S03E04: Building out Enterprise Localization Teams

Paula Hunter

Thanks for having me, excited to be here.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thank you for making it. Please tell us about yourself and what do you do?

 

Paula Hunter

So my name is Paula Hunter and I manage the localization and technical documentation teams at Motorola Solutions. Both teams support multiple brands within the video security and access control business unit. I’ve been in the localization industry for over 20 years. I started at Avigilon eight and half years ago as the sole localization manager, and have since grown the team to three additional members. Two years ago, Avigilon was acquired by Motorola Solutions and since then they’ve made further acquisitions of other video security and access control companies that now forms this business unit.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thank you for that quick introduction, Paula. How did you start your career in the localization industry?

 

Paula Hunter

Uh, well I’ve I’ve, I’ve always had a love of languages and other cultures, so I I received my Bachelor of Arts in Hispanic Studies. Graduated with that, was unable to find a job as most bachelor of arts graduates. And so then I had a decision to make, you know, I needed to take more education. My first thought was to get a masters in Spanish so I could teach Spanish at the college university level. But then this program came up that targeted art students and women to try to get more women into the high tech sector. And so I signed up for that program, I got a bachelor. Sorry not a bachelor, postbaccalaureate Diploma in Computing Science and part of that program was a had a Co-op internship. And one of the jobs when I went to apply was a localization intern. I’ve never heard of it when I read about it. It sounded right up my alley. It’s combining languages and computing science, so I took that co-op job, internship and the rest is history. That was over 20 years ago.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

It’s always interesting to work with in translation localization. We get to interact with people from all over the world. What stands out as some of your important observations and experiences in this industry from the time we started?

 

Paula Hunter

Yeah, that’s really interesting. So like I mentioned, I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years, but it’s been very… my my roles have been really diverse the 1st 10 years or so. I focused on software localization project management where the vendors were defined. The processes were defined, the KPI’s were defined and there was a larger globalization team at headquarters. So I didn’t have a lot of insight into global strategy or even the localization program as a whole. The last eight years is really where I’ve learned the most, and I focused on building out a localization team and program, you know, gained experience in vendor selection and management tools, automation marketing, website localization, globalization strategy.

 

So my roles have really varied, but one of the key observations I’ve made over the past I’d say eight years is how much localization programs, team structures and strategies differ across enterprises. There are as many localization structures as there are enterprises you know, balancing in house and outsourced resources, prioritizing on the time, cost, quality triangle, everybody does it differently and then the other observation I’ve made is how how much closer I feel our industry has come together, particularly over the last two years. Uhm, I remember looking forward to the the one or two conferences of the year, you know, the LocWorld, the GALA. But now there are so many opportunities to engage in network and you know share best practices and we’ve really come together as a family, the localization industry I feel and, and that’s been that’s been really huge and and just the visibility of localization in general, perhaps as a result of this eight years ago there were no localization jobs posted when I was looking in Vancouver, Canada, where I’m located. And now I see you know localization positions being posted, so I feel like enterprises are starting to recognize more and more the value and the need to have that expertise in house.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So that that’s a good segue for for my next question, we plan to cover the building out of localization teams and an enterprise today. You mentioned that you know there is a variety in terms of how this this team is implemented. Tell us from your viewpoint, where does localization stand inside in an enterprise today? Please provide a high level view of the localization department you know starting with your own company but then expanding to see what the rest of the industry. How do they treat localization?

 

Paula Hunter

Uh, I think in general it it really like I said, it really comes down to how the enterprise itself is structured. And how globalization and localization activities best integrate into those. I mean we all know locally successful localization means you need to integrate with all of the stakeholders that you support, so ideally every department has a global mindset, and what that looks like could vary. Does that mean they have a dedicated localization manager, or does it mean that they have a localization champion within each department? So it really depends on the global mindset of the organization and it also depends on the localization expertise that you do have. You know, what is their experience? It’s there there’s so many different options and I think you know the person who will be driving that it will, it will depend on their viewpoint, their perspective and their experience. Uhm, within our organization, load the localization team has recently moved into the engineering group.

