Metrics for Multilingual Communications

Language Solutions is ISO certified

2011-09-22T15:09:00.001-05:00

Language Solutions has received ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management Certification from BSI International Registrars.

We started working on ISO Certification in late January and managed to get our Quality Manual documented and successfully completed both of our planned audits with BSI (Stage I and Stage II) by August.

Download our Certificate

We were particularly successful with ISO certification because we've listened to the requirements from the ISO standard and let our processes (that were driven by customer requirements, innovation and through industry best practices) lead us to achieving the requirements rather than the other way around. During the audit it became apparent to the auditor that we had created a system of processes that is effective and fits with the needs of our clients.

The culture of Quality Management and Quality Excellence was already ingrained in our organization. During our test phase we learned that 80% of the ISO requirements were already met when we started and we made further improvements to our process to ensure that we met all of the requirements. The mindset of quality management and continuous process improvement was shaped by our involvement in Baldrige Performance Excellence and provided us with better understanding how ISO could be beneficial to our organization. ISO gave us new tools to use in our quest for performance excellence and is playing an active role in the every day management of the organization.

Implementation of ISO can be a daunting task, but it can be very rewarding if approached with the intent to make the organization better. We believe that ISO is an important addition to the success of our organization. The ISO certification is just the start. We plan to continuously review our Quality Management System against the requirements of our customers using the ISO standard and Baldrige Best Practices in our management toolkit.

Why you need a CGO

2011-08-11T14:38:00.027-05:00

A recent article in Fortune Magazine mentioned seven new C-level areas expected to emerge in the next 5 years. The magazine predicted some interesting positions such as the Chief Perception Officer. Surprisingly, a Chief Globalization Officer was not considered as one of these emerging areas.

Is global expansion and important growth factor in your business? If so, can you identify who in your organization is currently the champion for setting the global business directive? Our experience is that organizations that are just starting expanding globally usually do not assign a dedicated manager and resources for their global expansion. Global is not managed by one person or division but rather managed by many people at different levels of the organization, with different budgets and different managers. Management responsibilities grow organically over time as they become natural extensions of someone's current responsibilities.

This could be a risk when global expansion becomes more important to the business and needs to be managed. We've talk about this growth and maturation risk in an earlier blog post.

Without centralization, can your organization truly create global communication initiatives effectively and with consistency? If you are not able to pinpoint where global 'lives' in your organization, your organization will benefit from having a partner that your organization can count on for managing and coordinating global communications across the organization.

Examples of benefits:

Value Added Resellers can grow their international accounts by actively being involved in the sales process.

You can protect your brand message through centralization, ensuring that no unwanted brand messaging in your global communication piece goes out the door.

Consider Language Solutions as your 'Chief Globalization Officer' for centralization and management of your global communications. With defined metrics and goals that span the organization, we bring a global communication strategy to your organization tailored to your needs that would require an investment at a fraction of having to set up your own department with management responsibility.

Our focus on globalization strategies is as much directed towards the organizational goals as it is to work to support the people who 'make global happen'. If your organization has an international department or is starting to coordinate globalization efforts, we can deliver knowledge and experience that can help you move through the maturation curve effectively. Allow us to sit down with your department and talk about managing your global communication efforts and see the benefits of having a partner that goes beyond just translation.

What do you consider when choosing a Translation Vendor?

2011-05-09T16:07:00.012-05:00

In previous posts, we've discussed the buying process of multilingual communications. In this video, we ask you to consider various important factors when choosing a translation vendor:

Metrics for Linguistic Screening of Product Names

2011-02-16T10:16:00.013-06:00

There is a whole array of considerations that marketers and product developers go through before they even decide on a product name in their domestic market. However, these considerations are often overlooked during product name testing for their foreign markets.

When our clients come to us for linguistic screening of their English product names, our start is to take inventory of the main considerations that went into development of the brand for the domestic market. Here are a few examples of the most prevalent metrics for linguistic screening:

The Brand Concept

We consider the elements such as brand positioning, brand messaging, and product segmentation to be the foundation for analysis in the target market. We leverage the knowledge that was created during the name development to test and analyze in the target market.

