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How to Significantly Reduce Localization Costs for MadCap Flare
July 21, 2023
MadCap Flare is an extremely powerful content management system. Using its structured content approach can help streamline your localization process and significantly reduce costs.
Content creation can be costly, especially when you have to localize for multiple international markets. Even removing small inefficiencies in your authoring or workflow can translate into thousands of saved dollars when you scale that content.
With MadCap Flare and the right content strategy, you can quickly and cost-effectively scale your content through a powerful combination of structured content and localization.
In our recent roundtable discussion, experts from the team at Rubric explored how structured content can help to reduce localization costs with MadCap Flare…
How MadCap Flare and structured content benefit localization
MadCap Flare is one of the top content authoring and management systems in the world. It aims to help its users streamline the creation of documentation, marketing, eLearning, and many other types of content.
Flare is based on structured content, which treats content pieces like data for easier management. By storing content as separate "chunks," you can reuse the same content in multiple places.
We've previously discussed how Flare can facilitate content reuse and reduce manual steps during translation and localization.
When you use Flare in the right way – as in, you use structured content in a way that maximizes its capabilities whilst authoring with localization in mind – you can reduce the time, effort, and cost of localization.
Why content reuse significantly impacts localization costs
How do you reduce localization costs? Translate less content!
But how do you reduce translations while keeping a high-quality experience for your international customers? By using structured content, you can reduce translation effort while still producing the same amount of translated content.
As Rebecca Metcalf, Rubric's Global Content Business Analyst says:
"Rather than having lots of different variations of similar content – or content that's authored in very different ways – the content is authored once and then reused multiple times in different formats. You're only paying to translate that content once rather than multiple times."
This does more than just reduce the cost and work associated with localization. It also helps to improve the consistency of your localized content.
Dominic Spurling, Rubric's IT Director, says:
"MadCap Flare has content reuse as part of its default capabilities. You can define snippets and then insert them into various places in the content. You're not authoring twice and translating twice. If we think about it at the beginning and set up structures that enable reuse of content, then we can take advantage of that."
How to maximize your cost savings when using structured content
To reduce costs, it's helpful to first look at your overall volume of content. The more content you produce – and the more similar that content is – the bigger your savings can be. Many of the cost savings associated with translation are most visible with high volumes of content.
Rebecca says:
"A common use case is when you have a number of different products that have very similar user manuals. If you just have one set of snippets and variables, for example, to insert a different product number, you can reduce the volume of content that way."
A related source of savings is reduced maintenance costs.
For example, your content might have two slightly different paragraphs that essentially say the same thing. You then have to maintain these paragraphs separately, which is a waste of time, effort, and budget. When you make your content more consistent, you only need to maintain a single piece of content in Flare across all your content.
What if you're not yet using structured content?
You might be reluctant to adopt a structured content system like MadCap Flare.
A common source of uncertainty is the upfront cost associated with setting up the system.
Dominic says:
"It's pretty much like any other content management system deployment. You're always going to have that strategic planning and design phase. With structured content, perhaps a little more needs to go into that than with a traditional content management system. There's more iteration and testing to make sure that it's right."
However, while the cost may be higher initially, you can see a return of this cost many times over in the long term. The improvements you make can help by reducing time-to-market for localized content, increasing efficiency in the localization process, and reducing costly manual steps.
Important factors to consider when localizing MadCap Flare
When you are migrating to a structured content management system like Flare, there are various factors you should consider.
Some of these factors include:
- Implement a clear, well-defined structure. — This will allow for easy processing and management of the content.
- Invest time and effort upfront — It's worth putting in the effort to set up Flare and structured content with localization in mind upfront. You will see the benefits in the medium to long term.
- Find steps you can automate — Automation is an enormous advantage and potential source of savings with structured content. Examples include scoping out what is new in the content, integrating changes, and doing quality assurance.
- Ensure you have enough volume to make the migration worthwhile — The benefits of structured content are most obvious when you produce content at scale. It's important to ensure you have enough content to make the investment worthwhile.
- Involve your stakeholders — Try to involve as many of the people who will interact with your structure content as possible from the start. This helps to ensure everyone is making the best use of your structured content tools.
- Focus on the quality of your source content — Localized structured content is only as good as the source content you create. It's worth prioritizing source quality.
By embracing these factors, you can ensure your migration to a structured content system like Flare is a success.
Reduce your company's localization costs with structured content
As you can see, MadCap Flare can be a powerful tool to help reduce the cost of localization while still providing quality content to your international markets.
Whether you choose to use Flare or another system, consider the time and budget you could save by moving to structured content.