 

Uhm, the last eight years we sat within the product management group, which which really gave us a unique perspective because product managers are defining the road map and so that gives me an opportunity to see what’s coming in the next year, two years, five years, and be able to ask those questions. You know, how, how are we supporting this product in other countries? But because my team in particular they are so integrated in the software development teams and we rely we need to be up to date with their tools and how they’re operating and their organized organizational structure. So recently we moved into the engineering group, which has really enabled us to leverage their tools and processes and and really be more part of that team.

 

We can join, you know social activities and and get to know the developers even better and it’s increased our visibility. Some of the quarterly business reviews for example now includes localization so it’s it’s been really interesting to see the the difference I mean I think localization could fit anywhere. Ultimately, the team supports the whole organization, so I’m starting to wonder if maybe, it would be, it would be beneficial for localization teams to move from department to department, and you know that will help us understand how each group operates, but also increase the global mindset of those departments.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So a follow-up question is, now that you’ve moved into engineering and and under their umbrella, or is your team involved in things such as internationalization of code, for example to make sure that the code is localization ready as you’re dealing with this type of software. Are you involved with other upstream activities that you were not involved before?

 

Paula Hunter

Well, we’ve always been involved in the inter… our day-to-day work has not changed at all, we’re always, you know, responsible for delivering best practices, presentations to development teams at tech talks, and actually in fact, most recently we we’ve actually developed an internationalization training course. Uh, we work together in collaboration with our training team and they’ve produced a training course for developers specifically to teach them about internationalization best practices and also what they need to do to integrate into our framework, our localization framework. So the way the team works day-to-day has not changed. What has changed is I am, I have more insight into what’s happening at a development manager level, so I report to the head of engineering now so I have more insight. Essentially, my team was already integrated into the development teams, but I was not and so in order for me to better support the team if I’m reporting into engineering, I have a better sense of of what development is is doing and working on and I can trickle that down and then also escalate up things and show more visibility.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So is there a separate division of localization that looks after things such as marketing localization for that matter, or and do you interface with them or it’s all contained within your business unit?

 

Paula Hunter

We support any department that needs localization, so my team also localizes marketing content collateral. The website, we’re in the process of internationalizing another brand’s website to prepare for localization. Yeah, any essentially any department that needs globalization or localization they they come to us.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So you kind of answered this question already, we see that there’s no standard template for localization department, unlike IT or marketing as you mentioned, you said that your your team has moved under engineering. How has that affected the dynamics of your team compared to how it’s reported before with the product team? Has it changed in terms of our mindset?

 

Paula Hunter

Not really other than other than having more visibility within the engineering group, but we still support… I mean localization, we all need to lead by influence, you know. We we carve our own path, and so I I don’t see it as impacting our relationships with other stakeholders. We continue to support them. Yeah there there hasn’t really been any change in the day to day.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Paula, let’s go to the the basics of a localization team because our theme today is building out an enterprise localization unit. What are the core components of an effective and ideal localization department?

 

Paula Hunter

Uhm, I would say creative problem solvers, needs to be a team of creative problem solvers, people who are curious and self driven. Uhm, obviously passionate about other languages, cultures, and ultimately the end user experience. Being able to see the big picture and also dig into details, we need to be adaptable to how the organization changes to how other teams change. We need to be able to lead by influence, you know, we don’t have… we’re not a team of developers. We have one localization engineer on the team now, and a Co-op student. So we need to be able to lean on other teams to help us grow our program and automate and streamline and scale and be passionate about process optimization. Everyone on the team has quarterly goals on how can we do what we’re doing better. What do we need to do? What are some of the pain points? So you know, somebody who’s people who are really curious and and want to understand and build relationships. People who are great at relationship building, nurturing and curious.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Ideally, where should the localization department be placed inside the organization. You mentioned earlier that they should be moving from department to department so they get to experience all the different business units. Should it be a self sustaining entity like customer service for example?