The Language

Linguistic screening should not only take into account appropriate meaning in other languages but also the ease by which a product name can be pronounced by a person from another country. Pronunciation could be an important success factor in product name adoption. Product names are often ambiguous and created without direct meaning. Therefore, a valuable attribute could be a powerful sounding name. Names could be unintentionally softened through differences in pronunciation in the target market. Understanding how a product sounds in the target market can be valuable information in choosing a product name.

The Culture

Cultural analysis can include a wide variety of aspects. One example is the use of colors and images that are appropriate and engaging. Another aspect is name associations. In product name development, associations with competitors or other organizations is usually taken into account for different reasons (legal reasons, unique factor, etc.). Powerful associations can be made with similar words used in related or unrelated industries, or for instance in popular culture. Especially with highly ambiguous names, powerful associations that support the brand positioning can be a key success factor and should be tested in the target markets. Cultural views may vary by generation and therefore an important attribute is to understand the target segmentation of the product. Gender roles in purchasing are also important to consider as these differ by country. You may not be marketing to the decision maker!

Product Analysis

While actual product testing is not part of the scope for linguistic screening, we also should not discount the value of product analysis for the target market. Product aspects such as packaging and design can be taken into consideration and analyzed for further testing in the target market. Having product aspects analyzed before you test in your target market can help narrow down the goals for expensive tests using local focus groups.

The Linguistic Screening process should benefit from open communication and flow of information between product developers and linguistic and cultural analysts. Too many times, the brand development process is overlooked in product name development for a foreign market. When considering the investment that has gone into the product and the potential it could have, the investment in a carefully executed linguistic screening process should be a drop in the bucket.

The next time your client or your company wants to screen their English product name in other languages, give us a call for a proprietary process that we use.

Size does matter!

2010-12-09T13:52:00.003-06:00

So.... you are choosing a Language Service Provider or LSP as they are known in our industry or maybe you want to find a new provider..... what size company will fit your needs? Well that is something that should definitely be discussed with any providers you might consider - your needs......not their size. That should be the first point of discussion.

In our Industry, there are a lot of large translation providers - some public and some private. Allow me to make the case for you to consider a smaller organization. What are the advantages for you?

Our culture here at Language Solutions is based on a Customer First culture where we strive to truly understand not only your needs but those of your organization as well. What is your experience going to be with Language Solutions? As a smaller company, we can deliver on a Customer First model much better than a larger company can.

Agility - we have agility as a smaller organization and can move more quickly in response to your needs to serve you better. We have the capacity for rapid change and flexibility according to your customized needs.

Service Driven - you will have 2 dedicated points of contact for your projects. We don't have a rotating staff of project managers and as a smaller company, our employee retention levels are much greater than a larger organization so you won't be with a new person each time!

Long Term Relationships - Instead of a Service Level Agreement that is based on deliverables, why not consider an outcomes based relationship agreement. Let's discuss together what you want from our partnership and then set up accountability measures for that.

Involvement and Investment - As the President of this organization, I am involved in your growth and help to drive your performance. For some of our clients, this means meeting with their end clients to help answer questions, bring strategy to the table, being their first call for any language related question or challenge - true collaboration. What does collaboration mean for you? What kind of support would you benefit from?

A partnership that focuses on collaboration also leads to trust. I challenge you to look beyond price and see whether you are receiving value from the relationship you have or wish to have.

How do we engage customers, serve their needs and build relationships

2010-09-10T10:03:00.033-05:00

To answer this Baldrige overall requirement and as part of our ongoing quest for Baldrige Performance Excellence, Language Solutions recently finished a Voice of the Customer (VoC) initiative with our clients. From there, we developed action plans customized to the needs of each client using the SWOT analysis with data from the VoC process. The SWOT analysis considers those internal and external organizational factors that influence quality, time and cost on translation projects. We also use the Kano model to track customer requirements and how they change over time. We focus on delivering value by seeking out both spoken and unspoken needs of the customer and translating that into actions.

There are three customer requirements in the Kano model:

Revealed (Performance) - requirements in proportion to their absence or presence in the product or service

Expected (Must Be) - basic requirements that customers often fail to mention unless they are not fulfilled. Satisfaction is often not recognized by customers but dissatisfaction is very much recognized.

Exciting (Delighters) - the holy grail that we aim with each contact! These are the requirements that go beyond a customer's expectations.

This model is very dynamic by nature. What is exciting now can be expected tomorrow. Expected requirements may also become exciting after a real or potential failure. Our focus on internal quality helps assure that expected requirements do not fall through the cracks and points out opportunities to build in excitement.

