Panel: ROI – a Voyage into the Unknown or a Way to Communicate Localization Value?

Igor Afanasayev 00:00
The interesting and challenging panel discussion now about localization ROI. And with that, let me invite to the screen our panelists. It will be it is a Hi, Carrie Fisher, Chris England, and our session moderator, Rodrigo, Kristina. And since we're waiting for our panelists to come up, and I hired Hugo, just as a reminder that after that panel, you'll also be able to ask questions, you can also ask questions live, if you're on desktop computer, and you don't have any background noise, feel free to raise your hand and after after that, we can put you live, and you will be able to ask your questions. So without further ado, rejiggered, please introduce the panelists.

Rodrigo Cristina 00:53
Sure, sure. Welcome to ROI, a voyage into the unknown, or a way to communicate localization value. Good, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you are. I hope you're having a great time and that you've made the best out of this refreshing summertime edition of lock from home. Before we start our discussion and introductions, let me congratulate SmartCAT steam for the excellent event that they have once again put together for the level of panelists, presenters and overall content. A big shout out to Kate and the SmartCAT marketing team, who once again, has done a fantastic job. It's awesome to be here again, and to be part of this incredible experience. For me it has become more than an event it's it has become a powerful channel to share experiences, trends and knowledge within our beloved localization industry. Now without further ado, let me quickly introduce myself the panelists and and the topic. My name is rodrigo Rodrigo, Christina. And localization has been my passion for the last 15 years, helping to connect people, product services to the global marketplace is pretty much my day to day. I'm on the LSP side and I've recently joined two works, an exciting global multilingual vendor with an ambitious growth project, singular value proposition and a focus on localization outcome, not just on delivery. Well, enough about me. Let me now introduce our incredible panelists lineup the stars of the week in the UK, at least. Firstly, Carrie Fisher. Carrie brings the special sauce of localization to the world's largest fast food restaurant chain. She's the globalization services manager at Subway headquartered in Milford, Connecticut. She works out of her home in Boise, Idaho, where she leaves with her teenage son, two cats and one dog. She's a volunteer at women in localization in the global community program. Welcome Carrie. We are mega excited to have you here. Now Chris, Chris agriland. A bit of a localization globetrotter. Chris has a global business experience in South Korea, Japan, Ireland, Argentina, Colombia, and the list could go on. Chris is vice president of international operations at Active Campaign is responsible for ensuring that Active Campaign customers and partners experienced the same high quality of customer experience and value regardless of where they are located. Welcome, Chris. Great to have you here as well. Well, last but not least, et who has not heard or read about at over the last year, et has taken the industry by storm through her friendly tone and willingness to share her knowledge and experience. She is one of localisations rising stars being recently nominated for the language industry Person of the Year. He currently leads international product for cenc, an ed tech platform where she's building its international platform to enable growth. She champions localization transformation into a strategic function and has been featured at industry conferences and podcasts. Welcome at a massive pleasure to have you here. Now, let me briefly introduce the sessions topic. I'll start by sharing the classic definition of ROI return on investment. What return on investment, this controversial concept that makes localizations. Folks head spin. In its basic definition, ROI is a fairly simple and straightforward concept. It's a financial concept of investment performance. So in its classic definition, essentially, ROI is an indicator that shows to which extent a specific business produces gain from something that they've invested. It's calculated as a simple ratio between profit or loss obtained after the investment. And the investment itself. It's basically a percentage. Now, imagine that you bought a house for $100,000, you rent it for two years, at $10,000 per year. And at the end of year two, just to make it simple to make things simple, you sell it for the same amount you bought 100,000. So you obtain $120,000 of total revenue, and you've invested 100,000 US dollars, your profit is 20,000. US dollars, divide 20 by 100. There you go. 20%, ROI. It's that simple. I think we all can agree that in its essence, it's a straightforward concept, and very intuitive to calculate, I guess. Now, this takes us to the starting point of our discussion, and also the title of the panel. Now being such an easily quantifiable concept that's applied across many industries, many activities, what is so specific about our industry about localization industry that prevents good return on investment measurement? Why is localization? Or why sort of a voyage into the unknown? I would like to give the floor to Carrie. Can you hear me? What are your thoughts about this? Yes. Okay.