 

Paula Hunter

You know when I when I said moving from department to department that was from, you know it’s been a really positive experience moving over into engineering now, but I feel really strongly that globalization should be as you described, like like customer service and and should be reporting at the same level as all the same level as other departments I think for an enterprise to be successful globally we need to have that global strategy. Product development we have the most localization support there. Marketing there’s some localization support there, but it varies depending on budget and then customer service is a new department that we are starting to look into how we can support and so you end up with this disjointed and user experience when localization is budgeted and prioritized differently by department whereas if you have the globalization team sitting at the top, then that globalization strategy can be defined by all of the departments that make up the enterprise and can ensure an end to end consistent user experience. And this is something that I’m actually starting to dig into and have these conversations.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So that’s actually an interesting point you just raised because globalization or localization is a cross functional activity basically it it touches every aspect of the enterprise just like it does for example, they look after all parts of different departments and so forth. Do you think that at some point localization will become something that that will touch all of these different business functions.

 

Paula Hunter

Yes, I think it should. I think it absolutely should.

Sultan Ghaznawi

And for that to happen, do you need the executive support and sponsorship in order to raise the profile of localization to that level?

 

Paula Hunter

I believe so. I believe so. Finding the right people to talk to and and showing what sort of KPIs can be delivered and showing that into end user experience. You know, finding, the the key is understanding the decision makers and what is important to them and and showing them how having globalization at that level will help them achieve what is important to them. And again it comes down to each enterprise. Every enterprise is different. Every leader is different, and it’s a matter of selling that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So Paula, how do you build a localization team to be relevant to the current needs of an enterprise as well as to respond to its changing needs as the enterprise scales up in size? What type of people planning, training, and mindset should the localization head that’s yourself integrate into its DNA?

 

Paula Hunter

It depends on what localization activities are happening already, if any, in understanding the international expansion, desires and priorities of the enterprise, I can speak from my example. So when I came into Avigilon, Avigilon did not have any centralized localization team or expertise. Every department was dabbling in localization already, so the software was already localized. The website few pieces of marketing collateral and and so and so what I did when I first came on was, you know, try to take off that burden from content authors so that they could focus on what they need to do, and then centralize and look for efficiencies and optimization.

 

So really what I did was I went around and and did an audit and I basically asked everybody what are your pain points. You know what are you spending the most time on? What are our international customers complaining about and you know, people love to talk about things that are painful… right? Their challenges they love to… offload that stuff but that is really important information, so you take that in and you know, think on it, talk to your peers, talk to other people in the organization and and look at OK how can we address these pain points? How can we make this operate more efficiently and effectively? And so from my side, our developers really needed more support, but I couldn’t give that and also pay attention to everything else. So the first team member I hired was a localization engineer and so she was integrated into those teams, you know, and really got that process up to up to speed and and working more efficiently so the developers could focus only on developing and not dealing with vendors and then the second team member I hired was a localization desktop publisher because we realized we were spending I can’t remember the percent it was a high percentage of money with our vendor on desktop publishing and if we had somebody internal they could do that work and also customize and regionalize our marketing content.

 

And so that was how that was, how the second person was hired. And then, you know, going back to our localization software process, there was so much potential for automation, but we don’t have any developers assigned to our team. Developers are busy writing code, developing features, and so we pitched the idea of creating an internship. It was in our team with a computing science student and we’ve had this Co-op program in Canada, in the US it’s internship, so we’ve had this co-op program now for five or six years. And it’s been so incredibly successful we will bring a comp-sci developer into our team and we will empower them to look at how we’re working and ask them, hey, where do you see potential efficiencies and and they are giving they are given so much responsibility and they make such an incredible impact to our team and we feel like we are educating one software developer at a time and putting them back into the workforce and now they understand internationalization and localization, so we feel like we’re giving back because they still don’t teach this in, at least in the universities here in Canada that I’m aware of, internationalization within these programs. So these students now have that knowledge, so that’s essentially how my team is made up today looking for challenges, looking for areas of opportunities and focusing on that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So let’s talk about perception. Uh, I recently spoke with Talia Baruch about in great depth about this topic. How does the rest of the organization or enterprise perceive what your department does? As we’ve talked so far, I mean it’s it’s a new area and it’s it’s proliferating it’s growing, what do what do they perceive? Is it the right assumption versus the reality of what your team actually does?