Each customized action plan seeks involvement at the client's decision making process for a translation project. For instance, if you have a sales force that is scoping a translation process and need to set realistic expectations, we need to make sure that our action plan is to support the sales process wherever possible.
Being involved in the decision making process helps us to understand the client specific requirements. It also provides an opportunity to bring in our perspective to set realistic expectations where it will have the most meaningful impact. Our VoC process also confirms that it is much more difficult for clients to address processes at the request stage since the project needs have already mostly been defined by then.

At the request level, it is important to be able to meet the current needs of the client. Therefore, we also look at how current needs impact our workflow and where we can improve. We build relationships with our clients to understand and manage ongoing needs as much as possible so that we can plan ahead.

In our linguistic team selection, we make sure that there is enough flexibility to meet timeframes. While we choose our linguists based on various quality metrics, we also continue to train our linguists in the various technologies that we work in to ensure consistency and quality. This training helps us to provide the most qualified linguist who are capable of working efficiently using our technology.

A client based action plan helps us to support and influence the process where it makes the most impact. Whether this is at our internal process to provide enough flexibility or to help the client make decisions at the decision making process, we manage these needs throughout the value chain. The goal is to be prepared as much as possible to avoid any bottlenecks that could affect fulfilling the client's needs and this started with understanding Voice of the Customer.

We continue to use the Voice of the Customer and the Baldrige's systems approach to address individual needs from a holistic perspective. We listen both to client needs, vendor needs and concerns which have enabled us to provide the highest quality work at the right time.

Missouri Quality Award

2010-07-28T15:12:00.005-05:00

I just recently completed my first year as a Missouri Quality Examiner for the Missouri Quality Award program. The Missouri Quality Award is the State level award recognition for excellence in performance management in the educational, health care and manufacturing/service sector. The award is guided by the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.

The Baldrige Criteria is built on a foundation of core values and concepts that characterize high performing organizations. One aspect that especially came to attention is the core value of "Management by Fact." High performing organizations use leading performance measurements derived from the organizational needs and strategy that support the decision making process.

The use of performance indicators in the decision making process brings the organization to the next level of excellence because the organization does not only have a process for doing the work, they have a system for analyzing, evaluating and innovating these processes. High performing organizations not only look at current and historic data, but also uses comparative data and performance projections to predict future outcomes that guide the decision making process.

So what information could you be using in the decision making of your investment in multilingual communications? What are the needs of your customer or employee that drive this investment (to support, to inform, to engage, to comply)? Are you currently tracking the performance of your operations in foreign markets? How can you attribute (market) success to the use of effective multilingual communications?

Remember that investment in supporting a language is a long-term commitment. The questions are important to ask as you grow your business internationally. It forces you to think about your investment and where and how it should be spent best.

Why an audit?

2010-03-03T09:57:00.014-06:00

Taking a step back in your organization to assess your strategic needs for the future is not a bad idea in this economy. Everyone is looking for efficiencies that will help reduce expenses and increase profits down the line.

How would a Global Communication Readiness Assessment fit into your strategic planning? Most of you may have a strategic plan, but how many of you have effective global communications as a line item on that strategic plan? Our experience is that global communication often resides on the day-to-day operational level. Efficiencies are usually only addressed on project level and learning and growth is often siloed from other departments.

This is understandable; there are many strategic and tactical or operational challenges that an organization has to deal with. Time is a valuable asset of an organization and you want to spend it wisely. The volume of your global communications may not be large enough to justify spending a lot of managerial time to optimize every global communication process, perhaps just not yet!

Clients of ours using the assessment have noted that they can do this at their own pace, pass it around to others in the organization to compare, bring it with them to the next strategy meeting to bring awareness to potential "gaps", and elevate their own position with ideas on how they can go forward.

Realizing that there are restrictions to the time your organization has available is all the more reason to take this assessment and look at the areas that of improvement that will benefit you most. The assessment provides insightful questions on both operational and strategic levels that can be addressed. The most important aspect of this assessment is to get the communication process on the agenda for improvement. You want to be ready to scale up for the future!

The assessment can work on any level of the organization and the questions are organized to be scalable to any stage of maturation. Even on a project level or departmental level, the assessment can provide insight into your writing, designing and file management process that has an impact on the translation and localization process that follows.

