Which companies need a TMS?

There may come a day in the life of an organization when their current translation and localization efforts are not enough for business operations and something must change.

What are the reasons for a company to start thinking of buying a TMS?

  • The management has decided to enter new markets or go global.
  • So far the company has employed a few in-house translators who have worked with desktop CAT tools limited as to the sharing of translation resources (TMs, TBs) and it has become more problematic because of their growing volume.
  • The company has outsourced the whole translation process to a third party (agency, freelancers) and has no control over its translated content.
  • There are more and more complaints about the quality of translations due to inconsistent terminology, no reuse of content, more work for internal reviewers.
  • No one controls the costs of translations or knows how to reduce them.
  • There are concerns about security of translated data and the need is to have it at a higher level.
  • Translation resources are not stored in one place: each department has their own and there is no one who would collect and reuse them.
  • The whole translation process takes a long time: internal stakeholders would like to make it quicker, also with the use of translation memories and machine translation.

A TMS can be a solution to any of the above challenges.

In addition, a TMS is the right tool for a company that:

  • runs large localization programs
  • cooperates with multiple vendors
  • has large volumes of content to translate
  • works with files in different formats (a TMS can process a variety of them so you can save on licenses for employees)
  • operates in a strictly regulated environment (e.g. life sciences)
  • wants to have the whole translation process centralized instead of dispersed in different departments, thus saving on costs through a group buying process of translation services.

However, a TMS is not the right tool for every organization. This can be when your company:

  • is small or operates only in a few markets
  • has a very limited localization budget
  • has no in-house translation or localization experts
  • already has a content management system (CMS) or a product management system (PIM) in place with translation features
  • potential costs of a TMS (subscription or installation/maintenance fees) would exceed the savings from its use (TM discounts, MT use, less work for internal reviewers or content reuse)

In such cases CAT tools (with a server or group-sharing feature) or outsourcing the whole process to an LSP would be a better option.

Remember: With the purchase of a TMS, a company needs to employ relevant specialists such as: Translation Coordinator, Translation Manager, Localization Specialist or Localization Engineer to manage the system and process.