Situation Analysis:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known as the LDS Church or, informally, the Mormon Church) is a Christian restorationist church that is considered by its members to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. In their localization group, they have been using three different management platforms: SDL WorldServer, Workfront, and Clarity. The reason for using three at the same time is they don’t find anyone of them can fulfill all their needs.

  • SDL WorldServer: they use WorldServer as their workflow engine. It is also used to manage their linguistic assets like TM and TB.
  • Clarity: Clarity is used in the group for actual project tracking. It basically makes up the business PM function that WorldServer lacks. It is also used to issue payment (PO issuing). Because of heavy customization, the current version of the system cannot be updated.
  • Workfront: Workfront is implemented as the HQ project tracking system for upper management to oversee the process.

 

Problem Analysis

LDS Church is mainly facing two problems:

  • Problem 1: Can’t pay by TM leverage.

Because language resources including Translation Memory are managed by WorldServer, while billing is processed by Clarity, LDS church can’t pay translators by TM leverages.

  • Problem 2: Manual system sync

The three platforms that LDS church is using doesn’t talk to each other. As workflow is processed on WorldServer, and localization project management is performed on Clarity, workflows have to be manually inputted into Clarity system to sync with WorldServer. Data was also manually inputted into the third system Workfront which reports to the upper management. In order to handle the system sync, LDS church has to hire extra personnel specifically dedicated to data input.

 

Solution Analysis

The major need for LDS church is integration among three systems. It might be difficult to find three systems that can integrate with each other, but it’s not to find two systems that communicate well. Therefore, one possible solution is replacing two systems with one new system that can cover the functions of former ones. However, as LDS church has been heavily relying on WorldServer for language assets, their translators are also trained on WorldServer, it would be highly impossible to replace it with other systems. Workfront as the management system of the whole company is also unlikely to be changed to fulfill the needs of localization team. So the only system that can be replaced is Clarity.

The goal is to find a business-oriented TMS which integrates with WorldServer. Three widely used business oriented TMS are LTC Worx, Plunet, and XTRF.

  • LTC Worx: a web-based business system for global companies that need to produce and manage high volumes of multilingual content and products. Does not integrate with WorldServer.
  • Plunet: In version 5.3 of Plunet, it now offers interfaces to the existing translation technologies SDL WorldServer, Wordfast, XTM and Jive Fusion.
  • XTRF: XTRF can integrate with a wide range of CAT tool including memoQ, Memsource, SDL Trados Studio and XTM, but it does not support WorldServer integration.

Because of Plunet’s new function, Plunet was implemented to replace Clarity in order to achieve better integration among systems.