Every little progress helps. Meet with Language Solutions to talk about your needs to get started and take control over your global communication process so that you can depend on it now and in the future.

Global Readiness Audit

2009-09-23T09:01:00.015-05:00

A self-assessment audit for your global communication needs can be a valuable tool to determine your current situation, to set goals and to find areas of improvement that have the most impact. However, most assessment tools that we have seen provide solutions but do not focus on the leading indicators that impact your localization practices.

There are Language Service Providers (LSP's) that can help you determine your needs for global communications and most likely they promote the use of technology through their audits. Tools like Translation Memory Management, Terminology Management, Source Authoring are all good tools to improve the efficiency of your localization practices, but do not provide all the answers. Most Language Service Providers can take care of translation management using these tools. However, the success of each project is limited by their own Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and how they manage their own processes.

Our approach does not only look at our internal Key Performance Indicators for translation management, but also assesses how a client's processes can positively influence or negatively impact the localization process. Those are the leading indicators that a client can influence in order to improve quality and time-to-market at lower costs.

Most audits do not take into account that every organization is at a different stage of maturity and need scalable solutions. Even if you are a large company, your global communication needs currently might not be comprehensive enough to invest in large scale technologies like a full scale Source Authoring system or Content Management System. Technology is not the only answer for organizations to influence the quality of their global communication needs. You need to look at people and processes that have a direct impact on the localization processes.

The global communications process can be time consuming which is why most organizations outsource to a Language Service Provider. Some of these Providers have the resources and processes in place to effectively manage your translation process and keep that burden from your internal resources who have their own work to do. However, the impact that your internal resources have to affect the localization process should not be ignored. We promote involvement of people in all levels of your organization to find efficiencies in their own processes that have a positive impact on localization.

Our audit focuses on internal resources at all levels of the organization to determine how they can help improve their own processes to aid translation management on the client side. We identified 4 areas of assessment (Strategic, Organizational, Content and Language & Design) and identified roles within those areas that directly impact the global communications process. The assessment promotes each individual in the organization to contribute to the globalization process without having to step outside of their own responsibilities.

Contact us for our Global Readiness Audit. We are taking the next step for organizations at any maturity level to identify areas of improvement that yield the highest results.

A Baldrige Focused LSP in a World of ISO 9001

2009-08-05T13:55:00.005-05:00

ISO 9001 certification is the norm right now for LSPs (Language Service Providers) in the Localization Industry. As a company that follows Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, we're swimming against the tide of conformity. I do not believe that their should be an either/or approach in determination of the certification you choose and I view ISO 9001 and Six Sigma as tools that all fit in the toolbox for continuous improvement.

With Baldrige, there is a focus on performance excellence for the entire organization in an overall management framework and the Criteria focuses on identification and tracking of all-important organizational results: customer, product/service, financial, human resource, and organizational effectiveness. This year, I became a certified Examiner for the MQA Award with the State of Missouri and each employee will also go through this certification for their own professional growth next year. It's been an exhilarating experience!

Whereas ISO can lay the foundation for necessary procedural standardization and help to reduce variability, Baldrige can be used as a means of instituting broader quality management and provide the tools for analysis, prioritization and evaluation of the overall approach. Each are different but certainly can be compatible. We chose Baldrige for the educational approach which is an organizational value that is inherent in our organization and in our approach with client mentorship.

I will be focusing future blog posts on how Baldrige helps our own internal processes and compliments our process measurement system for clients managing translation.

Our Mission, Vision and Values

2009-06-01T15:50:00.014-05:00

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Understanding Cultural Dimensions in a Global Incentive Rewards program

2009-05-07T17:06:00.011-05:00

Recently, LSI’s own Jeroen Tetteroo, Senior Localization Manager, co-presented with our client, Maritz, at the Synygy Sales Performance Conference in Philadelphia. The presentation was based on a rolling out an International Total Rewards/Incentive system.

Jeroen and the Maritz team discussed how culture affects Pay Out Structure, Rule Structure and the type of Rewards that will appeal to different cultures. Jeroen presented LSI's metric "Build a Business Case for the decision to translate for a particular market". He showed how Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions can be used to support that decision and influence your strategy in designing an incentive/rewards program. To see this very interesting presentation, click here.

