hussain

Thursday, April 06, 2006

HI

Welcome