MultiCorpora Acquires Beetext

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Global Watchtower

Common Sense Advisory Blogs

Posted by Donald A. DePalma on August 31, 2010 in the following blogs: Business Globalization, Best Practices, Market Data, Translation and Localization
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Language technology supplier MultiCorpora today announced that it has acquired Beetext, another developer of translation management systems (TMS). The deal underscores the importance of offering a complete solution for companies managing large-scale projects.

MultiCorpora CEO Pierre Blais pre-briefed us on the acquisition earlier this week. Because both companies are family-owned and privately funded, Blais wouldn't disclose the dollar amount of the deal but did say that MultiCorpora was paying for Beetext with cash on hand and would not need to borrow any money. The two firms will merge operations and staff, but the Beetext office in Montreal will remain open. Beetext president Benoit Desjardins will take a customer-facing strategy and support role at MultiCorpora. Blais said that MultiCorpora intends to integrate the two company's products, its own MultiTrans and Beetext's Flow MMX, in the next couple of months. He also said that MultiCorpora will also sell both solutions separately for buyers that would like to integrate either solution with commercial off-the-shelf or homegrown solutions.

Why did these two language technology suppliers come together? Blais said that MultiCorpora felt that it needed core workflow and project management components to MultiTrans so that it could participate in some deals. Previously, it had partnered with Plunet, but without MultiCorpora controlling all the technology, it could not offer prospects the level of language and project management integration that they were seeking. Many corporate buyers and language service providers evaluating TMS solutions don't want to have to become integrators of disparately sourced technologies to get the full assemblage of language, project control, connectivity, business data, and system oversight they need to run their operations.

All told, the combined products add up to a strong TMS contender. In our assessment of translation management products, we found that MultiCorpora scored well with its language support, but fell down on project, financial, and vendor management. Conversely, Beetext has done very well on the business management axes, but was missing the language component. The performance of both firms on these language and business issues hearkens back to their original design centers, with each focusing on a different part of the TMS puzzle. Putting these two products under the same roof has the potential to create a much stronger product, without any of the "finger-pointing" problems associated with the arm's length couplings so prevalent in the industry.

Who will buy this conjoined product? Translation companies certainly will take a look. Our report on “Tech-Savvy Language Service Providers” (Aug10) demonstrates that most translation suppliers seek a more unified platform on which to operate. On the end-buyer side, MultiCorpora will certainly push the technology into its traditional government, non-government organization, and business buyers, especially those with in-house translation departments but also the pure outsourcers. Blais specifically flagged the SDL (né Idiom) WorldServer community -- he said that current WorldServer users want MultiTrans' advanced leveraging technology (that is, sub-sentential segments, as discussed in "Beyond Global Websites," Mar05), while other users simply want a replacement. It's telling that 2-1/2 years after Idiom's acquisition by SDL that the market still seeks an independent TMS solution.

MultiCorpora faces the classic challenges in bringing two software vendors' code bases together. Besides the obvious issues of unifying interfaces, application programming interfaces, support and training, and vision, the newly expanded MultiCorpora will have to pump up its marketing and sales efforts to get a hearing in a marketplace against TMS contenders such as Across, SDL, STAR, and TransPerfect. However, the merger of products with clear strengths in their respective sectors bodes well for MultiCorpora's offering.

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