Internationalization Case Study 2 – DataCert

Summary

Bridge360 delivered internationalization development services to DataCert, the leading provider of legal and IP spend and matter management solutions, enabling the company to take its first, important steps into international markets.

The Customer

DataCert, which was founded to establish standards in electronic submission of invoice, is now a total solutions provider of legal spend and matter management solutions.

The Challenge

DataCert's growth plans included new sales offices in France and Germany. Moreover, the sales team was targeting sales for the flagship matter management Web application to several European customers. Because the product had not yet been internationalized, the challenge was to find out what it would take to make the application usable in European locales and beyond.

The application was written on a .NET platform, and it also used several third-party components that introduced internationalization challenges. The fact that the application handled multiple currencies made the situation even more complicated.

Though DataCert had a strong development group and dedication to extremely high standards, very few members of the team had experience with international projects. The need for practical experience motivated the leadership to call in the experts from Bridge360 to lead the globalization process.

Assessment

Bridge360 begins all engagements with an assessment, which is a great tool to gain an overall picture of a software system and any possible internationalization issues the product may have.

The assessment team traveled to DataCert's headquarters seeking answers to key technical and business questions. After the initial on-site meetings with DataCert's development team, Bridge360's consultants researched technical issues and performed basic testing, discovering that the product was not as prepared for international markets as originally thought.

"Because the application was based on .NET, which has basic internationalization support, there were several things that worked immediately," recalls Chris Durand, Chief Technology Officer and leader of the assessment team. "But the more we poked and prodded, the more potential issues we discovered."

At the end of the assessment, Bridge360 provided a report detailing each issue, several potential solutions, and a phased approach for implementing each solution.

"Our approach when doing internationalization assessments has always been to leave the client with enough information to fix the problems themselves if they so choose," said Brenda Hall, CEO of Bridge360.

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