Creating efficiency and customer impact through single sourcing at a global retailer

Introduction

Getting a large volume of content ready for single sourcing

Our client, a global retailer operating dozens of online marketplaces, needed to single source its content using Tridion. After migrating the entire business-side help knowledge base into the CCMS, they realised the content was often duplicated, contained errors, and was not ready for translation into the 12 required languages.

Anticipating a major rewrite and working with a small in-house team, they turned to us to improve accuracy, eliminate redundancies, and prepare the content for translation.

The goal? To get the right information to the right people, at the right time, in the right language.

Challenge

Addressing duplication and errors to prepare content for global roll out

While all knowledge centre material — including policies, procedures, and scripts — had already been migrated into Tridion, our client needed to improve the quality and reliability of its business help content before progressing with its enterprise knowledge strategy.

As it stood, the content held in the CCMS was often duplicated across marketplaces, obsolete, or contained errors. Before rolling it out into 12 languages, they needed to fill gaps, remove duplications, and improve quality in order to reduce translation costs and increase call assistance speed.

The issues we encountered:

• Content copied from the consumer side, not always fit for purpose for business users
• Large volumes of duplicated material across marketplaces and regions
• Gaps and missing coverage in marketplace help content
• Publishing errors causing incorrect or inconsistent information to appear online
• Lack of translation memory to support efficient multilingual rollout
• Small, newly formed internal team without resources to manage content at scale

Our approach

Working as part of the in-house team for a smooth, streamlined workflow

Once the content migration into Tridion was complete, it became clear that all material needed to be sorted, tagged, deduplicated, and prepared for translation before being reintroduced into the CCMS. We designed an efficient workflow of reauthoring, translation, QA, and publishing to achieve this.

What we did

We assigned a small team of writers supported by a localization and translation expert. Their focus was on customer-facing help content, comparing material across marketplaces, aligning inconsistencies, and addressing structural gaps in the DITA framework. We simplified language to reduce complexity, cut duplication, and improve readability, ensuring content was single-source ready.

Reauthoring took place in XMetaL, while translation was managed through the client’s internal tools, with content added back into the repository once complete. Quality checks were carried out using Acrolinx and the client’s style guide to identify discrepancies and refine clarity. Corrected and standardised content was then republished to the knowledge base.

Our project management ethos

We embedded ourselves into the client’s team, working in weekly batches and maintaining full transparency through trackers and regular meetings. By operating on-site for workshops and reviews, we quickly identified solutions, challenged assumptions, and delivered each assignment within agreed timelines. Our proactive approach ensured content copied from retail was adapted for business users and made fit for purpose.

The results

Turning a knowledge base into a single source of truth

The project delivered measurable improvements in content quality, efficiency, and customer experience. By simplifying language, eliminating duplication, and preparing content for single sourcing, we created a foundation that not only reduced translation costs but also improved several key performance indicators:

• Significantly improved readability across high volumes of content
• Higher customer satisfaction
• Reduced translation costs through clearer, streamlined content
• Faster on-call assistance