Global Information Management

An essential business strategy for global companies

We help corporations drive global brand consistency and accelerate time-to-market by providing software and services to manage the delivery of all corporate information into different languages. We call this Global Information Management (GIM).

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Faced with increasing competition and a shrinking world, businesses face fresh challenges in maintaining and growing global market share. The internet, communication advancements and the breaking down of trade barriers have led to a new global market with huge market potential, but this new global environment has its challenges.

Today 90% of the information that is produced by a global organization is relevant to an international audience – yet on average only 10% is delivered in their language. Today’s global customer is more demanding and the mandate from the board is clear – satisfy global customer demand. This need to support a global presence, providing the right information to the right customer in the right language, is putting even more pressure on company resources.

The global information lifecycle, from content creation through to the publishing of information in multiple languages, involves complex processes that span geographical, organizational and technological boundaries. Many enterprises try to manage these complexities by devolving responsibilities to local operations. This fragmented approach, with little co-ordination between local operations and corporate headquarters, can be very damaging, resulting in:

Inconsistent messaging and brand delivered across regional boundaries
Regional delays to product introduction
Poor localized content quality
No economies of scale in new markets
Significant inefficiencies in global information processes
A dramatic increase in localization costs

These issues are resulting in a loss of market share, damage to brand value, inferior customer experience and poor customer perception.

The Global Information Management Solution

To address these issues, companies are turning to Global Information Management (GIM). Global Information Management is a new class of enterprise solution that provides the essential business strategy and tools for enabling a corporation to manage the escalating requirements for local language delivery.

Many companies have invested in content management and web management solutions to manage the content creation, approval and publishing processes. Whilst these systems can manage and deliver localized content once it has been created they do not have the capability needed to manage the localization process.

Global Information Management solutions augment a company’s existing solutions to provide the capability needed to manage the process of taking approved content and localizing it appropriately for a global audience. Effective GIM can dramatically reduce processing time whilst reducing localization costs.

IDC believes that interest in GIM solutions will accelerate as companies recognize the opportunities to increase the international strength of their brand, gain untouched mindshare with new foreign consumers, maintain a strong internal corporate image, and shorten time-to-market for new products and services. All of which will lead to increased brand awareness, improved customer satisfaction and accelerating global revenues.

Alison Crawford, IDC

SDL has helped many organizations by providing a consolidated Global Information Management solution to address a range of business objectives. These companies are targeting different business challenges and have seen significant benefits. Some of the issues being addressed and the benefits being achieved include:

Time-to-Market – Being first to market with a new product allows a company to realize a significant increase in market share. But having all the supporting content published in many languages can be time consuming and expensive, leading some organizations to adopt a phased approach to new product introduction. This phased approach may have worked in the past but in today’s internet enabled world, customers demand equality of service irrespective of location. Many companies are working with SDL to reduce the time and cost of producing localized content. Enabling them to have a truly global launch, making the product available in many countries at the same time.
Brand Consistency – As companies expand their global reach they struggle to ensure consistency of corporate message and brand in each of the countries where they operate. As many take a tactical approach to global publishing, they see mistakes that can damage their brand integrity. By adopting a single solution for Global Information Management, SDL customers have automated many of the tasks of publishing localized content to a global audience – resulting in an increase in quality and brand consistency.
Enhanced Customer Experience – With the web, your competition is only one click away. To ensure that they retain and grow their customer base, global companies are deploying web-based solutions to provide an enhanced user experience. But to do this in a global market requires a structured approach to global information – providing the customer with the right content in the right language at the right time. SDL customers are providing better support and enhancing their customers’ online experience by providing access to information in the customers’ language of choice.

For more detailed information on the Global Information Management process

Webex

GIM Webinar Series: 5 Strategies for Delivering Global Content (complete webinar series)

Looking for ways to decrease translation costs and accelerate time-to-market for your global products? Download the webinar recordings from this GIM Webinar Series where you'll learn 5 GIM strategies that will transform the way you manage and deliver global content.

White Papers

Web Content within a Global Information Management Strategy

This SDL white paper describes effective design and implementation strategies that will help marketing and localization managers design and implement a truly global website.

Solution Brief

Global Information Management Solution Brief

SDL global information management solutions are successfully helping market leaders, spanning every major industry including automotive, technology, retail, finance, government, and life sciences. With SDL, enterprises meet the challenges of global market participation head-on, achieving superior international market performance, brand recognition, customer adoption rates, and lifetime customer value.