How to Assess Your Company's Localization Needs and Capacity

Changing your products, services, marketing, and content for different languages and cultures can be tricky. However, the benefits of localization services can be significant. These benefits include more revenue and a competitive edge.  

Because localization comes with a lot of moving parts, a well-thought-out strategy is a must. This strategy will align your efforts with the organization’s larger goals and help you better understand your localization needs, capacity, and ability to support future localization requests from across your organization. 

Let’s take a closer look at how to assess your localization needs and internal capacity, which can reveal hidden opportunities and sharpen your global strategy. 

Understanding Your Localization Needs 

To be effective, your strategy should include the localization needs from all areas of the business. This includes marketing, web localization, product development, and customer support. By centralizing localization, opportunities arise to lower translation costs, improve quality, and streamline processes. 

Researching your target markets allows you to identify the right audiences and languages for your business. Remember that not every market needs the same level of localization, and some countries use multiple languages. Understanding your audience’s preferences and buying habits will focus your efforts on activities that will be the most effective for each market. 

One of your bigger jobs will be to determine the type of content your organization wants to localize. Every content type comes with its own challenges, from the technical complexity of UI localization and multilingual site localization to the precision of legal and life sciences documentation. Understanding your localization needs helps you plan the expertise, processes, and tools required for different content types. It also shows where to use machine translation vs. human translation to speed up your work. 

How much content to translate is another factor to include in your strategy. Some companies translate the same content across all markets, and others translate varying amounts of content for each market. Still, others work closely with translation agencies and in-country teams to determine what content works best locally. The right model will depend on your organization, its goals, and your audiences. 

Once you know more about your audiences and the content to be localized for each market, you might want to think about scalability. As time goes on, it’s likely the demand for content will only increase. Planning for continuous localization, peak periods, and automation will help your localization team do more, especially when timelines are tight.

Evaluating Your Internal Capacity

Once you’ve established your reasons for localizing content, it’s time to consider what you have to work with. A possible pitfall here is not considering all aspects of your resources. Internal capacity is more than just understanding what your team can handle; it’s also about your infrastructure and identifying where you might need extra help, for instance: 

Resource identification and assessment: Your internal resources include budget, people, tools, and technology, as well as buy-in from your senior leadership. Do you have everything you need to run a successful localization program, or are there gaps? How can you close the gaps? 

Process evaluation: Look closely at localization workflows, collaboration, and how translation tasks are accomplished, considering whether you can automate with localization tools and software. Don’t forget to include localization quality assurance, especially if your organization is in a regulated industry. 

Technology: AI-powered innovations are evolving by leaps and bounds. It is important to regularly check how well your localization and machine translation solutions are working. This helps make sure they meet your current needs and will grow with you over time. 

Evaluating these elements helps you set realistic goals before you start your localization strategy. It also helps identify areas that need investment or improvement, whether it’s technical expertise, a more agile localization process, or more robust technology.

Using What You’ve Learned

As you create your localization strategy, remember that you are making a plan that will guide you in your efforts. This roadmap will help support your organization’s global goals by: 

• Measuring goals with metrics: A localization strategy combines strategic thinking with data analytics. Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) and tracking their progress with metrics will demonstrate localization’s value and can help justify additional resources.
  

• Defining roles and responsibilities: Strategic alignment doesn’t just happen at the leadership level. A well-structured team understands its role, how it interacts with other departments, and how it fits into the localization strategy to support the company’s goals.
  

• Ensuring your product or service is ready: Designing products that are ready for global markets from the outset is a step that’s often overlooked. To promote a smooth localization process and maximize efficiencies, educate your internal teams about localization and internationalization best practices.
  

• Talking timelines: Localization often happens in conjunction with product launches, marketing campaigns, or legal deadlines. Strategic planning supports realistic timelines that help your internal stakeholders know what to expect and when.
  

• Allocating resources: Evaluating your resources identifies both your strengths and gaps. Whether it’s budget, personnel, or technology like a Translation Management System (TMS), surveying your assets will help you focus your resources effectively and avoid unwanted surprises. 

Bringing It All Together

Once you start your localization strategy, it’s important for everyone to know their role. This includes keeping customers and stakeholders informed, managing content, and ensuring quality. If you’re introducing new or improved technology, such as a TMS or a connector tool, be sure to leave ample time for pilot projects, training, and testing. 

Localization is always evolving and demands constant improvement. Setting KPIs and collecting metrics to measure translation quality, content volume, and localization ROI will help you demonstrate the value of your efforts. Finally, planning for localization scalability will help you meet growing market demands and entry into new regions.

Strategic Localization Starts Here

Productivity doesn’t happen by accident. Taking the time to assess your localization needs, prioritize resources, and identify areas for improvement gives you the insights you need to act strategically. From here, you can create a strategy that aligns with your company’s vision and supports its global ambitions. 

Want to make your strategy even more effective? Discover how memoQ's enterprise solutions can streamline your localization process, improve collaboration, and support your business goals.