Carrie Fischer 07:25
I don't know. Is it really that hard? I don't think it's, it's prevents good ROI measurement, I think it depends on a few varying factors. And you might need to adapt your calculation depending on the company and the maturity of the company. CSA wrote at least six different papers on this topic. And they have something called a global revenue forecaster, in which ROI is one of the key factors. So there are good tools out there to help you figure it out, and good people as well. I think it might be difficult to measure sometimes, because some people may not know exactly what to measure, or what data to take into account when figuring out ROI. And to add on top of that complexity is knowing where your company is, in your global adventures, and you're just starting out. Have you been in international markets for a while? Where do you land on the localization maturity model? That's important to take into account, I think, when calculating ROI. When your company is kind of new to international expansion, you kind of have to put a stake in the when I was with Hyperion solutions, the CFO took my recommendation of an ROI of 10 times for markets we were already in and had been in for a while. And then emerging markets like Greece and Turkey for us, which were emerging. We lowered the ROI to account for that low initial market penetration. We knew we had to localize to compete and we were willing to make that investment. I think another varying factor is what kind of business you have. at Subway, we don't think about localization ROI. We don't it's not taken into account. When we look at going into new markets, we focus on a country or region, figure out where to put the restaurants and open them. Localization ROI discussions don't happen. We just do it as part of entering a new market. I still calculate them as one of my data points for my personal knowledge. But our ROI is so incredibly high. It's really not a meaningful metric. But it is it was when I was in software and ecommerce business. That doesn't mean I can't measure it. But it does. I do think it matters what type of company and business you're in.

Rodrigo Cristina 09:50
That is a very, very good, very, very good and probably different approach from and take from Chris's.

Chris Englund 09:59
Well, actually I could pick Couple a little bit on what Kerry was saying, because I think ROI is a fine abstract concept. And in full disclosure to everyone listening some of it from Rico's thought provoking remarks are new to my ears now. But as I was hearing you speak Rodrigo and thinking about ROI being so easy to measure, it occurs to me that it's probably not the whole, the whole question, something that we're not taking into account when we talk about ROI, or a lot of the other factors that businesses use to determine what is a worthy investment candidate. And when you're speaking of that house example. For instance, one major omission that I that I feel is ever present for us when we're looking at localizing marketing campaigns or adding new languages to fuel international growth are some of the other effects and benefits of localization. And I know we'll talk about that a little later. But when comparing it against all of the other things that we could be using money for it, Active Campaign, opportunity cost really looms very large. So given the chance, I can show a really impressive localization ROI on just about any investment that you, Mr. VP of Finance, gives me to spend with a vendor, I'm very clever at this. And I'm able to find just the right metric that can show that this $55 spent on localizing a mere tweet into a German language netted us millions of dollars in revenue, I think the problem will be is when the VP of Finance says, Well, how do you capture the opportunity cost of your team not working on a more impactful project? In this? Also, when you say it was just $55? Can you? Can you tell me? What component of that $55 is you, Chris, as overhead and your salary? And so I think ROI has the risk of reducing the complexity of a business decision into something that may not capture exactly what is of interest to the person that we're discussing localization with. So to bring this to a conclusion, I think what I've noticed is that sometimes what I'm selling isn't what my business partner is buying. I'm selling this concept may be the opportunity of making, you know, greater conversions than a marketing campaign. But maybe what my business stakeholder is buying is actually the pride and prestige of being able to say we launched that campaign and that language. And so I think sometimes ROI, so I think ROI is great, a great metric, and it's easy to devise, I think the real part is deciding how we capture what is the investment and the return? And how do we ensure that we're on the same page about it, so that when I come back with that great calculation, you believe that is the true impact of what I'm delivering?

Rodrigo Cristina 13:32
That's some very, very good point. So we are actually finding out that the simple calculator calculations that I came up with, in the example, they don't really close the subject at what do you think about this? How hards? What how hard you find, whenever you have to discuss her why, with your localization stakeholders, and why do you think it's so sort of complicated?