 

Paula Hunter

That’s a really great question and it completely depends on who you talk to. So developers because we’re so integrated into those teams, most developers fully understand what we do because they need to adhere to certain principles in order to have their their prod… software localized. But then some back end developers you know aren’t aren’t necessarily that aware ’cause they’re not working with UI. So it it really depends on the level with which we are we are integrated with the teams, we do make a concerted effort, you know, what part of our team mandate is to every time we hear of a new team that spins up or a new new hire, or you know, a new acquisition, come, you know it is our… it is our mission to go out and and increase visibility across the organization. That software internationalization training course is one example and now being part of engineering as part of the All Hands meetings you know I I have a opportunity to propose some topics that are related to our teams.

So It it really depends I I think as a localization team back to your question about the DNA of a localization team, I think it’s really important for everyone in the team to always be… have that mindset and and look think on how can we increase our visibility. You know, what what sorts of wiki pages or or other pages… how can we share with the organization, what we do and you know, I task every team member to think on new ways of of promoting our team.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So on that note, what type of evangelization activities you found to be effective and useful. For example, lunch and learns, what is it that your team does in order to raise its profile?

 

Paula Hunter

Yeah, there, there’s a lot of that… lunch and learns, tech talks uhm, we we we try to edge our way into town hall meetings. If there’s team meetings. Just just always looking for opportunities to do that and and like I said with the teams we work with that is part of our DNA, we need to identify these opportunities, find out when these departments are having you know quarterly reviews or team meetings and you know get get get ourselves as an agenda item on there. So again, you know back to just being curious and friendly and making these relationships and building these relationships, and you know spreading the word and approaching it from the point of view, we are here to support you, we want to help you help the organization expand internationally.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, we we talk about educating our clients internal clients, which is obviously other business units in your organization. You and I both know the executive sponsorship for localization is critical. Where do they stand today in terms of supporting the creation and sustaining of a localization unit compared to how things were when you started working in this area and the enterprise at the start?

 

Paula Hunter

Well, like I mentioned at the start, I didn’t really have any visibility into that I was given. I had a very specific role, very specific tasks and I executed on them. I didn’t have any visibility into that, so I can only speak to my experience over the last 8-9 years in my current role company. Again, it comes down to the people I mean executives can turnover, right? We’ve had a few different executives since I’ve started, and every time there’s a new one that is an opportunity to educate and and share, right? And everyAnd you know, I I tried every year to get marketing members to attend to get approval for them to attend, they wanted to. But it wasn’t approved by their group and I, you know, I put together presentations to sell and so unfortunately that experience of mine was not successful. executive has different ideas about globalization and prioritizing that. I’d like to think that the executive sponsorship has increased in our organization because of the growth of the team and raising our visibility. Yeah, it’s it’s. It’s hard for me to speak outside, I do in some of the in some of our peer networking gatherings. I do still hear you know a lot of challenges a lot of localization managers on the client side struggling with that. So yeah, it’s it’s hard to, it’s hard to really generalize on on that.

 

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Sultan Ghaznawi

Do you think that the industry has a role to play in order to raise the profile of localization at general business level? Like you know, for example we have these different industry groups such as GALA and localization world and so forth. Are they doing enough in order to to raise at this profile so that executives get to learn about what we do at , you know, at a business level, not just you know having this obscure group of people that show up and doing lunch and learn from time to time, which some people have actually complained about that they can’t get their voice out.

Paula Hunter

Uhm, no, that’s a really…. that’s a really, really good question, I’ll admit I haven’t seen a lot of that being offered. So you know, if if these groups, I’m I’m just thinking off the top of my head right now, but if they put together, you know some some pitches to help localization managers sell that sell that idea. I think that’s actually a great opportunity for vendors to help support clients.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So related to that, would you think it would be helpful to create, for example, a study to say that large enterprises or even platforms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, when they started localising across different business functions, this is the type of statistics or KPIs that they were able to accomplish and aAnd and if we were to replicate that and use our localization teams in this way, we would see you know this type of productivity gains. Do you think a study like that would be helpful and who should be doing that? For example, we have these different industry bodies mention if if we were to present that would that help raise the profile of localization?