Understand what you buy

2009-03-09T11:58:00.003-05:00

It is essential for buyers of translations to understand how management of the translation cycle impacts their costs. We manage our translation projects by process and provide a detailed overview of what is entailed in the scope. Breaking out a project per process allows buyers to:

compare apples to apples when evaluating bids to ensure that all bids include the same services
see how their organization's own processes can impact the quality of the translations
understand how the order of the processes in the translation workflow can affect their overall costs

Compare apples to apples

How can a corporate buyer of translation services compare quality and price without looking at the processes involved in the translation workflow?

Most organizations look at the price per language when comparing quotes from multiple Language Service Providers. This allows them to assess their budget for each market. However, we mentioned earlier that if budget is an issue and organizations want to gauge which languages to choose, price should not be the leading factor. The organization should strategize as to where their dollars are spent most efficiently by looking at the language and cultural factors between the domestic market and target market. The potential within the target markets should be a deciding factor on what regions or countries to focus on. Those target markets that benefit most from translation and or localization should be on the top of the list.

Pricing out translation projects per language also inhibits process efficiencies that you may have when you combine languages together. Some project management tasks only need to be done once in a project – regardless of the number of languages. Therefore, buyers can see cost savings if languages are bundled together.

LSP TIP: Ask questions! When the price differs between vendors, find out why.

Buyer-side processes impact on translation.

A key piece of insight that we share with our clients is the importance of considering the entire Content Lifecycle. Many of the metrics in our Client Mentor Program (CMP) focus on the processes that precede the translation process. Additional efficiencies can be achieved during translation if certain things are in place before the source copy is sent to translation.

One area we assess in our Global Readiness Scorecard is Content Readiness. Do we need to modify the files our clients send us before we send them to translation? Or, is the content ready to be translated?

The first steps in a translation project are File Preparation and Preflight. These two steps are impacted by the quality of the source documentation. The processes the buyer goes through before sending us their files affect the amount of preparation we must do before the translation can begin. One example is if a client sends us text in a Word file that has been stripped from a PDF, the line breaks that divide the phrases must be removed so that the translators have entire sentences to translate, rather than broken pieces. Another example is if the text contains cultural references that would not apply to the target audience. These references will not be affective if they are simply translated. The source text would need to be revised so that the cultural references are removed. Or, the translator would need to adapt the translation to include a reference appropriate for the target culture.

Translation buyers must understand their translation provider’s processes in order to see how their processes can impact the quality of the translations. This is where transparency and mentorship come in and can be of great benefit for translation buyers in the 80th percentile of the GCMM.

LSP TIP: Strive for transparency! Get insight into your translation provider's processes so that you can work together to make efficiencies in the Content Lifecycle.

Well-planned workflows = Predictable costs and timeframes

A process-oriented workflow enables you to predict inefficiencies that can creep in later in a project. Organizations tend to overspend on projects when strategic decisions are made after the project has already started. When additional phases are added by the organization as an afterthought, the processes before and after these new phases are affected. That is why the Client Mentor Program focuses on those leading indicators.

Often clients are focused on the end goal of getting their translation by a certain date. They believe that getting the translation started as soon as possible will get them to that end date more quickly. What we point out in our Client Mentor Program is that preparation is everything when it comes to effective project management. Taking time before translation starts to evaluate which phases must be part of the project may add a few extra days on to the schedule. However, with a well-planned project workflow, we reduce the chance of adding in phases late in the project that require rework or repeating phases that are already complete. Repeating phases adds to both the schedule and the bottom line.

LSP TIP: Take the time to understand what steps are needed in your project workflow. You'll see the extra planning time up front will save you time and money in the end.

Collaboration and Teamwork – Many hands make light work

2009-02-17T13:11:00.004-06:00

Many of our clients requesting translation projects do not feel like they have time to assess and resolve process inefficiencies. What they don’t know is that the responsibility for process efficiency is not in their hands alone.

A popular process management philosophy, Kaizen, states that when you look at improving an inefficient process, you have to look at all of the processes that are of influence or being affected by the inefficient process in order to create real improvement. Consider your vendors and internal staff to be part of the translation process. We actively encourage our client requesters to put us in direct contact with the project team – including both external vendors and internal staff – to collaborate with us and discuss efficiencies at each step of the process.