Iti Sahai 14:07
Um, well, initial thoughts on ROI itself as a term as a concept, it's very focused on throughput. And language, as we know, it is very organic, it's very evolving, it needs to be adapted, along with a product and services to the region that we are catering to, to the region we're going after, right and just having a throughput metric to measure the success is not doing justice to the work that we do, and also not even capturing the true essence of how we are measuring success. So the criteria for success, my opinion needs to be paid, determined and defined. And that that could be it could differ depends on what is the eventual outcome. We're looking to drive from our localization activity itself, is it that you know, we're looking to to increase our discoverability are our acquisition or our customer retention? What is it that we're focusing on determines our success criteria, and then we launch a language to then measure the outcome, right. And that's how it sequence and it all sort of ties together. Because International is a cohesive narrative, it is very horizontal, it is not just one person or one team, it is a team sport, it's literally everyone needs to come together, to bring it to fruition to bring it to life to have an effective go to market. So having that that conversation beforehand is critical to the success of our our, like localization function and our ties into our market effort.

Rodrigo Cristina 15:47
Now, very, very, very, very good. Very good set of points there. I think Chris touched, one of the questions were started touching one of the questions that I that I have, as a segue of the first one, which is, you know, are we really considering when we attempt to measure ROI? Are we really considering the true impact and value that our industry and localization activities generate, you know, for an enterprise? Or are we just scratching the surface of what we are analyzing, or even more like what Chris was mentioning, are we picking and choosing the right flavors, to make a fantastic sandwich just for the analogy with subway? Who, Chris, at carry?

Chris Englund 16:45
Well, I would handle a pickup on what et was, was just alluding to some very astute observations that lead me recognize that it's very fun to talk about the return on investment of launching a new marketing campaign. It's a discrete effort that leads to actual dollars $1 sold, right, I can use my marketing automation platform, Google Analytics, hosted BI tools to be able to say this campaign netted us this many dollars. But then I but then, two weeks later, I'm going to have to pick up the project for localizing our terms of service into French and Italian. And now I've invited this question of return a return on investment on every little thing that I might do in localization. So kinda occurs to me is I especially as I like contrasting with carries example of subway needing to localize kind of almost like price of admission for markets or etc, talking about this fluid nature of how language is really something that spans a lot of your, you know, your entire business, like it incurred occurs to me that one problem we have is we like to talk about the ROI of an individual project, talking about it on, you know, on a full program basis can get a little bit challenging. And we also need to ensure that we haven't limited the conversation about why do we localize to simply it made us more dollars, because sometimes, it helps us retain more dollars, sometimes it just makes the customer happy. Sometimes it just makes our brand better perceived in that market. Sometimes, if we're honest, it just keeps us from getting sued and brought to court in that country. And we need to, we need to acknowledge some of these things. Because I think if you look across the business of Active Campaign, different business stakeholders care about localization for wildly different reasons. For a head of marketing, it honestly could be a point of pride. For a head of sales, it could be a point of revenue or lead generation, for our for our attorney or a guy, you should always make good friends with your legal counsel and finance people first, as we all know, for our legal people, it is, you know, just not getting sued. And so we need to understand I think the economics of of the business and required reading for my localization teams has always been David Scott's SAS, economics, SAS metrics that you should measure. It's on his blog for entrepreneurs and David Skok is a venture capitalist at matrix capital partners and he talks about so at least in my field, right, which is the SAS software business, what is important to making a successful SAS business because part of its increasing revenue, but a hell of a lot of it is keeping that revenue and keeping customers and was happy as well. So if I can, if I can visualize that as a localizer, I can make some better arguments about why we need to localize certain content.

Rodrigo Cristina 20:12
Very, very good take, I think, I am going to pass the ball now to ET. Because I'm assuming that the the needs in subway, given what Carrie explained the beginning to, you know pick and choose items to measure ROI is not as you know, as mandatory as is probably for it is a given, you know, the budget is slightly different, I'm assuming. So what is your take on this 180?

