VideoCarleton of Frost & Sullivan says that in the near term, it's a buyer's market. Larger companies are offering customers deep discounts on long-term maintenance and service contracts, which could lead to a shakeout. Longer term, he believes that vendors will have to make the software easier to install and use in order to drive down implementation and consulting costs.
Despite the price pressure and success stories, however, most companies don't feel a compelling need to spend big money on ECM. Not only are times tight, but the inefficiencies ECM addresses are often so baked into an organization as to be almost invisible. Whether Microsoft's InfoPath opens people's eyes to the further possibilities of creating documents and forms quickly, finding them, and reusing them remains to be seen. Companies that are currently content with their content may rethink their approaches. Then again, a recent online job search for "file clerk" returned hundreds of openings.
Sidebar: The Worldly Web
As more companies expand globally to serve new markets or to conduct business online with partners overseas, the need is growing for Web sites — and their associated content — that are multilingual. A whole subset of content systems, called globalization software, has sprung up in the past year or two to support the needs of international E-commerce.
These software packages not only translate English content into a huge number of other languages, but also provide what one vendor calls "cultural adaptation," which may include adjusting a Web site's terminology, look, and feel to suit local norms. The technology can also help companies extend a consistent brand image across global sites, and often includes workflow capabilities so that content developed in one location can be easily deployed on sites hosted around the world. Some of the better-known vendors of globalization software are Lionbridge Technologies Inc., GlobalSight, and Uniscape Inc.
GE TradeWeb, an E-commerce Web site run by GE's Global Exchange Services division, will use GlobalSight's globalization package to transform the English-only site into a multilingual one serving customers in German, French, and Italian. GlobalSight's system, which also is used by the World Bank, provides an automated process allowing central management to have control while enabling local country staff to adapt content for their market, a mix-and-match of centralized and local control that many experts say is essential to most multinational Web strategies.
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