When one of our clients chose a new technology vendor for their online surveys, we contacted the vendor directly to get a better understanding of their proprietary technology. While the vendor had previous experience with Language Service Providers, we found out that the process for retrieving and storing multilingual content was manual. After a direct discussion with the vendor, we were able to find specific inefficiencies that impacted the time and costs for our client. We optimized the process to work within the vendor's proprietary software. And we were able to provide the vendor with useful information on how to improve their software for multilingual content.

We have defined 20 Readiness Objectives in our Client Mentor Program™. Our objectives tie directly in with the issues we resolved for this client. Here are two examples.

Organizational Readiness Objective: Ensure quality outputs by assigning team members to participate together in tasks that require their expertise and knowledge.

This objective takes into account every resource and person who influences the translation process. It formalizes the relationships between all the team members involved in the translation process. In this case, the technology vendor played a very important role in the translation process because their proprietary software was not designed for localization. Direct contact with the vendor was necessary for us to help our client mitigate the risk of overspending.

Content Readiness Objective: Eliminate redundant steps in the process of developing source copy.

The localization industry uses a lot of technology to manage content for translation. The technology vendor’s proprietary software introduced redundant processes because it was not setup for localization. We assess whether technologies our clients are using are designed with localization in mind and their impact on cost and timeframe. With this information, our clients can select appropriate technology vendors. Our assessment can also help technology vendors to improve their products by adding support for languages other than English.

Resolving all the inefficiencies throughout the process are not the responsibility of just one person. It takes teamwork and collaboration!

Bring on the pain! When translation matters...it's too late!

2009-01-07T15:45:00.033-06:00

You cannot change what has happened in the past. However, you can learn from it by identifying those behaviors that have both helped and hindered your company in the past. Those are lagging indicators. You can greatly benefit from understanding these behaviors and how they’ve impacted your company. You can change the future by looking at leading indicators and taking a proactive approach with the way you manage your translation. It’s never too late!

Taking a proactive approach by identifying and managing those leading indicators that have an impact on their projects can help organizations avoid the pain. However, if an organization has never felt the pain, they are less likely to find value in a proactive approach–especially when translation is not their highest priority. It is a vicious cycle that organizations have a hard time escaping.

When do multilingual communications become important enough for organizations to start investing in internal process assessment and management to gain efficiencies in the translation process?

When we introduced the Client Mentor Program™ in 2008, we realized that organizations who are managing their translation projects often do not understand how they impact the costs of their translation projects. 80 % of organizations with multilingual communications need guidance and assistance in order to mature on the Global Communications Maturity Model. These organizations view their multilingual communications as just an expense. They do not tie translation to return on investment. They will not understand the impact of an inefficient process until they feel the pains associated with a project that does not go as they expect.

We at Language Solutions have our own internal metrics defined for managing translation processes efficiently for our clients. But we can only control so much... At some point, processes on the client’s side are beyond our direct control. Our focus, therefore, is to help organizations gain control of their own internal processes. Our Global Readiness Scorecard was designed for our client’s benefit to help them evaluate their processes. We then work with them to implement metrics for improving their processes.

Process efficiency translates into cost savings and has a positive impact on timeframes and the quality of the work. All of this can be achieved if an organization understands how their internal processes that happen before and after translation impact the translation process. These are the processes that you can control….if it’s important to you.

Edited by Jeanne Granda

Translation Management Strategy

2008-12-16T16:27:00.003-06:00

Does your organization have a translation management strategy? Many organizations rely on their LSP (Language Service Provider) to effectively manage their translation projects. However, there is only so much efficiency that can be managed on the LSP side. Are people within your organization aware of how they impact the overall costs? Does your LSP make this visible to you and mentor you to achieve efficiencies in your own processes so that you can not only affect your costs but also the quality of your communications? Would your organization take advantage of this if it were available?

Many organizations that we work with are in the 80th percentile of companies on the GCMM. Many of these organizations won't realize the value of efficiencies until they are in the High Risk stage of which overspending is a common symptom. It is the overspending that causes them to finally understand the pain and consider the value of efficiencies. At this point though, organizations cannot go back and change what has happened to get them to this point.

Our approach is to be proactive early on and help mentor organizations throughout their stages of maturity. However, we have found that until an organization experiences the "pain" associated with the High Risk stage, it is very difficult to get them to be proactive early on. So what causes you to take that proactive stance in your organization? Perhaps it is an opportunity to bring a new strategy to upper management. Perhaps it is an opportunity to be able to defend the budget that you are asking for....