Iti Sahai 20:45
Yeah, and this is yet another reason why I want to be, I want to grow up and be Carrie Fisher because I don't want to have problems when I grew up. But jokes aside, I feel for and I truly believe that for any value write any return on investment, any sort of metric that we're trying to gather and put together, there is the, the need to be in the problem space. And to me to own the problem as as opposed to just coming up with the solutions. And for localization. And for the work that we do. It is identifying whose problem are we looking to solve? is localizing this particular campaign or this, you know, piece of content going to solve a business problem? Or is it solving a customer problem, which invariably ties into what value? It's is it bringing? Is it a business value? Is it a customer value, and when I say that, I truly mean that is, if it's a business problem that we're solving, right? It's the cost of doing business, it is something as a table stakes, we just have to do be at legal terms of use, you know, compliance related documentation that we need to have, in order to be able to go to market, there is just no argument or conversation around that. Whereas if it is a customer problem, which is perhaps, you know, more tied into the ability to use a product documentation, things like that, and better branding more, you know, culturally fit content that resonates with our user, which over time, not just facilitates our adoption, but our retention as well, and our overall customer satisfaction and less, you know, less tickets, when it comes to customer service or customer success, then that is us solving a customer problem and, you know, bringing more value to the customer in their experience. And that becomes more of a negotiable and more of a discussion within the organization as to well what value does it truly have. But then again, there are certain tools that you can then use in order to illustrate that, that excellence and that need for localization, you know, in whichever area that you choose to choose to, you know, navigate and negotiate with the business. But more often than not, in my experience, it has been the inverse, where the business is, in fact, forcefully arguing the need to localize because they see that it's a need, you know, to go to market, and to be able to be able to even do business and market and so usability feasibility, adaptable, you know, the different components of product market fit, which quick service restaurants, I think, are the trailblazers in that, in that sense that even with subway being able to or somewhere McDonald's or any other quick service restaurant, being able to, you know, have boots on the ground in a local presence, they wouldn't really be able to succeed unless, you know, just having the menu localized and translated, wouldn't really wouldn't really allow you on its own self to be successful in market, right? You need to adapt the menu to the local flavor, quite literally. And, and whatever that means for your own product and services. So there is that, you know, overarching conversation, in terms of the business value versus customer value, and what are you truly looking to solve?

Rodrigo Cristina 24:10
Very, very good points. Very, very good take on that carry. Do you want to add something? That's special flavor?

Carrie Fischer 24:20
We don't sell beef in India. I don't know. Without localization, we wouldn't be the largest QSR in the world. And the menu is the biggest showcase of that. So ETS, right? And that's, that's why it's not. You want to be like me, too. You know, you don't. I'm lucky in that I don't have really have to deal with ROI. Really, for subway. It's just, it's a non issue. And that was the first time ever because in software and an E commerce every other business that I've been in, it's been quite prominent. So it's interesting. I still it's a good topic.

Rodrigo Cristina 24:58
Thank you. Thank you carry on. Mmm, I will now go to the next question. I'll start with a slightly controversial point. I think in my opinion, our industry is not great at all, in marketing itself, in communicating itself. And it's and the value that it that it adds. And to be very honest, I've think we've been doing a great job over probably the last couple of decades in ostracizing ourselves. Which seems a bit contradictory because one of our goals is to actually build bridges between people markets, products and services. Now, can ROI. Because, again, it's a numbers language, whether we like it or not, can it be a means to facilitate facilitate communication between localization and non localization stakeholders, therefore, exposing the value of what we do as an industry and what we bring to the table as a organizational function? So I think, I will go for carry now it's like a rant, I have a randomizer. Now, a mental randomizer. Gonna go for carry now?

