Streamlining Operations with Unified Terminology

Cruce Saunders
Welcome to Towards a Smarter World this is your host, Cruce Saunders. And I'm pleased to be joined today by the director of Unified Content Services, Kelly Lawetz. At Genetec. She leads a team of content developers, editors, operation specialists, taxonomists, translation coordinators, that are all responsible for the creation and delivery of high quality technical content across lots of different channels. Getting that message out to Genetec's customers, partners and employees. Kelly and Gentec started their taxonomy journey in 2021 when a lack of consistent product and business terminology was identified at a risk to digital transformation efforts that were a high priority for the company. Kelly's been leading the charge and it's great to get to connect with her today. Hi Kelly.

Kelly Lawetz
Hi Cruce.

Cruce Saunders
Well, thanks very much for joining us. We've been connected for some time and it's great to now get to share with our listeners some of the business programs and the progress you've been leading in Unified Content Services. Unified Content is something we've been talking about at [A] for a long time, and in many organizations it's not a function. So it's very exciting that there is even a function for unified content at Genetec. And your portfolio is huge. Would you give listeners a sense of the scope of Unified Content and what your mandate is?

Kelly Lawetz
Yeah, I think I probably stole the title of the department from [A], probably got the idea from you, but it's aspirational. So you're right, we do have a very large mandate. We take care of technical documentation and the translation of technical documentation and everything around that. But there's this other part of us which started with technical content, but we always had the aspiration to unify because we always knew that everyone's creating content and that operations part, the operational services, we could extend those to other organizations and actually help them create content better, deliver content better, author content better, translate content better. So that was built in, that was part of our vision, my vision from the very start, but we didn't always have that. We built towards that, starting with in terms of Unified Content Services, the first Unified Content service that we provided was translation. We offered a translation management platform where we could receive and manage translations from all across the company so we could see what we were translating, we could leverage our memory, etcetera. So we started on that, not necessarily on content, but on the translation of content, and we've extended it into terminology.

How can we help not only people in technical content, but people across the enterprise creating content, be consistent around their terminology? So start with a vision. That's what we did. We started with a vision. We had our aspirations and we built a strong technical documentation and operations team based on DITA, and then we were able to extend that to the rest of the organization. So yeah, it's been fun, lots of fun.

Cruce Saunders
Well, it's a big job to begin to expand the role of orchestrating content from function to function. And I love that you're starting with language in its root form as one of the ways to do that. There's a lot that a centralized organizational function around content can do in a busy enterprise with lots of channels. But you've started with terminology and with language, and it's really important that there's shared language in an enterprise, but it's pretty rare that there is. And so that concept of shared terminology and terminology operations is new to a lot of folks. Can you describe a little bit about what you see as terminology operations and why it's important for organizations to care about using terms in the same way from group to group?

Kelly Lawetz
Well, the opportunity at Gentec I have been talking about terminology, and consistent terminology is actually part of our goals, one of the pillars of our organization. So we've been talking about it for a long time, but suddenly it hit the business crews, and suddenly the executive identified that the lack of common language, the lack of managed terminology was a problem. And it was a problem not necessarily in the content level, but it was hitting them as they were trying to transform their data systems, their business systems, because you're merging system data together and it has to be in a single flow. And if you're not calling, if a customer doesn't meet a customer across the system, you're going to have problems. So that's where that need came from. And from there, we had always been talking about it, we did it within our own organization, but we needed to scale right, we need to provide a service to the entire organization. And that was where terminology ops came from. So we needed to build a process. Actually, we need the people, the processes, and the systems and technology to be able to support the need across the organization.

That's where it came from, and that's what we do.

Cruce Saunders
And for somebody that hasn't considered terminology before, what would you say are some of the most important reasons to consider looking into developing a shared terminology program?

Kelly Lawetz
Well, it comes back to common language, and whether you're for whatever reason that you're creating content or exchanging data, if you don't have that common language, then that's the first step. You can't get any further. And the bigger you become, whether we're talking about your organization, so your teams, your employees, or your customer base, or your products, when it's small and you know everyone, and everyone knows the products, and you can coordinate at a very small level with minimal coordination, it's almost tribal, that's fine. But as you grow, if you don't have that common language at a cultural level, but also at a systems level, at a content level, at every level, you're going to face problems. It's going to cost you money, it's going to cost you customers. Bottom line, there's this thing, what was his name Clay Christensen, and this is old. It's an old, like, Harvard Business Review. And he was talking about innovation. And he said expectations for value and satisfaction are set at the big higher, but they're measured and calculated at that little higher. You know, the big hire is when someone decides to buy, and the little higher is when someone decides to use, and then they resubscribe, they renew.

And content and terminology is about that little higher. It's that experience. And if you're not consistent with that experience, they will not renew, you won't get more customers. So that's where I see terminology fitting in, and that's where I see terminology and managing your terminology as very valuable to the business.