At LSI, we have metrics defined in 4 areas that we assess for a client's own translation management strategy. It is not necessary for a client to implement all the metrics in the 4 areas that we assess but rather focus on the 1 area in which they can gain success. Each area has 4-6 metrics with an action plan for continuous improvement and for measurement. If your organization has a quality management system, we can help you to interpret that data as well that you are already tracking and add our metrics to yours. It might be a strategy for the new year that you can implement!

Do you risk losing control of your brand?

2008-11-18T09:20:00.014-06:00

We have mentioned in earlier posts that the decision to centralize control over your messaging will impact your brand identity. Centralization of brand messaging is the first step in creating a consistent brand identity. When it comes to multilingual communications however, some organizations rely on local experts to market and sell their products. These type of organizations must find a balance between ownership of their messaging at the corporate level to protect their brand identity and allowing for customization of their communications by local experts such as their in-country distributors.

Our spotlight is on the profile of a company that is emerging in several foreign markets at the same time. This company is using local distributors to market and sell their products in-country. Until this year, they have relied almost entirely on the local distributors to translate their packaging and marketing materials. When this organization approached us to help them develop a strategy for their global expansion, one of the key objectives that we determined in our SWOT analysis to be a top priority was to establish “control and ownership of messaging to protect brand reputation and identity”. This is one of the 6 metrics we have identified in the area of Strategic Readiness for companies managing their multilingual communications. In the Balanced Scorecard framework, this metric falls under Quality.

Click on image to enlarge

Mitigation of risks with this objective include:

Brand management

Competitiveness

Legal requirements

If the distributors had full control of creating the messaging used to market this company's products, the company had no way of knowing whether the distributors always adhered to the guidelines and messaging on their U.S. packaging. This is a classic case of an organization risking brand dilution with no way to evaluate which claims were being made or how their brand appeared to buyers. Furthermore, the company's competitive advantage is driven by the claims that are made to entice buyers to purchase their products. A marketing strategy centered around a specific claim may work in one market while it would not be effective – or even legally acceptable – to make such a claim in another country. The U.S. based headquarters of this company had no control over these individual strategies and no way to ensure that each country's legal requirements were being met.

The first step for this company was to centralize and take ownership of the messaging. The second step is to take ownership of the distributor relationship in regards to their control over the messaging. These distributor experts can provide insight into the target market and how best to approach buyers. The distributors sell the product and should be involved in choosing terminology used in the translations. Terminology management became the central focus of this strategy to strengthen the brand, engage the distributors and "hear" their voice and provide linguistic evaluation for the organization to "own their messaging."

This metric in the LSI Client Mentor Program™ provides an action plan of 6 steps that an organization must evaluate and act upon for this objective. The organization is then measured not only on a number of quantitative issues but also on their change of perception in their committment to the objective. A score of "ingrained" with this metric is one more measurable way to move this company efficiently along the path of the Global Communication Maturity Model™.

The benefits of having a centralized approach with well-defined roles and responsibilities are clearly evident to this company We have an efficient and repeatable process (think Baldrige criteria) that can be applied to each new market as our client expands. In addition, we are able to scale efforts within existing markets in a cost-effective way due to the Translation Memory assets we’ve built.

Are you intentionally diluting your brand with your multilingual communications?

2008-10-03T16:14:00.020-05:00

We are passionate about opening minds and shaping perspectives of people and organizations as they create communications for their global audiences. By making organizations aware of the impact that culture and values have on the language in their communications and connecting that with their overall strategic business goals, we can bring the global community a little closer together. In effect, we can be a catalyst for global change... person by person, communication by communication.

We seek to shape perspectives that your multilingual communications is a valuable element of your brand assets, not a commodity. With translating an organization's marketing publications, we consider brand equity. How is the brand affected by translation? Does the organization’s brand risk dilution at any point in the process? Do you maintain a consistent brand while respecting cultural nuances? Is there a strategy for global brand consistency?

To answer these questions, we look at the critical processes around the creation of an organization's source publications and translations. It's important to be able to identify gaps in the processes that can be improved and prioritize objectives throughout the whole Content Lifecycle. Management of these critical process steps can bring internal process efficiencies affecting the multilingual communication strategy while also protecting the brand identity.