Carrie Fischer 26:32
Go for me, okay. You know, taking ROI, I think in its simplest form. Yes. I think ROI discussions is really how I connected with our C suites. Again, back when I was with Hyperion solutions, you know, after holding costume parties, and brown bag lunches, and presenting in front of anyone who would listen to me, I also had people's attention, because I had one of the biggest budgets at a period and the C suite, wanted to know what that money was going towards. Again, depending on the type of company ROI can be a conversation starter between you and the C suite. On the one hand, they might ask, Hey, why are we spending all this money on Country X when we're not seeing higher sales? And your answer could delve into some of the deeper issues maybe that aren't being addressed? Like, well, maybe our products aren't really that global ready? Maybe we're not using effective sales techniques in country X, and we're not marketing our product in that country, effectively, etc. And then on the other hand, you know, having conversations about ROI does allow us to showcase our value. It allows us to show the C suite how much money we're saving them by using a TMS or MT or any other idea that we've implemented, in my opinion, it's an opportunity and an opening.

Rodrigo Cristina 28:02
You did it. But I managed to dodge that bullet. Chris. What do you think about this one?

Chris Englund 28:18
It's funny when, when you were leading up to it by asking that we do a great job of ostracizing ourselves. I kind of reflect on some behaviors I engaged in my own self joining Active Campaign is the first person ever to lead or take on localization of the company. And what I, what I did was people would we would there would be these conversations at the executive level about something related to some country or language or currency. And somebody invariably at the table would say, Hey, I think that's something that localization can take on, right? And I would sit there go, oh, no, no, no, no, no, we now we see, we don't do core corporate tax structures. For you know, multinational organization, what we actually do is just language stuff. We do languages. And instinctively, I would like, always try to clarify with a lot of people about what localization actually is. Whereas for many, many people localization was an entirely new concept. And I had the opportunity to kind of define what localization really is an active campaign. And so we kind of have a running joke within our team that if anyone asks, Is this something that localization can do? We should say? Yes, it even if it's definitely not something that we're yet experienced for that that's the American hubris in my cultural contribution to my multicultural team. But I think it's worthy because to mention this because actually, I think we unfortunate Didn't we do interject too often? And say, Oh no, let you know this is we do language language services. I mean, I have an opinion on the international customer experience. And yes, I know a little bit about how it currencies are important to increasing the customer experience. And oh, yeah, I know about how they use whatsapp in Latin America. I worked in marketing. So that's always the one I get a lot of mileage out of WhatsApp, and how the Chinese don't use email. And that's why we can't expand it to China. I'm getting a little waylaid. But like, the point is, why do we do that to ourselves when people come and say like, Hey, look, is this a localization problem? Why do I answer why do I feel it? My instinctual answer is? Oh, you know, that's, that's something our SVP of sales should probably decide as to whether or not we move into that country that that wouldn't be for localization. Because I think we have an opportunity to talk about this from the perspective of like, the International user experience we have, we have perspective of like working on a day to day basis with people from a variety of different cultural backgrounds, we have access to regional experts. I know I'm not answering your question. I'm answering the question I wanted to. But anyway, so can ROI be a means to facilitate communication? Absolutely. And we can start to broaden it by talking about the return being our international growth in general. And so we're not just talking about how our German language localization, this campaign netted us X number of MQLs, or closed opportunities, we're talking about how in general localizing has allowed us to keep up with 55% of our revenue being international, over the course of growing from 90,000 to 150,000 customers in the last year and a half. And we kind of just, you know, we kind of want to leave it at that level. Because the impact of localization is beyond just the transformation of language.

Rodrigo Cristina 32:12
Totally. Great. Thank you very much for your thoughts. Et.

