5 Criteria for Selecting a Global CMS
By Robin Lloyd at 2002-05-22 00:00:00 |
As global enterprises buy and implement content management systems at a record pace, organizations should consider the global-readiness of their proposed solution before making a purchase decision. If language and technology barriers prevent content authors, managers, and publishers from fully leveraging the content management system (CMS), a company may fail to reach a full return on its content investment.
Global-readiness entails far more than simply ensuring that the content database is internationalized -- able to store data in any language. A truly "global" content management solution must include multilingual interfaces for all critical applications, localization-specific workflows out-of-the-box, integrated language/locale menus for all supported authoring tools, and an underlying metadata structure that accounts for language and regional differences.
While perfectly "global" content management solutions still remain on the horizon, many CMS vendors have made significant strides by adding other globalization-related features that are proven to support the effective management of multilingual content.
As you evaluate your company's global content needs, here are five key considerations:
1. Are the Content Management System and all supporting databases fully internationalized? You will want to ask more than a few cursory questions about internationalization ("I18n") before taking a vendor's word for it. Are all components of a typical customer implementation able to store multibyte character sets? Some vendors claim to be fully I18n-compliant, but this may apply only to the core content repository.
2. Does the system allow you to identify and tag content by language and locale? Ideally, your system will allow content authors to set language (i.e. Portuguese) and locale (i.e. Brazil) requirements as early in the content lifecycle as possible, so that localization and multilingual publishing steps are incorporated from the beginning.
Whether early or late in the cycle, you will need the ability to generate and/or apply metadata classes that reflect the language and locale for a given object or file. Note that most leading content management systems include some facility for creating extended attributes, allowing the customer to create customized object classes as needed. However, unless you plan to invest the time to do this yourself, or pay a systems integrator to do so, you'll want a CMS that provides a global object model natively -- one that allows you to identify and tag content by language and locale.3. Does the system link source language content and translated content? As your company localizes large amounts of content, it is critical that your content management solution establishes and maintains linkages between source language content and its localized versions. In most cases, a parent-child relationship can be established between an object or file and all of its various iterations. This enables synchronized publishing (for a global product launch, for instance) and global version control.
4. If you are using translation vendor, are they familiar with your content management environment? This question may seem more relevant to translation vendor selection -- and it is. Ultimately, it is your translation vendor's responsibility to provide an easy mechanism for transferring content to and from the content management system. The vendor must also be sufficiently familiar with the taxonomies and object models of your particular CMS, in order to ensure that these are preserved throughout the translation process. However, it is important to consider these requirements during the CMS selection process, since choosing a lesser known or obscure product may reduce your chances of finding a language vendor that is familiar with it and that can integrate its processes with the system.
5. Is the workflow capable of incorporating translation steps? Content management systems are evaluated on many different parameters, but a robust and flexible workflow engine is a "must have" requirement. While using the right translation vendor(s) should minimize the amount of project management required, the workflow should comprehend all relevant translation steps in the overall content lifecycle. It is also important that they workflow enables validation and review cycles by in-country participants, and provides a framework for synthesizing translated content with original local content.
These key questions will help you effectively evaluate the "global-readiness" of a content management solution. Equally important to your assessment of these capabilities however, is deciding how and when to leverage language management tools and globalization technology. An effective content management solution will take advantage of state-of-the-art language management technology -- which includes translation memory, terminology management and other tools that improve the efficiency and accuracy of human translation. In fact, language management technology can lower translation costs by as much as 30%, while ensuring the quality of translated materials.
While a content management solution must be able to take advantage of this technology, some organizations prefer that language management technology not reside behind their firewall, as this introduces yet another set of tools to be managed directly.
One commonly used approach addresses this technology issue. It leverages language management technology residing outside the customer firewall, and achieves multilingual content management without the purchase of additional technology. This approach involves a lightweight connector between the content repository and an outsourced localization vendor, who then hosts all of the relevant language management technology.
Global-readiness is a critical factor when selecting a CMS. Content management has become the backbone of many companies' strategy to become efficient, knowledge-based organizations. For global organizations, these systems must address the needs of all users, in all locations throughout the world, in order to achieve the ROI today's economy demands.
Evaluating the global-readiness of a CMS solution based on key criteria, and taking a smart globalization technology approach is the first step in making effective and efficient content management a reality. Fortunately, many leading content management vendors have recognized these requirements, so the knowledgeable customer can find the optimal mix of product and services to enable truly global content management.