 

Paula Hunter

I think so. I think so, I mean I know that there are localization engine… agencies that that do provide these services I I don’t know if I’m a I mean like Nimdzi and you know the Common Sense Advisory and GALA to some extent. Uhm, but I think more of that would be would be helpful.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What type of research do you use in in your work in order to improve the productivity and the overall performance of your of your team?

 

Paula Hunter

Uhm, it’s really a lot of it is is peer networking, and talking to other localization managers, what have you done? And also leaning on our vendors so, so for me personally our vendor has always been well, we have a few now, but our primary vendor has always been a partner and an extension of our team, particularly in the early days when I was alone supporting the whole organization, I really leaned on them because I didn’t know the first thing about marketing localization. Or, you know, localization of training content and that sort of thing so so they actually provided they were they were crucial they were a key part in in building out my team.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Speaking of of vendors, Paula, let’s let’s talk about about them. They see your organization as an entity defining their requirements. Do they understand that your team is not just about purchasing text translation from them? How how would they add additional value to your deliverable?

 

Paula Hunter

Uhm, absolutely, no, they are involved in everything that we do. You know the automations that we, well most things that we’ve done. You know we do some localization test automation so so all of our script writing is done internally. But in terms of tools you know we have a combination of our own in-house on Prem tools, we we use tools hosted by our vendor and you know, they have suggested opportunities for for being more efficient, ’cause it’s in their best interest too, right? Like the more efficient our processes are, the better statistics they’re going to have on turn around times and quality and and all that so so we are very partnered with them. Sometimes they come to us with suggestions. Hey, we noticed you know we have other clients who do it this way. This could probably benefit you guys, do you want to explore this and then we do the same? You know we were at a conference. We were talking to a peer they’re doing this, can you help us implement that? So it’s they’ve absolutely been… they do provide those suggestions, which we really appreciate. So yeah, they are very, they are very involved in in our processes and how we operate.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And that is a good segue to my next question, Paula. Localization teams or departments can be fully self sustaining, meaning that they have their international translation teams as well as they can have a hybrid model where the spillage of translation work goes to outside vendors. And then there are localization teams that don’t do any of the work in-house please tell us the about the pros and cons of each model for, for those localization managers that want to know and one is appropriate for our organization versus another one?

 

Paula Hunter

Yeah, I mean if you the more the… more you have in-house, basically, how much responsibility do you want to have, right? And how much money do you have to invest internally? Not all organisations have, you know money to invest in, you know in-house translators, in-house tools developers and what makes the most sense. You really have to look at, you know, cost benefit and we go through but you know quite often that’s particularly with tools. Do we want to purchase our own tool? But when the more you bring in-house tools wise, the more headcounts you’re going to need, and then that increases the risk if you lose somebody and you have this tool and you have no one to maintain it, it’s going to go down.

 

I kind of I… I like it to come, you know, as a parent sending your kid if you need after school care and before school care, do you send them to you know, uh, a daycare? Or do you have a nanny, right? If you have them at home with a nanny and then the nanny gets sick, it’s all on you, as a parent to deal with that. Whereas if you send them to a daycare and and somebody gets sick, they’ve got all these backups, right? So the vendors have that backup so I mean, they’re I’ve I’ve thought about bringing in house linguists. You know it’s really looking at what is the goal of of the localization team, as it aligns with the business needs, just just assessing that the cost benefit. There’s pros and cons to both absolutely. And what is your expertise in house as well? Who is leading your localization and globalization team? Is it someone who has built out extensive in-house teams? Or are they more experienced with working with with a vendor? Yeah, there’s there’s pros and cons for sure.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And to to your point, in order to have or maintain an in-house team, obviously it’s not just a matter of bringing some people and and getting them to translate. Uhm, there might be times when volumes may dictate that you shouldn’t have any people at all for a specific language because you’re dealing with so many different markets. So for for large multinational enterprises, uh, I’m guessing it’s difficult to centralise everything when they operate in 10s of countries with different laws, cultures, languages, demographics and so on. Should localization teams be centralized or does it make sense to have in country localization units? What is the ideal structure?