Iti Sahai 32:20
Yeah, no, in terms of ostracizing, if you mean that we like to stand out from the crowd because of our fabulous uniqueness. And yes, we were self proclaimed nerds. And we love what we do. And we take great pride in coming up with alpha numerals is, you know, unique terminology that only we in our inner circle can understand. Absolutely. We love that stuff. We thrive on it. And we, you know, carry the flag high when we, you know, march ahead with localization and everything that has to do with what we do, and telling people how nerdy we are. And there's a lot of lot of profound joy in doing so. But at the same time, aside from just being unique in the value that we bring to the business, I think a lot of it has to do with just moving forward in terms of how the role of localization is evolving across different organizations and different kinds of businesses, is there is this need for conjunction, and what I mean by that is, everyone in the business is driving towards one common goal, whatever that Northstar is, if it is having more revenue, or more visibility or more retention, whatever that is, your Northstar, everyone is driving towards that. And I as a localization person, I as an international product leader have to align with that goal, because it is the common purpose it is, you know, the sense of belonging all across the business, and across different business units, is something that we need to drive and champion. And when we think of international, there might be a few folks who might be sort of the point of contact for that right in the business, but eventually something to work. Chris alluded to that. We don't do that, you know, in localization, I just do language services, or translation services, we need to step away from that mindset and on the problem, okay, well, here's the problem that we as a business are looking to solve when it when it comes to local currency in our product and how those payment gateways look like. I can help let me connect the people let me connect the dots and think bring the right sort of resources in a room to have that conversation because I'm the face for international because that is tied to a lot of what I do. Right and a lot of what I love and a lot of what brings me joy. So even being that that person in the face of international is important and there is great pride to be had in that as well. But more importantly it is aligning with the business purpose in terms of what we do You. And eventually, you know, I like to say that we are in the business of languages. And in the language business, we need to understand, we need to be aware of what the other person understands in terms of the language that they like to hear and they can comprehend, right. And when it's talking to somebody in legal perhaps it's just table stakes content, it is a non negotiable. When it comes to someone in marketing, you can speak to more of like an empathy and you know, user behavior and a brand value in market and region. So adapting your message to who your stakeholder is and how you're reaching out to them to align with the problems that they're looking to solve for the business is the key to localization to you know, even having better metrics to then position when we calculate our ROI.

Rodrigo Cristina 35:56
Thank you. Thank you very much, et Igor. Well, you have a question.

Igor Afanasayev 36:02
No, I don't, I don't actually but I'm here as a gentle reminder that we want to start answering some questions from the audience. And we have some. So you can go back to the q&a tab and basically read the questions that you personally like.

Rodrigo Cristina 36:17
Sure, sure. I personally like one question that has been brought up by Marina by Marina Grayson Pharrell, many companies ignore cost savings, even though Marina can show 100. And in some cases, a million dollars of yearly savings through the use of a translation memory technology, because it's not directly or at least whomever is analyzing, that understands that localization is not directly generating money. How to overcome that opinion? And, and, and show and show value. Who wants to tackle this one? Carrie?

Carrie Fischer 37:15
Sorry, 80 Do you want to go? Right? So I had that problem. Subway, I was the first four years ago, I started at Subway. And I'm the first globalization person they had lobia, it was willy nilly, everyone was doing their own thing. No TM, no one vendor being at whatever rank, no savings, there was no visibility, and no transparency whatsoever. So that's what I feel I brought to Subway and it consisted of one slide. And it was the yearly savings of TM reuse. You know, I mean, it's it's something as simple as that. Because the people in the whole, you know, subway ecosystem. This is not their specialty. They haven't been doing this for 25 years, like the rest of us. Yeah. And they don't know. And so I for me, Marina, it was it was showing visibility and transparency into not only the process, you know, what, what am I doing? What value am I bringing, how much money I'm saving the company every single year, by simply having a centralized TMS and being a centralized function within subway. And I'll share with anyone who listens, go ahead at

Iti Sahai 38:37
just to add to what Carrie said, I mean, the fundamental business 101 Is you are you have a job at a company, either because you are generating revenue, or you're saving cost. That's literally the only reason while you ever have a job at a company, there is no third reason to it. And the more you are able to articulate one or the other is, you know, the better for you. Because either you're eventually showcasing to your leadership and in your role and your function, whatever that might be, that you're saving cost for the company and creating efficiencies and having the right sort of tool tools and plays and processes in place to save time, money, whatever that looks like, as opposed to generating revenue and it doesn't necessarily always have to be about you know, generating more revenue. So it's how you engage with leadership on that conversation and you're able to articulate your value is what is important. Chris Yes,

Rodrigo Cristina 39:43
do you have to add or a lot of bits to this one at the end? Just a tiny bit.