Cruce Saunders
Yeah, that's very compelling. It's tied very much to the essential customer experience and bringing that together pre and post sales.

Kelly Lawetz
It's continuing if you have to spend your time wondering if something was a mistake or if it means something. And this is really from people to systems, and that's time is money, time is customers. Customers can go somewhere else. Employees can go somewhere else. Employees will spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the right thing is to do, what is the right word to use. Translators will spend a lot of time mistranslating. So it's a little higher. And it's the little things, the little frictions that's caused in the processes that people follow and the processes that systems follow that can really bite you if you don't get it right, especially as you start to grow.

Cruce Saunders
Yeah. Interesting. You know, as AI starts taking on more role in content generation, having consistent terminology also becomes a basis for sort of training.

Kelly Lawetz
Yes, absolutely.

Cruce Saunders
Consistent output as well.

Kelly Lawetz
And we have a lot of content. That's something actually we're going to start looking into. But that's also you can do so many things once you get it right or almost right.

Cruce Saunders
Well, you know, a lot of these kinds of programs don't get off the ground due to budget constraints. And really they have huge value, but they're often really flying under the radar of the sea level. I'm curious about how you've been able to get sponsorship for these initiatives and what has been key triggers for executives to really drive their involvement.

Kelly Lawetz
Well, you know, it's a continuous it's not a struggle. You have to keep at it. But at Genetec. As we mentioned in the intro, it was identified at the beginning. We had been talking about it. I had been talking about it. I've been talking to various people in the organization. But it's only when it was identified as a threat, as a threat to us being able to transform because it was causing a lot of friction, a lot of time was wasted either fixing systems because we didn't have that consistent terminology, or having these confusing conversations which didn't allow transformation to move forward. So the executives felt it, and the executive needs to feel something. They need to feel it's going to hurt their bottom line, hurt their brand, etcetera. So there were plenty of examples that I had where the executives were speaking to that. The need for the common language, the need for us to have a consistent experience, whether we're talking about the sales experience or the product experience. So I reminded them, and I said, okay, that's well and good, but how do we do that? How do we deliver that? And this is coming back to there as big things in terms of how we deliver that, and then there's smaller things.

And so because they suddenly understood I had been talking to them for really Cruce, many years about this and the risk, but when they finally encountered that, they remembered that we had been speaking about that our organization had demonstrated process maturity, etcetera. So they came to us and they said, can you help? And we said, yes, we can. But we started small. And I would say we're still relatively small, and we will continue to extend. So there's a problem. The executives see there's a problem. You're ready to address that problem. You don't have all the answers, but you're able to deliver something of value in a short period of time that shows the benefit of continuing. That truly shows the strategic benefit of putting more money in terminology. That's what I would recommend. That's how we did it anyways. And we're continuing to do that. It's ongoing.

Cruce Saunders
Yeah, that makes sense. It does. It's not a vitamin, right? It's a painkiller. Well, good. And you've rolled out a pretty comprehensive program, even with a limited budget. And curious about how you describe the shape of that program and what are all the components. I know it included tools and standards and some team structure and best practices. A very comprehensive approach. Can you describe the elements and why they're important?

Kelly Lawetz
Yes. Where did we start? Like, we didn't do it all at once. Right? We started first by hiring for this program is basically identifying the problem. We worked with you guys, actually to come up with a roadmap, get the right people in place, and then start, pick something. Don't pick everything. Pick something small. Right. We really took an agile approach. Pick a small term, set, something that everyone understood that it was problematic, but it wasn't too problematic, where we could actually sandbox that and start to play, start to figure out what is a term? How do you define a term? How does a term fit in a taxonomy? Who's responsible for reviewing and approving, sandboxing that, experimenting, getting the process in order, having the people in place and then running it again and again and going back and getting feedback. So with a small set of terms, and then you start to extend it. And that's where we went from a project, a POC, into term ops terminology operations, because we put the people and processes in place. We introduced a technology to help us deliver all those decisions that we made to where people author in line in real time.

And then we started to extend our reach. The amazing thing is when you start to do something well, but also when you start to do it consistently, people start asking you for help. People start asking you to do work because you've demonstrated with a small set, nothing, nothing burnt down, the stakes weren't as high. But then you demonstrated that you had that, that process in place and that you could guarantee that that process would deliver an approved term into a system that's accessible by everyone. And people started asking you to help them manage their term. As we've rolled out this program and we continue to demonstrate what we've done and continue to receive feedback and improve. We've had legal come to us. We've had other business units come to us and ask about how we can manage their terms, how we can help bring consistency and really help the authors, whoever is managing and authoring that content be better, go faster, etcetera.