 

Paula Hunter

Yeah again I don’t know what the ideal structure would be, it it really depends on the business and their traction in these countries and the needs, I mean, different industries are going to have more regulations than others, more, you know, more laws to abide by than others. Uhm, like the healthcare industry for example, or even you know our video surveillance equipment. We have different regulations, different, you know, privacy laws for different countries so. So, uhm, it really depends on the industry and I personally think having as much centralized as possible keeps things consistent. But you do need on the ground you need on the ground sales people you need, maybe you need datacenters, maybe you need you know warehouses to save costs on on shipping. So yeah, it really depends on the business and the industry, I think. But but about a hybrid model I think you need both.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Speaking of which, do you sometimes rely on local staff who are not localization related to help and and and connecting you with the local markets?

 

Paula Hunter

Our global sales team are crucial to assisting me and my team in prioritizing of course, sales teams ask for a lot. So we need to bring in, you know other teams to help prioritize but yeah, I mean our global sales teams are our eyes and ears and feet on the street. Uhm so I am very connected with them. I meet with them regularly. They act as our ISR’s to review marketing content to make sure that it’s resonating. I don’t think you can be effective without some someone on the ground in country to to be keeping you up to date with what’s needed.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So and as a support role, the localization team responds to content transformation demand from marketing, HR and other business units as you mentioned. Is there enough awareness about the output of this team and within the organization that when there is a localization heck up, like you know, we’ve all had those situations it is not a surprise for customer service or others and they know that it it came from localization, it’s not an issue related to the code itself, for example.

 

Paula Hunter

Uhm, I would say there’s enough if you mean if I would say there’s enough awareness that any issue that is reported gets back to our team. If it if the issue is reported to sales directly, the entire global sales organization is aware of my team. I forgot to mention, I’d another opportunity to to present and be visible is at our annual global sales conferences. I’ve had the opportunity to present about my team and what we do, and we’re here to support them and to you know give us feedback on how we’re doing, that sort of thing. So from a sales perspective they come straight to me because they know me customer support… uhm, at some point if customer support escalates it up, somebody will know about my team. So it comes back to that question from before you know what is the visibility of my tam within the organization, it’ll find us eventually it all depends on the level of awareness of where that hiccup occurred in the first place.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Is there a process, uh, defined process for escalating an issue related to, uh, a localization bug, for example, that would, you know, get channeled to you? Is everybody aware of how to follow the process?

 

Paula Hunter

For software, yes, absolutely. Yep. I was just gonna say for software, absolutely it goes, you know, tech support development team assigned to our team.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

OK, so and what about the end clients? When do they ever think of localization, the product or byproduct of their transaction with the enterprise, with the brand?

 

Paula Hunter

Mm-hmm, I don’t think any customers think about that at all. I think end customers in fact… on that note, I don’t think and customers really think about any of the factors that put together the product that they have. All they care about is their experience, their end user experience. You know if there’s something wrong with the translation, then that’s on the brand, if it breaks, that’s on the brand, um, if it’s hard to use then you know it’s it’s all one in the same I don’t personally, think for my experience, if if a product isn’t working for me, I don’t think you know which department was responsible for that. I just associate it with the brand.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So the localization team is an enabler of communication or interaction between the customer and the product I think more than anybody else. We’re more, we gain more exposure. Does it ever come to the spotlight for anything that the customers you’ve probably have heard that they want, they’re complaining specifically about localization?

 

Paula Hunter

To be honest, we haven’t really heard a lot what we hear most is they want more language support.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That’s a good news.