Chris Englund 39:50
Well, you could go or I could go well, how about say it is? Reference ABS like business basics that something like TM is a classic case of valuation of an intangible asset. So I guess we're talking all in accounting terms in today's session. And there's a lot of different approaches to valuation of an intangible asset. But think about things like how does subway, for instance, value a brand, like just just the brand has some value? It's on financial statement, it's it's actually reported to, to stakeholders, to investors, we can kind of do the same with a lot of our localization investment as well. One thing that I had thought of in a previous role where TM was a little bit larger, more valuable was, what is the annuity value of a TM over time? And how does that actually generate us? Revenue today? You know, averting costs over time, and what how can this value here. And, you know, I think valuing this for the actual dollar value is very, very helpful to people. It's funny how the math behind that dollar equation becomes so unimportant, once the dollar value is actually presented to, to your stakeholders, and your aim is worth $350,000 this year, next year, we can we can increase the value or actually degrade the value a little bit. And over time it over the next five years, we can expect to get this out of out of cement. And so the other way that we can look at it too, is look at our present translation costs. And say, some of what I'm paying for today and translation costs. Actually an investment into that annuity that I shall recoup and reap over time, I'm putting enough of my colleagues in the same room. With typewriters, it's kind of like a monkeys example, they're gonna start saying the same things. And maybe that was the worst of Shakespeare, but you know, what, you know, you end up saying the same darn thing across all your marketing and all your health talks, that we would be fools not to reuse this right. So, putting $1 price tag on it has been helpful to me. Thank you,

Rodrigo Cristina 42:26
thanks, Chris. Two thoughts about that, I think what you just said highlights the fact that you know, ROI can definitely be used as you know, communication facilitator between you know, people that might not speak the same language in localization. And second thing, talking about savings and, and finance. Whenever you take a look at for example, an investment valuation methodology like the net present value, in the cash flow numerator, you have, basically the cash flow and the cash flow accounts for savings as well. So, savings are in reality considered by modern old, ever, you know, everlasting finance, part of the cash flow, they are considered cash. So, Marina, its cash. And if you don't, if they don't know that it's cash, you tell them to read investment valuation by the medulla. And next, next question that I find very, very interesting as well. And this was, this one was posed by Katherine Bosman, to what extent do you think that the commodity common deep ties ation, commoditization of language services, generally, per word pricing, et cetera? Get in the way of localization being seen as an investment rather than a cost center? So very, very good question. Thank you, Catherine. insightful, as usual, wants to take on this one, et perhaps.

Iti Sahai 44:11
Throw me to the wolves and I'm just getting excellent question. And I've spoken about this earlier, at the previous live from home, where I did a presentation on how to reimagine localization as a strategic function. And part of that mindset is essentially to you know, position yourself as a localizer as a localization team within the company as a growth enabler as a revenue enabler as opposed to a cost center and and the more problems you begin owning right in the in the company and the challenges a business is facing and how language and localization could potentially unlock it and will really tie into Elton and being seen as an investment as opposed to a cost because the moment you start enabling growth, you are an investment. And the moment you think of yourself, as we just come, you know, way down in the workflow and the funnel, we just, you know, move projects and give translations to the business in the very basic sense of what we do, then it is a cost and, but I think overall, what is really helpful in even having that conversation with your stakeholders or with your manager or with your leadership is really is really that shift in the way we think. And we align around the business goals, and, and eventually measuring what success and determining what success looks like for us. And being that you know, growth mindset, sort of a team, which I think is, is important in even having that conversation because cost per word can be can be a metric, which makes sense to a lot of folks within the localization world world itself. But anyone outside of that space, when you talk to the engineering team, or you know, the sales folks, it doesn't really resonate. So it's also, you know, adapting that in terms of the value for the business and the outcomes, we're looking to drive, etc. I feel that's, you know, that's the key to success there.

