A Presentation at CII BPO Publishing Conference

By

Vijayalakshmi Rao

COO & Director,

Scope e-Knowledge Center Pvt. Ltd.

viji@scopeknowledge.com

April 2011

Agenda

• Scope’s offerings

• Changing Customer Environment

• What Does this Mean to us?

• Imposing Expectations• Imposing Expectations

• The Outsourced Value Chain

• Typical Quality Parameters / Norms

• Challenges Faced

• Addressing Challenges

• Case Studies

Scope’s Offerings

Content Enhancement & Knowledge Services

• Content abstraction

• Technical Data Extraction

Intellectual Property (IP)& Research services

Information providers

Corporates

Corporates

• Technical Data Extraction

• Keyword / semantic indexing

• Taxonomy, Thesaurus & ontology

• Editorial services

• Content creation/re-purposing

• Multimedia Transcription

• Integrated Publishing Support

• Data cleansing / update / creation

• Vertical search

• Catalog management

• Patent searches

• Landscape analysis / Licensing evaluation

• Competitor Analysis

• Company Profiles

• Industry / Market Reports

Master Data Management

Transforming data into knowledge Helping create defensible intellectual property

• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• Customer Data Integration (CDI)

• Product Information Management (PIM)

• Spend Management (SM)

End-user related

• End-users operating in a scenario of information overload and multiple choices

• Positioning and ‘branding’ of publishers being determined not by ‘what content’ but by ‘what best of

content’

• End-users using content not just for information but for decision making

Changing Customer Environment

• End-users using content not just for information but for decision making

Industry related

• Industry highly crowded and competitive; consolidation yet to happen

• Increasing demand for specialized products warranting higher levels of customization

• Adoption of agile and lean publishing strategies to enhance productivity and reduce costs

Technology related

• Technology turning out to be a key driver of content creation and delivery

Changing Customer Environment

-25%

67%

• Need to cope with new delivery methodologies and formats

Many of these challenges are being pushed backwards to Many of these challenges are being pushed backwards to

editorial service providers in the name of

‘higher quality standards’

What Does this Mean to us?

Some client quotes…

• “Quality is today a multidimensional concept. We expect much better

quality in-built with more stringent cost and service level standards”

• “ Yesterday’s excellence is today’s standard and tomorrow’s

mediocrity…we expect quality to keep improving with time”mediocrity…we expect quality to keep improving with time”

• “Higher the value add, lesser the margin for error as more critical

decisions could be taken by the user – hence, tougher the Quality

Standards”

• “We are not sourcing the raw material from you. We are looking for a

manufactured product”

These expectations are changing the way Quality is being defined, expected and measured

Sign-offs mandated at critical stages

Quality Penalties and Bonuses

Expanding definition of errors

Imposing Expectations

Expanding definition of errors

Re-scoping more errors as fatal errors, Fatal errors mean immediate rejection and rework

Expectations of Continual improvement in quality

Say in deployment of quality auditors and editors

Periodic price reduction demands – Productivity gain sharing without compromising on quality

Lack of transparency in sharing their quality tools and methodologies

Imposing Expectations

Assessment of internal quality standards and methodologies

Sharing of quality manuals by vendors, best practices and norms across vendors fixed as targets

Third party audit of quality

Copy / Basic / Technical

Editing /

Basic & Value

Linguistic Data Abstractio Content

The Outsourced Value Chain

Increasing complexity of work

Editing / Localizing /

Proof reading

Value Added

Database Services

Linguistic Services

IndexingData

Extraction Abstractio

nTaxonomy

Content Creation

Increasing subjectivity in quality

Typical Quality Parameters / Norms

• Parameterized Quality measures like

– Accuracy, Comprehensiveness, Relevancy, Selection Quality, Content Quality, Editorial Quality

applicable in varying degrees, across the value chain

• Selection and Editorial Quality normally have 98-100% as targets • Selection and Editorial Quality normally have 98-100% as targets

• Targets for others could be between 95% and 99%

• Fatal, Critical and Other errors based on perception of or impact on user

• Specific client needs parameterized and measured against a target, occasionally improvement over past performance

• Complex work entails subjective measures of quality including peer and multiple levels of review

Industry

• Availability of professionals with aptitude for BPO/KPO publishing work, good English skills

• Increased dependency on error

• Absence of industry standards, sharing of best practices long way to go, to some extent lack of collective bargaining power

Challenges Faced

People Process

Industrywork, good English skills and ability to deliver high quality work consistently

• Increasing salary and hiring costs

• Training and retention of experienced quality auditors

• Increased dependency on error correction rather than error free content creation

• Building and deployment of suitable tools to measure quality

Addressing Challenges

People

• Understand and simulate the end user to get a end-to-end perspective of what the publisher wants and

• Don’t compromise on the quality of resources you hire

• Continually train and groom quality ‘auditors/enhancers’

• Build quality into the process. Get quality right the first time

Customer Process

Peoplethe publisher wants and needs

• Aim to go beyond what the customer wants-value enhancements fetch a premium!

• Aim for continuous productivity improvements, be transparent and share the same with the customer

• Use technology effectively; a lot of quality issues can be addressed through automation

• Disseminate client feedback to all and convert it into process changes, parameter changes and target changes

Build a culture of quality in the organization

Case Study (Abstraction)

Client Publisher in Engineering domain

Input Scanned Images of Technical Documents

Output Informative Abstracts that capture the key points and essence of the

articlearticle

Quality Targets Abstract Quality (Both Content and Language) – 99%

Challenges • Getting Good Engineers for a Documentation Job

• Combination of the two Es - Engineering and English skills

Abstraction - Approach

• Process split into several stages depending on skill sets needed Eg. Less

experienced Engineer drafts Abstract, Experienced Engineer improves the

Abstract content, Specialist Copyeditor improves the language

• Independent Quality Auditor audits both content and language

• Workflow tool assists filling information common to different fields

• Rigourous training provided to ‘think and deliver’ abstracts

• Internal quality targets much higher than client targets

Case Study- (Chemical News Indexing)

Client Publisher in Chemical domain

Input Scanned Images of Chemical Journals

OutputText File containing extracts covering relevant business events in the Chemical Industry, published in journals

ChallengesGetting Good Analyst for understanding and indexing the key excerpts of the business eventsSpeed, relevancy and accuracy of indexing critical

Target Audience

Decision makers who are interested in the management, investment, marketing and production aspects of the chemical industry

Indexing - Approach

• Selecting suitable articles for indexing based on type of information content.

• Identifying relevant keywords that represent the core concept of the article and as well capturing relevant company and personnel names

• Understanding the essence of the news and writing extracts / abstracts and refining titles.

• Indexing keywords and classifying them under relevant sections depending on the nature of • Indexing keywords and classifying them under relevant sections depending on the nature of the article.

• Design & presentation in the required format

Quality Parameters Internal Target Client Target

Selection Quality 98% 95%

Field Quality 98% 95%

Keyboard Character accuracy 100% 99.99%

Thank You

viji@scopeknowledge.com