RE: Business Case for i18n?

For me, the general, abstract  case goes something like this:

The investment of adding international product features, support, 
distribution channels, etc. can be evaluated to see if the :
         1- margin of return on the product/product line will increase or 
decrease
         2 - overall revenue will increase or decrease
         3 - market share will increase or decrease
         4 - competitors will be blocked from the market by your presence
         5 - the cost of creating *and* sustaining all the aspects listed 
above, measured against the risks of achieving "good" answers for #1 -4 is 
satisfactory *

All that still isn't enough to make the case.

Other folks are also competing for limited resources, so you might need to 
assess the answers they would provide to the above logic and make sure 
yours make more sense to the decision makers.

A lot of tech firms are making feature decisions, given limited 
resources,on a build vs. buy model I think. I would try to impress upon the 
decision-makers that i18n/l10n, if it is to lead to a "defensible 
competitive advantage", is not something that (as a whole or even a large 
part) can be "bought" today, and the longer it takes before the "building" 
begins, the more it will cost, and the more the risk for failure will go up.

Barry Caplan

At 12:36 PM 6/14/2001 -0400, Suzanne M. Topping wrote:


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Al Gilman [mailto:asgilman@iamdigex.net]
> >
> > In a rapid glance over the Internationalization home page at
> > W3C I found
> > lots on 'how' to internationalize the Web but I didn't
> > instantly stumble on
> > the story 'why' that I could cite.
>
>The most important why's for most people is that internationalization
>saves time and money.
>
>Many companies will eventually decide that they need to present thier
>site in another language based on some sort of compelling business
>objective. Once that point comes, if the site isn't internationalized,
>it's probably going to be expensive and slow to roll it out in another
>language. There'll be lots of re-engineering activities that will have
>to be made in panic mode.
>
>Who needs that when you can build the right architecture up front?
>
>Suzanne Topping
>BizWonk Inc.
>(Solutions for a Global E-conomy)
>stopping@bizwonk.com

Received on Thursday, 14 June 2001 17:03:41 UTC