Going Global

Smart globalization technology deployments

The continuing trend to extend strategic business applications across global enterprises reinforces the need for organizations to adopt globalization, localization, and internationalization (GLI) technologies. Many companies are taking steps to "globalize" products and operations in an effort to cash in on the opportunities presented by multinational markets. However, there's no "one size fits all" globalization strategy.

Not long ago, companies seeking to establish a presence in a particular country or region might have indiscriminately "localized" multiple versions of their corporate operations and products to fit the language, culture, and business processes of the target areas. In addition to incurring huge expenses related to such conversion projects, enterprises also frequently set up pricey physical operations abroad.

Developers have refined "internationalization" strategies to streamline processes for making products multilingual and multicultural without redesigning them for each country or region. For enterprise IT operations, successful GLI teams are now more likely to focus on implementing specific IT and business functions to deliver targeted results. Businesses may also test the commercial waters abroad with virtual Web presences.

Analysts predict that GLI strategies will increase in importance globally. Meta Group posits that GLI management will be essential for e-business and CRM success by 2005, but estimates that only 20 percent of Global 2000 companies will be proficient in these technologies by then. According to Alexander Motsenigos, IDC's senior research analyst for globalization and localization services (GLS), demand for GLS is high and will expand into a $10.3 billion market by 2005 with U.S. and European markets accounting for 78 percent.

"Globalization and localization solutions ... enabl[e] ... global understanding, communication, and interaction between and among an enterprise and its customers, suppliers, partners, and employees," said Motsenigos.

Companies will be spending the bulk of their GLI dollars on localization, translation, and interpretation services, or LTI, according to IDC. Another fast-growing market is cross-lingual applications (also called CLA) for multilingual content management systems and the like. Fueling this market is the preponderance of companies operating solely in single-language mode.

A Q4 2001 study conducted by the Localization Industry Standard Association and Geomarkets.com Inc. found that 66 percent of U.S. IT company Web sites have only English content, even though more than 50 percent of Internet users speak other languages. A May 2001 Aberdeen Group report estimated that "80 percent of multinational B2B companies will 'globalize' Web sites by 2004 to ... optimize business in global markets." However, translation and multilingual sites and products are just the first steps.

GLI technology is currently evolving to accommodate even more market factors, such as e-commerce, CRM, and knowledge and supply chain management. Meta Group predicted that supply chain globalization will drive development of "content-rich global trade management and logistics technologies" in 2002. Enterprises will also need to apply GLI technologies to Web services and customer portals, according to the Meta Group.

From 2003 to 2005, Meta foresees a strong need for GLI planning for CRM efforts in marketing, sales, service, and product programs. During that time, Meta also estimates companies will use GLI technologies for "collaboration ... private supply chain e-hubs ... and [to add] intelligent components ... [to] key transaction systems."

"Web globalization will remove geography from the competitive equation," said Tom Dwyer, Aberdeen's Web globalization research director.

— Claudia Willen

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