Cruce Saunders
Terrific. And part of that has been information sharing. Like getting groups of people together to talk. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that process of really socializing terminology and reinforcing with best practices?

Kelly Lawetz
Yes, we started as part of our POC, we started with a like I said, we started with products, product names and we created a small group with product managers, everyone who dealt with product, to a bid content, etcetera. What is it? Product managers, marketing, bid training, unified content services. And what was really amazing is that people attended these groups because they were interested. We identified a need right at the beginning. So the C-suite said oh my God, our systems can't talk to each other because we don't have a common language around our business terms. But our authors were also saying because we were creating more and more content oh my God, I spent so much time trying to figure out what the right term is to use and there's so many iterations reviews. So these people came together, they had a vested interest in seeing that we figure out the process and we figure out how to manage our terms. And we were very consistent. We set up a Friday meeting and that Friday meeting always happened. And we would bring people up to speed on what we've done in that small group and then we would get their feedback on processes that we were trying automations, we were trying the review and approval process.

And then the next week we would come back, we take their feedback, we come back and we'd improve it. So that weekly touch point with that small group of people who are part of our MVP and then also making sure that we deliver on the suggestions or the improvements. So continuously improving that process then sharing it out with the rest of the organization. We have this forum where we can basically broadcast to the company what we're doing. And so we did that after we run this project for six months, we had the process in place, and we shared that out, and we were able to deliver it. We had a place where people could actually check their terms. So that's really important. That I would emphasize, no matter big or small, that you focus on being able to deliver value as soon as possible. It's not going to be perfect, it's not going to be complete, but you're delivering value. It's not shelf where it's not a guide, it's not some reference. It's really in line in real time. They can use it, they can feedback, they can improve it, your user base. We did that, and then we just continue to iterate that same process.

Do something, go back to this user group. More and more people are starting to be part of that user group. Feedback with that user group. Give them, whether it's engagement stats or terminology consistency or review process, whatever is part of the process, feedback to that group. Ask them if they're satisfied. Ask them where we can improve and then improve.

Cruce Saunders
That's beautiful. There's rhythms, there's listening, there's feedback cycles, and they're seeing value through tangible outputs. What about the systems that help to support all of that, the systems for terminology management?

Kelly Lawetz
We went small. Yeah, we went small. So you can start small, start small with everything you can always, and you know, the smaller you start, the more agile the system of record that you use, the better, because you can move. But we started with what we had. We used what we had. So we had SharePoint. People were, I think it's called SharePoint term store. People were adding their terms to SharePoint term store, but there was no governance around that. So we took that over. People were aware who managed their SharePoint sites, in particular product management, they were aware of that. And so we started to use the SharePoint term store as a system of record. But it has its limitations. The limitations were that it's available for tagging in SharePoint, but it wasn't available, it wasn't helping our authors. So then we looked for a system that could actually manage our terminology, but also deliver that terminology to where people are authoring. And so we went with Acrolinx and used them to deliver our terminology. But this answer that I'm giving you is not clear cut, because it's not clear cut right now. We don't have that one system of record.

If I were to really be honest, we have SharePoint term store, and then we have Acrolinx. Things come through Acrolinx, and then they go into SharePoint term store. But that process of managing, I guess, the different channels in which our terminology needs to be published to is not ironed out entirely. We're still working on that. Yeah, there's a lot of manual stuff still happening, Cruce.

Cruce Saunders
Well, of course.

Kelly Lawetz
Sorry to interrupt, but it's really important that you so you may have like we have SharePoint and we had Acrolinx, so you acknowledge that. But before we had ten system, everyone was keeping their terms everywhere else. And so fine, we can't get to one system, system, this authoritative source, this system of record, but we got down to three and we know them, we know what's going in them, we can see them, we get notifications. So that was very important to communicate that, to say this is iterative, we're continuously improving and evolving this service. So that was important because sometimes when you're looking at this project you're like, we need a system of record, it must be that. And all those must have, must be's with regards to technology can trip you up, I think be very flexible around there would be my guidance.

Cruce Saunders
Well, yeah, it's practical and it's available within the current context of technology without huge initial investments. And I think we've seen semantics programs that are able to start with kind of the centralized approach, but in every case it always takes iteration anyway, right? So there's going to be an iterative cycle to mature the understanding of how terminology is used and then the consensus and group dynamics around shared terminology. So it's really an iterative process, not just technically, but of course within the culture and the environment process, right? So there's a movement towards more and more semantics, maturity semantics being the kind of bigger world of interconnected taxonomies, when we start to move from just having kind of terms in space or a dictionary to relating those terms into taxonomies, and then we start relating the taxonomies into something that semantics nerds would call an ontology. Right. We have really a domain of knowledge being mapped out and that becomes more and more and more useful over time. But what I love about what you're doing is it starts in the blocking and tackling of real life systems that are being used in the enterprise today with teams that need to see immediate value and you're moving the ball towards sharing process and technology around terms with an eye towards the bigger picture.