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How do your marketing publications drive results? To build a business case for your multilingual communication strategy, it is necessary for your Language Service Provider to understand your organization's business objectives and to demonstrate that effective communications can move your organization toward achieving those objectives. How do these goals relate to the processes that are in place to create the communications for the domestic market? What processes need to be in place for multilingual communications to match that success? Can you also determine the messaging that has a direct impact on the brand identity?

We have defined 6 objectives for clients in the area of Strategic Readiness. Consider the objective to "Establish control and ownership of your messaging to protect an organization's brand reputation and identity." In order to achieve this objective, an organization can take on a number of action items. We start clients on an inventory path of current messaging in their international markets. We then determine which messaging has a direct impact on their brand identity and determine the languages in which those brand materials are published as well as the level of content required for baseline translation.

From here, an organization can determine their processes to eliminate or revise messaging that has not been approved by their corporate office or that which may be a risk to their brand reputation or identity. Drill down further to technology assessments and determine the role of technology in the channels for communication and how terminology will be managed to centralize control of that messaging.

Which indicators help you to measure control and ownership of messaging? We have 8 metrics to determine this and among these, we quantify the number of documented communication strategies for each target market, the number of markets in which messaging originates with corporate, the percentage of content reuse in translation, the number of languages with terminology centralized as well as the client's change of perception in committment to a global strategy. Within the Balanced Scorecard framework, this objective is within Product and Service Quality. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post and we'll write on an actual case study of a client that implemented this successfully and the impact it is having on their brand!

Leading Indicators for Building a Business Case to translate for a particular market

2008-09-09T13:38:00.007-05:00

During a consultation with one of our clients, the question that came to the table was how to measure the impact of culture on HR communications for one of their clients. This conversation gave us a good opportunity to present our metric around cultural distances and how it can impact your business case for translating for a particular market.

There are many leading indicators for building a business case, but generally there are two decisions to be made:
1. Do you translate for a particular market, and in what language(s)?
2. Do you internationalize or localize for a particular market?

The first point deals with the language of the communication; the second with the cultural distance of the target market as compared with the domestic country of the client as a leading indicator to support this decision. Both of these factors can have a great impact on the effectiveness of the communication, but the second decision was the most important for our client to quantify and to be able to tie into the strategic outcome of the end client's business.

In the proposal meeting, we were able to provide our methodology for measuring the impact of culture on the effectiveness of communications. The measure is built around a couple of key cultural dimensions and the ranking of each target market on that value based on the value as measured in the domestic country (in this case the US). The cultural distance metric ranks how far target markets are culturally removed from their client's domestic country. The metric also gives good insight as to how cultures of different target markets correlate. This would determine whether the messaging needs to be edited for an international audience (internationalize), for a particular region (regionalize) or customized for the particular market (localize).

This metric fits very well with our strategic partner, an HR Global Consulting Firm, who can do further research towards each cultural dimension and relate it to the cultural values that are present in many corporate communications. With this metric, a more informed decision can made towards a directive for localization. We will continue to bring this metric into further practice with our clients and report about the results.

Too much focus on lagging measures

2008-09-09T10:30:00.003-05:00

A number of factors affect an organization’s position on the Global Communication Maturity Model™ (GCMM). In organizations that are just beginning to respond to international marketing demands, process management efficiencies are usually driven at the operational level. Upper management in organizations at the Reactive and Conscious levels rarely drive process management initiatives. As companies mature, the strategic top is increasingly involved in and focused on process management because their global communication endeavors have a bigger impact on the overall success of the company.

Innovation usually finds its roots at the operational level. How can lower and middle management help to innovate in process efficiency for global communications? How is their contribution to the overall success of the company validated?

The position that an organization is in on the GCMM is indeed a lagging indicator. Too many organizations focus on the lagging measures such as profit, ROI, etc. Those are the existing metrics currently in our industry. Metrics are critical to global thinking, but failing to measure the right things can lead one off the path. Language Service providers in our industry have plenty of metrics, especially TM (Translation Memory) leverage percentages. However, global organizations need to look at the leading indicators that influence and forecast the amount of leverage an organization can get from their TM. Those leading indicators need to be aligned with the people in the organization that impact those measures. At Language Solutions, we help organizations to tie key objectives to people and processes within their organization, providing insight on accountability and decision support.