Content has become the cornerstone to enable interaction between the various communities and value chains in a global enterprise. These communities and value chains include employer and employees, buyers and suppliers, government and citizens, retailers and consumers, among other interactions, as shown in Figure 1.

It is clear that global enterprises have three value propositions when it comes to content management.

• Smooth communication for delivering content to different consumers,
• Collaboration between knowledge and content owners who may be in different countries and time zones, and
• Intelligence to analyze the content to determine how it should be used.

Figure 1. The complexity of content management

This is the ‘why’ of content management, but is it that critical? Global enterprises are made up of departments or functions that generate and consume content during their operations. These departments or functions probably have rich content assets, which are hidden on hard-drives and servers, and in file cabinets. And don’t think that a small company is less susceptible to this than a large multi-national corporation. The same content gets recreated in fragmented blocks, and therefore must be updated and maintained separately. Global enterprises which have not developed a unified system where content is not duplicated and readily available will continue to have hidden assets and re-generation of these assets. Integrated Content Management with the appropriated Globalization Model should be the vision of every global enterprise

Figure 2. Integrated Content Management

Content management theory has evolved from maintaining content in dumb file systems to storing content in intelligent repositories that can initiate an action and respond to queries based on user needs and some underlying business rules. There is a growing need for enterprises to create a global repository of content and a local control of that content at different geographic locations.

Selecting the right Globalization Model

Before we start diving deep into this topic, let’s review three important globalization-related terms:

Globalization-related terms.

Globalization encompasses all processes necessary to adapt content or code for different languages, locales, and cultures. Globalization involves defining business requirements along with the global processes for content aggregation, content management, content displaying, workflow and maintenance.

Internationalization is the process of designing and implementing the Content Management Application, Content Delivery Application and other related e-Business applications to transparently manage different cultural and linguistic conventions without additional modification.

Localization is the process of adapting all business and logical content for a locale. Localization goes beyond the translation of text and includes cultural adaptation, branding, testing, usability, user experience, and issues related to the management of content workflow.

Project success relies on these three layers being executed properly by starting with globalization, then internationalization and finally localization. You can put these three processes together by following three common globalization models

Lock Step Globalization Model

This model is characterized by rigid formats, strict requirements with minimum flexibility. If this is web content, sites layouts look exactly the same regardless of the language or region. The benefits include ease of internationalization, lesser amount of code, enforcement of corporate standards and simpler site maintenance. On the other hand, this model restricts the amount of locale-specific design and business content. This model would not work well for consumer-focused sites where cultural compliance and local marketing communication are crucial to site success.

Locale Specific Globalization Model

This model is the opposite of the Lock Step Model. It allows each site to have its own look and feel, layout and design. Site developers can create unique content targeted to local audiences. This model offers flexibility to build sites for targeted audiences, cultural adaptation, and unique user experience. However, the site development, production and maintenance around this model require intensive human resources, manual processes and complex maintenance efforts.

Based on our research, many global corporations today implement this model — whether they planned to or not — by authorizing in-country teams to design and publish their own site or by acquiring or merging with companies which already have website in place. However, they soon realize that their global branding strategy is greatly diluted, content quality is unacceptable or unknown, and customers misunderstand critical messages. This model does not leverage repurposing content and creates much inefficiency during implementation and site deployment.

Hybrid Globalization Model

So what is the best solution? The answer lies in a Hybrid Model. By combining the internationalization readiness of the Lock Step Model with the flexibility of the Locale Specific model we can derive a Hybrid Model. With our internationalized infrastructure in place, we can move to the next level with adjustable attributes for site layouts, content positions, styles and culturally specific elements to deliver locally unique sites.

A robust Content Management System separates business content from the display engine. For the Hybrid model, we must consider separating application assets from display engine using a Message Catalog model. Software programmers can easily recognize that a Message Catalog is just another flavor of the more familiar Java resource bundles. However, Message Catalog extends its offering with a management interface for all application assets. Upon a page request, the Content Management Server would detect the selected locale, assemble the localized page dynamically and serve it efficiently. A few leading Content Management solutions in today’s market include sophisticated caching features, which improve site performance and eliminate database resource bottlenecks while enabling globalization solutions.

Designing for Global and Local Content

Using a typical US-based corporation as an example, its global content can include corporate information, investor relations, mission statement, annual report and similar information. On the other hand, local content focuses mainly on local products, events and news. How does global and local content impact Content Management? The answer lies in the site structure and content sharing policy. By creating a corporate standard we can ensure a consistent derivation of global to local sites by worldwide teams. This process minimizes the content production resources while improving the overall site quality.

Localization cost is always a touchy but important subject. This sensitive issue must be resolved prior to any content production process. Due to cost, selecting content for localization must be based on formal corporate guidelines rather than a brute force approach of creating translated site images in a number of languages. Due diligent research into users, locales and market opportunities can pinpoint language and content category priorities. By leveraging Personalization features available in some Content Management Systems, we can scientifically automate this research through intelligent reports of users’ visits to local web pages. The result can drive the development of the site structure, content policy and localization goals. Content editors must then define localization criteria based on content categories and contextual value instead of mimicking the entire US English site for every language involved. For example, it does not make sense to localize news articles specifically written for the US audience into five major languages when they have no global relevancy.

We recognize that both global and local content impacts the content management workflow. Our global workflow would include, at a minimum, Content Authoring, Content Editorial, and Content Publishing adapted by all content production teams worldwide. If an article needs to exist in multiple languages, then a localization task will occur. Beyond the standard localization workflow, we can enhance our workflow with optional tasks such as cultural compliance, legal and usability reviews.

Figure 3. Content Management Workflow.

Integrating with Localization Management Solutions

Until recently, a number of software technology companies in this space delivered their products focusing on the localization and localization management aspects. These products, also known as Global Management Systems (GMS), include four basic components - a Connector, Translation Memory, Workflow and Project Management components. Interestingly, these products all integrate, via customized connectors, with the leading Content Management Systems by tapping into the available Application Program Interface, file system or content database records.

We believe that these solutions complement our Content Management solution. However, a truly global Content Management System starts with an Internationalized Content Management infrastructure that includes the layers of complexities discussed earlier in this paper. Until this effort is completed, the Localization Management or GMS solution cannot properly adapt to the system well. A thorough analysis of GMS requirements early into the project will make it possible to achieve a simpler integration.

Technologies alone are not enough to ensure success. Service is an important criterion to any localization project. We continue to rely on localization professionals – such as project managers, translators, localization/internationalization engineers, human factor engineers and business managers to ensure that proper execution and enforcement of corporate guidelines are met. Localization success can only be achieved when knowledgeable team members jointly execute well-defined project plans and a predefined content management policy.

In a word

Content management demands have become quite complex. Integrated and globalized solutions are desperately needed across enterprises to ensure that management of content assets is performed efficiently. As the world becomes more tightly bound together across borders and cultures this need becomes even more important and additional complexities enter the picture. By utilizing solid content management services, corporations can more effectively manage and target content across disparate mediums and context, and achieve their globalization goals.

Deborah Brock Webb (dwebb@vignette.com) is Globalization Program Manager with Vignette Corporation. She has been involved in internationalization and localization since 1985. She was a leader in IBM’s National Language Support community, with responsibilities including NLS design, planning and management of IBM’s largest translation projects. After leaving IBM, she was Senior Account Manager for International Language Engineering and Sales Manager for International Translation and Publishing. Prior to joining Vignette, Deb was Localization Manager for Dell Computer Corporation where she focused on developing new techniques for streamlining the overall localization process, with direct impact on Dell’s delivery to market and cost of localization.