Kelly with all of these different terminology starters that are in place, there is a lot of fundamental basis for more maturity in the future. I'm curious what you see ahead.

Kelly Lawetz
Well, the possibilities are limitless, Cruce. The possibilities are limitless whether we're using whether with this consistent terminology and consistent content, we're able to leverage our content in machine translation, in machine learning, in better connected systems. So all those systems that require consistency in order to be able to build the rules, the automation, etcetera, but also all those people who require consistency. But we're still at the beginning, we're still really focusing on building that terminology, getting it down path, going from a chaotic way of managing or not managing our terms to a repeatable process. For managing our terms, we're actually looking at culture change. Right. So there's a big thing and how once we've changed the culture around how we see and use terminology, then whatever systems need to do, we're ready. But right now we're still focused on the people and the processes and making sure that those things and what we deliver is organized and repeatable. We're not at that technology piece right now, but in order to be able to plug into that technology piece, we need this consistency and process worked at first.

Cruce Saunders
Yeah, terrific. That is the foundation. And once you've got the ingredients, you can make lots of recipes in the future. And whether that's search engine optimization, or whether that's semantic search on the website, or whether that's more personalized targeted experiences based on the terminology.

Kelly Lawetz
It's interesting that demand hasn't come into our service yet. But what's always interesting, and you can see what the organization is thinking, is the people who attend our information sessions, the people who attend our service delivery reviews, the types of questions that they ask. They're not asking for anything. They're not adding something and saying this must be delivered. But they're probing, they're asking questions, and they're bringing up all the possibilities and they're excited about it. So it's always interesting, and I always use that to figure out the future and where we're going by the questions that I get in those show and tells that we do.

Cruce Saunders
Yeah, that's huge. You've got engagement, which is enormous. So let's start to wrap up by looking at the ways that people who are brand new to terminology management and they don't have any kind of program in place right now, and they just want to get started. Where should they start and what are some sort of initial best practices they can start considering?

Kelly Lawetz
The first thing, depending on how much budget you have, is manage and build what you control. So if you're a small technical writing organization, how do you manage your terms within your organization? Do you have organized and repeatable processes? Are they documented? Do you deliver terminology consistently? Could you demo what you do to a larger organization and start to give budget? So within your organization, make sure that you understand what a term is, what term management is, and then start to just practice it. We have a new term. What is the definition? We need to change this definition? How do we do that? Capturing that process and then starting to extend it out to other organizations. One of the things that we did, just because we did have some buy in at the C-suite, meaning that they didn't necessarily wasn't the hot thing, but it made them worried. Right. So we did have some buy in at the C-suite level because they understood the risk, because they were experiencing it and what they did. So that's around business systems. Well, I worked with Simple [A] and I said, okay, I really want to understand how if you can work with someone consultant in that business and start to develop your roadmap, which is what I did.

I found working with you guys very helpful in terms of building that roadmap and that understanding. So building that vision, coming up with your strategy and your objectives for short.Term, mid-term and long-term were very helpful because they were very concrete and because you don't have an organization, let's be honest, not everyone understands or understands all the time. They might be worried about it at a certain time, but then it goes away and they're worried about something else. But that risk still remains because that's always changing and you're having to comfortably address that, having that concrete plan. So a very strong vision, your strategy and objectives for the near term and then really focusing on delivering, that is where you should start. And you don't need a consultant to do that. You can start small within your organization and say, what is my vision? What am I trying to do? What problems am I trying to solve? And then work your way through that and focus on delivering and then show and tell because there's a lot of marketing, Cruce, I won't kid you and I won't kid the audience, you're wearing all hats as you try to roll out this type of program market strategy.

You have to have engagement, you have to measure your customer engagement. There's a lot of sales involved in rolling out this program and you need to be ready to do it.

Cruce Saunders
And you've done it. You've done it. And that is absolutely enormous. There's a lot of people in the content industry who are needing to see what leadership looks like and you're demonstrating it. Leadership looks like getting something rolling, getting the advocacy for that built within an organization through rhythms, through bringing people together, through demonstrating results, through tangible outcomes that are built on an identified strategy @mrcruce that can be communicated upward and within peers. So it is a lot of work, but that ultimately pays off in something that is going to live really for a very long time as the foundation for intelligence and the future of content and customer experience. So that is huge. And I look forward to hearing more about how all of these program elements get antied up into a more intelligent future at Genetec and in your leadership career. So thanks so much, Kelly.

Kelly Lawetz
It's exciting times ahead.

Cruce Saunders
It sure is. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with the audience. We really appreciate it. And everybody enjoy taking one step at a time towards a smarter world.