No Budget for Terminology?

Once again, this year's SCHEMA Conference was a source of great inspiration and information about the latest developments. In their presentation, Klaus Fleischmann, Kaleidoscope, and Stefan Gruber-Barowitsch, Congram, discussed how to encourage company-wide usage of terminology from technical documentation. It's often said that there's no budget for terminology! So how can you still achieve your goals? The presentation included a range of different ideas and suggestions, and we'd like to take this opportunity to share them with you!

No Budget for Terminology? Next Question: How Do I Achieve My Goals without Anyone Noticing?

Terminology is important and unavoidable. Those of us who are in the field of technical documentation know this all too well. Colleagues in other departments, on the other hand, do not.

Another thing that most people in the company don't know is that terminology is already being used, but without conscious thought or management.

It is often a company's technical documentation that feels the impact of missing terminology management: the combination of the necessary legal certainty with internal efforts to communicate consistently and accurately soon makes the need for a more effective process for standardized terminology abundantly clear.

A proper process for consistent and correct terminology results in

• more revenue
• more efficiency
• lower internal and external costs

That's why it's important to share the range of possibilities for integrating terminology into departments and areas.

A lean and agile terminology process is key here:

This process can be quickly integrated into existing processes because it involves

• clear responsibilities
• collaborative workflows
• minimal objectives
• minimal effort

.

Arguments for Terminology

While terminology processes can be easily established and ensure clear workflows and responsibilities, technical developments are fueling the need for terminology, providing further arguments in favor of its introduction. Of particular note here are

• chat bots
• AI applications
• search engine optimization (SEO)
• neural machine translation (NMT)

This is because functioning terminology management is essential in order to make good use of these technical possibilities.

However, terminology can also lay the foundation for new developments. One of the main connecting factors here is digitalization because it is

• a new topic
• interdepartmental
• encouraged

Terminology plays an important role in many digitalization trends. The wide variety within these trends can be summarized into five groups:

• Products and services
• Customer relationships and marketing
• Workflows and processes
• Business models and value-chain
• Employees and corporate culture

There are many other promising approaches for centrally positioning terminology management in the company and successfully introducing it. Ultimately, digitalization processes that lack consistent terminology are often unsuccessful.

More information about the topic of terminology

If you want to find out more about the topic of terminology, you may find our series of videos on YouTube useful. For instance, the six-part quickTerminology webinar series deals with the important aspects of terminology work. Terminology Management in 4 Parts highlights the possibilities that our terminology solutions can offer for your terminology work.

As we said, we are on hand to respond to your questions and suggestions!