 

Paula Hunter

Yeah it is the good news. Absolutely yeah yeah. Customers, I mean we we have a very large global footprint. Avigilon has a very interesting history. From from the time of being a small startup, the global strategy was to hire sales people around the world and think about all the details later. And so, because we had such a great value proposition, you know we became quite successful. And and it’s been really the last several years catching up to our success. And making sure that we’re delivering the same quality in other countries as as we are here so. Yeah, to answer your question, we don’t really hear a lot of complaints from the field. Uhm, just wanting more more language support.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

How do you track the demand for new languages? Or you know, if if you’re really in a market and they want to add an additional language, how how do you track all of that? And how do you justify and budget for it?

 

Paula Hunter

Uhm, well this comes back to every department. Every department owns their own budget localization budget and you know I influence that. I guide and advise and you know in some cases really try to drive and push on behalf of the global sales team. I’m the voice for them and they’re the voice for me. Yeah, the the the process is is still a little bit ad hoc. Um, we have worked towards formalizing it at the end of the day product product managers are the ones that decide what language is our highest priority. Uhm, but it is a collaborative effort, you know, I’ve we’ve started to drive more formalized meetings between product management, global sales myself, and engineering to to figure out these priorities so we’re continuing to refine that process. Let’s just say we’re getting there. It used to be a lot more reactive, and we’re moving more towards being more strategic and looking at, you know, metrics such as revenue by country, and you know website visits and looking for opportunities to obtain metrics that will help build, build a business case.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So going back to localization vendors and and there are probably some of the audiences of this this podcast, in fact, majority of them, how has their expectation changed over time? Do they lead conversations today with regards to new technologies and efficiencies that that that could benefit the enterprise or is it the other way around for you?

 

Paula Hunter

Uhm, yeah I think we touched on this a little bit before it goes both ways. So, so we are a team. You know ourselves that the vendor is an extension of our team and you know if if one side identifies an area of opportunity where we can streamline or adopt A new tool or integrate with a tool. Then it’s really a team effort.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And again localization vendors, they they want to help. They are hungry for growth and obviously your success means success for them. And my opinion that is dependent on the growth of their customers localization efforts. Are they responsive to the changing needs of localization buyers like your department? What can they do better?

 

Paula Hunter

Uhm, they… in my case I would say they’re absolutely responsive and proactive. Uhm, so I think just just continuing to do that as a client. It’s really interesting. I mean, I we make efforts to interact with other clients, other buyers to to share stories, share experiences, share successes, share challenges. But vendors really have a unique perspective because they work with so many different clients and they see all the varying ways that enterprises have team and so you know, leading on our vendors to share experience… obviously, there’s NDA’s, and there’s only there’s so much information you can share, but you know, and even in some cases, connecting us with other clients to talk about, you know if a vendor said, hey, you know, we think there’s an opportunity to become more efficient by doing this one of our other clients does this, do you want me to ask them if they can talk to you about it? And and we have done that and sometimes it works for us and sometimes it doesn’t work for us. So I think vendors I think that’s a real opportunity for vendors to really leverage that. And maybe, internally, I’ve never worked for on the vendor side before, but I can imagine opportunities for project managers to come together and, you know, share notes and say hey look this client, we just had major success and then you know sharing that information with another PM and then that vendor PM can share that with their client and and really taking advantage of the the variety of experiences that vendors have.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely, there is an ocean polar that we sell translation as localization vendors. What does that mean for you? Does your organization, Avigilon for example, or Motorola by translation from a vendor or some sort of value that is tangible and shows up in your enterprise’s bottom line?

 

Paula Hunter

Definitely, definitely not just buying translation, and I think I’ve I’ve I’ve sprinkled in details about this throughout our interview so far. Yeah, they they’re they’re our partner. They are our partner and they they absolutely contribute to to the the evolution of our localization program and does contribute to our bottom line. You know we moved from localization testing in person to automating by producing localized screenshots and of course that’s going to change how the vendor supports us in localization testing and so you know, we worked together with them to create a new process and and now we’re spending less money, less time on localization testing and that required collaboration with the vendor to to make that happen.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Paula, how do you see localization department structures, their work processes and the output of their work changing with the proliferation of automation in the form of, for example, machine translation and other similar technologies?

