DevOps to DocOps to LocOps: The Next Step in Global Agility

Markets move too fast for a long lead process, whether you are developing software or marketing products and services. Business priorities can shift on monthly, weekly, even daily basis. In response, businesses are rapidly adopting Agile methodology to accelerate product delivery, manage changing priorities, increase productivity, and enhance visibility.

Businesses experiencing the benefits of Agile now see the value of applying those principles to DevOps, and recently DocOps.To keep up with the dynamic 24/7 demand for global content delivery, and to create the personalized customer experience that users demand, enterprises must now look to a new agile strategy: localization operations (LocOps).

To keep up with the dynamic 24/7 demand for global content delivery, enterprises must look to a new agile strategy: localization operations (LocOps).

Agile led to DevOps

The need for greater agility led to the implementation of DevOps (development/operations) to improve automation and monitoring for all steps of software development. DevOps aims for shorter development cycles, faster deployment, and dependable releases. Because Agile and DevOps strategies have been so beneficial, they are now being applied to other areas, like documentation.

DevOps was applied to DocOps

CA Technologies, one of the largest software corporations in the world, took a page from the DevOps playbook and became an early thought leader and practitioner of DocOps (documentation/operations).

DocOps applies DevOps-type collaboration to teams across the enterprise, taking content creation out of traditional silos, and into a dynamic platform, where content matures along with a project’s lifecycle. DocOps combines collaborative authoring, aggregation from multiple sources, and a way to integrate customer feedback to quickly update and deploy changes.

The Next Step in Agile Marketing: Localization Operations (LocOps)

Just like DocOps, localization operations (LocOps) must be agile and allow continuous translation, collaboration, and change management. Effective cloud-based LocOps offer more automation, no-touch translation and delivery, and the ability to reuse translated terms across the enterprise, saving both time and money. Implementing LocOps offers several operational benefits: integrated translation gives you more scalability, you will be able to enter new markets faster, you get better translation quality, it’s more cost-efficient, and you can collect localization project data to inform strategic decision making on effective resource allocation.

Quickly and easily roundtrip content from your enterprise application into the TMS in a single, uninterrupted workflow.

Scalability

LocOps means creating a centralized translation and localization hub that brings all of your translation into one platform for uploading, translating, and publishing dynamic global content. Translation connectors, multilingual API, and a cloud-based translation management system (TMS) are key tools for an integrated LocOp strategy.

Connectors offer out-of-the-box integrations with all of the most popular web applications. They let you quickly and easily push content from your enterprise application into the TMS and then pull translated content back into your enterprise application in a single, uninterrupted workflow.

A cloud-based translation management system (TMS) offers scalable integration because it stores, tracks, and manages multilingual content across different enterprise applications allowing continuous, integrated translation in real time. For large, complex translation projects, the only way to handle the volume, continuity, and synchronization between several different departments and locations is by managing translation in the cloud.

A multilingual API is an easy-to-use, powerful way to integrate enterprise applications with a TMS. It enables access to additional translation tools within the TMS like translation workflows, centralized cloud-based Translation Memory (TM), and Machine Translation (MT).

Speed & Quality

A cloud TMS gives enterprises the agility to create, update, reuse translation memories, terminology, glossaries, and style guides. Terminology management allows you to achieve more accurate translations by organizing specific terms with a clear set of rules for their usage. This ensures that translators use your industry-specific terms, acronyms, technical terms, short phrases and slogans appropriately. The result is consistent voice, messaging, and branding, no matter where, or in which language the consumer engages with your content.

Cost-efficient reuse of translated terms across the enterprise

Translation memory (TM) reduces costs and increases speed and quality by reusing translated terms. You only have to pay for new translations. In addition, when TM is centrally stored and managed, it is immediately accessible for other projects and translators.

Your localization platform should be as agile as your authoring process, so translating content updates won’t stop or slow down delivery.

Continuous updates and agile change management

Your localization platform should be as agile as your authoring process, so translating content updates won’t stop or slow down delivery. API calls between the TMS and your enterprise application can detect newly updated content and automatically translate.

Data and analytics on delivery, quality & productivity

An important tool in any LocOps platform is data collection and analytics to support multilingual business intelligence. Gathering localization data intelligence gives stakeholders the ability to make strategic business decisions according to important data sets delivered through the platform. Critical data points for monitoring the efficiency of localization include time to market, completion time by language and by application, and terminology compliance across all languages. You can also monitor cost savings through organizational reuse and sharing of linguistic assets.

The Agile principles that led to DevOps and transformed and improved DocOps are now being applied to localization. Automating and integrating translation inside your existing content application provides a LocOps framework for continuous, agile translation. An end-to-end localization solution makes it easier than ever to scale and to maintain translation quality. To continuously deliver the personalized customer experience that improves engagement with your brand, enterprises must now look to the strategic benefits of localization operations (LocOps).

Calvin Scharffs is Vice President of Marketing at Lingotek, a company dedicated to changing the future of translation technology and services. He has over 18 years of experience managing products, sales, marketing, and operations. His experience ranges from work with Fortune 500 companies to small startups.