To Build Or To Buy a TBMS: 4 Things You Should Consider
When corporate buyers face the decision to implement a Translation Business Management System (TBMS), the immediate dilemma that follows is – which one to choose.
Navigating in the TBMS space
There is plenty of easily accessible industry knowhow on what is available on the market – just go and visit nimdzi or slator websites for comprehensive analyses of all the solutions out there. All of them however do not mention one very powerful contender on the market, one that we at Consoltec often come up against: a custom-built TBMS solution.
Being an established TBMS provider – we could easily come up with more than a dozen of compelling reasons for choosing Consoltec over developing your own bespoke solution in the “Build or Buy a TBMS” debate. In turn, we have decided for a much fairer comparison listing advantages of both approaches:
Build a TBMS | Buy a TBMS |
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For a comprehensive list of why you should choose Consoltec as your TBMS, please see here and now let’s look in more detail at the advantages of the alternative approach.
Addressing the needs of all internal stakeholders
When you’re looking to build or buy a TBMS system, it may as well be the first and last time you’re in the software buyer seat. Whereas we at Consoltec have been in the software seller seat for years and can therefore share some advice.
It may seem like a TBMS is bought by the CEO and when built – the whole organization has a say what they actually need. What we see in our day-to-day interactions with prospects, although the conversation may start with just the CEO, the decision to buy involves all the department heads. And it’s not just us, according to Gartner Research, it can be as many as 11 stakeholders!
Even more so, it’s in our best interest to involve as many department heads as possible, this way we manage their expectations and ensure a faster and more predictable onboarding process!
On the other hand, if you decide to build – having too many stakeholders involved in the scoping and product design phase, is not very productive. To cope with this, you will probably need to hire a Product Owner (on top of your Software Development Project Manager), making you a half-way software house.
Tailor made to your current technology landscape
The current market still has providers offering just their out of the box solution and software houses who claim to write the code from scratch for each and every client of theirs. The reality however, is that companies which would build your bespoke TBMS would be reusing a lot of the functionalities already used by their other clients. Just like all the industry leading providers of ready-made solutions would be more than happy to accept custom feature requests.
At Consoltec, we like to say that this is how we grow. With every new client pushing us to new levels of efficiency or security – we accept the fact that decades of industry experience do not give us the right to impose just our way of solving certain translation process challenges.
It may seem tempting to develop your own bespoke TBMS just to make sure it will seamlessly integrate with your whole current technology landscape. However, any reliable provider of a ready-made system should also offer industry leading connectivity, both via integrations as well as through their API. Both should also be secure, which is guaranteed by their certifications. When building your own solution, make sure your chosen provider would understand the nuances of all the different ISO and SOC II norms that your clients will expect you to meet.
Matching your organization’s specificity
What’s meant here is that you would get all the unique features built specifically for you and not have to pay for anything that has been developed for any of your competitors. While that might have been true (thus making a critical difference) in times of selling perpetual licenses, nowadays all providers operate in a SaaS model.
When creating a bespoke solution, you will need to spend time and money for anything that will be custom built just for you. After all, that’s the point of getting your own proprietary system. When choosing an industry leading solution chances are, what you need is already there. Built and tested by other industry players. You will not bear the costs of developing it from scratch, but just the subscription fee for using a module.
Take note, when building your own set of features – will they be guaranteed to stay up to date and secure? What is the cost associated with this? Oftentimes the effort of maintaining a custom feature for just one client greatly overweighs that of a subscription fee.
When it comes to paying for features you will not be using, modular pricing in SaaS offerings has been a standard for years. Always make sure your proposal precisely describes the scope of the implementation and the things you want to achieve with certain functionalities, not just the names of modules of the system which can be not as clear to you as they are to the provider.
Maintain code and data ownership
Apart from the aspect of cost of maintenance (either done by a third party or your own team), this greatly boils down to risk management. At first glance, when you own the code of the solution you use – the risk is mitigated, as it’s in your own hands. To handle it properly, you will most probably need to have a full time team of admins and developers. For long term risks, they will be there to respond to cyber security risks and threats. In terms of their short term value – you will be thankful for their assistance when all of a sudden the system stops working for a certain user.
That being said – you cover your own risk by yourself. In case of an industry leading solution like Consoltec, the risk is spread among all its users. They all drive the efforts for us to always stay secure and compliant with the latest industry standards. They also share the cost of us working on this, but divided by thousands of users – it’s just a fraction of what a single user would have to cover.
Data ownership touches the aspect of security but also involves hosting. Long gone are the times of lock-in scenarios, where a provider would not let you switch to a competitor by holding your data hostage. A simple export option should be just a few clicks away, but it’s your duty to make sure it’s there – regardless if you go for the build or the buy a TBMS option.
If you’re concerned about where your data will be hosted or have some specific requirements in that regard, make sure your TBMS partner understands them and can accommodate. At Consoltec, we’re very proud of our flexibility in that aspect – a flexibility that does not compromise on security.
Struggling with the Build or Buy a TBMS dilemma – reach out to us for a noncommittal conversation!