 

Paula Hunter

Yeah, I think you know, localization departments will always need people, no matter how much is automated. What those people, what what those people do will will probably change. But you know, language and cultures and human behaviors are always evolving, and we’ll always need humans to keep up with these human changes. So there’s there’s always discussions, there’s always that fear, you know AI automation coming in, replacing us, replacing our jobs. I think our jobs just just need to evolve and really focus on all the things we’ve talked about already. You know, looking for areas of opportunity to improve looking for areas of opportunity to to grow in certain regions in certain areas. Uhm, and then building more technical expertise into your team, you know we started with that computing science Co-op student and you know building more of that and and having to rely less on development teams to assist in our automation and and bring more of that expertise in, but you know, we need the curious people. We need the people to identify what needs to be changed and how we can evolve and become more efficient.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

We just celebrated the start of the new year. What are your predictions for 2022? If you were to take a bird’s eye view of the localization industry, Paula, how do you see things changing this year?

 

Paula Hunter

I I’d like to see a continuation of the incredible collaboration within our industry, and that’s like vendors and clients like, what I love about our industry is that oftentimes you can’t tell if somebody works on the client side, the vendor side, we’re all in this together, looking for ways to transform our industry so I don’t know if I see a lot of change. I would like to see a continuation of of what I’ve seen in the last year or two, in particular with you know more online opportunities to engage and all of us working together to address these challenges. Uhm, I guess one thing that that if we continue on this trend is that you know I’ll I’ll have to explain less and less what what I do. You know you meet somebody for the first time, what do you do? Oh localization, loca what? Like nobody notices. And so I’m I’m hoping I’m, I’m guessing that this will this will change over time. Yeah, so not… a lot of change, just I hope we continue down the path of where we’ve been going.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely, we have reached the end of this conversation, Paula, and I wanted to ask you for your message or advice for industry peers and other enterprise localization departments, translation and localization providers, as well as the industry in general. What would you like to tell them?

 

Paula Hunter

I just want to reiterate, there are a million and one different ways to approach localization and globalization. There is not just one. Take the time to understand as a on the client side, take the time to understand your business and how the organization operates and what some of the pain points are, talk to the people on every department and learn how they work, what they do, what, if any, pain points exist in doing business internationally? Be curious. Ask questions. Uhm, essentially create your own rule, you know it’s… are the big part of our job is is communication and you know problem solving and So you know, for for people in the industry on on the client side, you know? It’s is really up to you. And and then on the vendor side you know, I mean, similar things can apply. Take the time to understand your clients business and organization and maybe ask some probing questions that might help, come help them ask the questions you know like we are all in this together so…

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely, that was a very very fascinating conversation, Paula. I enjoyed speaking to you and learning from you about enterprises. How they conduct localization and the equally important is that we if we were able to help the localization industry, both the supply side and the buyer side to get a glimpse of how localization department functions. Uhm, I’m hoping localization vendors took note of your thoughts and concerns and think of ways to deliver solutions that are of better value and fit for enterprises like yours. With that I want to thank you and look forward to speaking with you soon and this future episode.

 

Paula Hunter

Great, thanks so much for having me, it’s nice speaking with you.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Enterprises continue to double down on global growth and expansion, while multinationals drive the demand for enterprise localization, the structure and setup of localization initiatives remain fragmented. There is no framework or one size fits all approach, so implementing an enterprise localization program. People like Anna Schlegel have written extensively on the basics of developing a localization structure for large organizations. But at the end, the objectives and nature of enterprises dictate on where this activity fits. For example, some enterprises may centralise their localization efforts, while others may want to keep their efforts very decentralized to ensure full autonomy for their teams and local markets. Localization vendors must understand how these different setups require different solutions and propose them in a way to address their unique challenges.

 

That’s our show for today and I hope you like this episode. The aim is to provide an inside look into how an organization like Motorola Solutions operate in the localization context. If you have suggestions or any specific topics or guests, please get in touch. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your platform of choice and give us a thumbs up or five stars for this episode to boost our ratings until next time.

 

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