As with many other small businesses, Language Service Providers (LSPs) often wade into the technology swamp without fully recognizing the difficulties and dangers lurking there. The demos we see at the many language industry conferences make it all look so easy. Many LSPs are faced with a choice of either continuing to develop and maintain a proprietary TMS or moving to one of the many available commercial offerings. This brief case study will allow you to avoid overestimating or underestimating difficulty when answering that question.
Berlin-based LSP, text & form, was faced with exactly this dilemma. The costs associated with maintaining and extending their proprietary TMS solution were substantial, yet the list of desired functionalities continued to grow. The real question came down to one of return on investment: did the proprietary system create competitive advantages that would justify the additional investment, or would it be more cost-effective to invest in third party solutions? We chose the latter course, and this is our story.
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The first thing you need to know when planning a journey is where you are starting from. This is often more important than where you are going, because it is possible to alter your destination en route. At text & form, we began with a thorough assessment of the existing proprietary technology. In performing this assessment, we looked at three broad questions:
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