Article was written by Yulia Akhulkova. Translation Management Market A Translation Business Management System (TBMS or BMS) does exactly what its name suggests: it helps manage business operations. Unlike Translation Management Systems though, TBMS solutions do not offer translation and editing environments. TBMS products are mainly used by translation agencies because of their understandable need to manage, monitor, and control business operations, the same as in any other business. Unlike in other businesses, however, technology solutions coming from outside of the translation industry are often too inconvenient/expensive/hard to customize for the specific translation operations and needs. That is where TBMS products help. Source: Nimdzi Language Technology Atlas The TBMS market today features over 40 different solutions. New products continue to appear, as many LSPs are still searching for cheaper alternatives to established market leaders. Some refer to companies like Lingo Systems for custom TBMS development, others build TBMS in-house. In 2023 alone, we saw such new additions to this space: Traduno, launched publicly by Mondia Technologies, a group of LSPs sTMS, developed by MITRA™ Translations Agency Unicorn A-M-P, a management platform integrated with memoQ (as this was the TMS of choice for the solution creators) As we anticipate a surge of new TBMS products in 2024, we've compiled the first public snapshot of the market focusing on established players. Our team prioritized solutions where our members had direct experience implementing and using them. This hands-on knowledge, alongside factors like market longevity, feature breadth, and user-friendliness, helped us select five initial products for this snapshot. This carefully chosen selection lays the groundwork for ongoing market tracking in this evolving space, allowing us to adapt and update our evaluation criteria as new options emerge. Dimensions and Labels Dimensions UX Cosmos, represented horizontally, measures the ease of use of each TBMS. Functionality Space, represented vertically, reflects the extent of available features within each product. Labels Starlight Specialization: systems with a focus on the most needed features Multifaceted Galaxy: systems with extensive functionality and featureset All-In-One Astronaut: everything you could think of in a TBMS, and more Celestial Clarity: products with clear ease of use achieved via customization Cosmic Intuition: generally easy-to-use products Galactic Glide: smoothest UX in the space Disclaimer: Scoring is somewhat subjective, and so are the cut-offs In evaluating the solutions’ overall functionality and ease of use, we asked a range of language technology experts to rate them on a scale of one to five and averaged the scores. While this scoring mechanism is not completely objective and may be biased by industry perceptions, it provided us with a useful means of clustering. The separators between clusters were placed to highlight key insights. Ask the experts This study can be used to help developers and businesses assess the potential of TBMS software. For example, a developer of a new language software product could use the graph to see where their product could fit within the market. A business that is considering adopting a TBMS could use this matrix to learn about market leaders. However, the aspects that are most important for a particular business vary depending on the actual application. Talk to a Nimdzi expert to identify the specific needs of a TBMS application in your organization. By carefully selecting the variables for our partners, Nimdzi creates custom assessments that result in a valuable tool for understanding the potential of the required language software. References Why You Should Be Thinking About BMS Selecting a Business Management System: Looking Into the Mirror Automating Business Management in Translation: The Why and the How Nimdzi Language Technology Atlas