Rodrigo Cristina 46:27
Chris

Chris Englund 46:32
I'm conflicted on this one, because I think it depends on the context we're talking in, I'm in this really credibly fortunate position, that Active Campaign, more than 55% of our revenue comes from outside the United States. And I think that this question is, I, I joke that my job that, in general, I shouldn't joke so publicly. It's my job in general is explaining the rest of the world to Americans. And I don't think that this you guys know you have that job, too. And I think that we wouldn't be having, like, I appreciate the question. It's a very valid question. Of course, not, not at all to reduce it. But like, I think if we were in a company, where if we were a company based in Quebec, near from, or if we were a company based in, in Belgium, concept, localization being seen as a cost would be totally impossible to view, you wouldn't imagine us a SAS tech company that's VC funded in a place like that, to have a serious business model in which Dutch is the only language that is offered, in these cases, offering at least the English language and then the French language, German language, are going to be seen as your only pathway to expanding outside of your side of your home country. And so I don't know if it's actually this price per word, I wouldn't think that that is what turns us into a commoditization, I think it's a it's a cultural perception within the company about like, how very fundamental level outside of the United States or outside of the English speaking world, the preferred language of businesses, the native language of your users, and being in talking about it in those terms, helps to like, bring this back to a point of that better and better understanding about localization being your primary problem for a lot of tech companies like, like my own, though, is that we see a lot of success. And we're in 170 countries around the world, in languages that use languages we don't localize into. And so the really, the really challenging thing is we have a sizable install base users in places like, let's imagine Taiwan, yeah, with about five or 600 customers there, I imagine and dives into Chinese. And so the real challenging thing is like convincing your stakeholders within your own organization that like you haven't checked for the Taiwanese market quite yet. Like you're only dealing with the early adopters who are willing to do business with you in English. And so then I think, if we want to get serious about this market, we want to localize into Mandarin, then, then it does get it does get construed as a cast. So I think the most, the best way to get around this is to talk about like, how, in order to be successful in any market outside the English speaking world. You have to speak the language of the country that you're working with it and that it's an investment because it's the only way to be successful in that market. So I don't If that answers exactly the Katherine's question, but I guess I would redirect that question in and talk about this in terms of the markets that localization opens up.

Carrie Fischer 50:12
I'm sure it helps Gary, please, sometimes we don't have that luxury. And we've got procurement people breathing down our necks, saying, What the hell, you know, this company offers 15 cents a word, and you're going with somebody with 17 cents or what, you know, it happens. I've been there. And the way I got around, it was, you know, I'm not paying for words, you realize that we're using a human being right, and that they have to make a living. And by the way, they've worked for us for the last few years and given us outstanding quality. So that's why I pay two cents more than this guy. Sometimes, that's what it comes down to. It's really tough, you know, when you don't partner with procurement. And you need to, I've been in that situation, I've also been in this weird situation that I am now where I have complete pretty much autonomy right to, to choose whomever, based on who's doing the best job and all that comes into effect. But it's, it's It's tough when you have someone who doesn't understand the industry, which is basically everyone but us in charge of the purse strings. So that's what I would bring into it, Katherine, it's just the human element, that we're paying people, not robots. We're not paying for boxes, right? We're not paying for keyboards. We're paying for people.

Rodrigo Cristina 51:47
On that, last, on that last point, we're paying people and not robots. I'm going to go to the next to question they have, which is, you know, localization is able to generate ROI through opening new markets. And this is sort of the traditional view of return investment in local versus traditional. Now, with the with the advent of machine translation technology, a higher or I would say, well, a higher end, a different ROI is now achieved, as products and services reach faster the global marketplace. Now, you know, probably the first question is, do you agree with this? And have you actually seen this impacting your localization operation? And it's, you know, perceived ROI, let's talk about perceived ROI, because we'd have many multiple ways of, of looking at at ROI. Maybe, Chris, now, his seems his head is down. So yeah, that's it.

Chris Englund 53:06
Just thinking because it makes thought provoking statements. I'll once again answer the question I want, which is, I mean, I think the real value of MT is that it is increasing the amount of content that I can bring forward in a language amount, I think many of us when we reflect on say something that is like a medium value, let's say like user documentation, just over the course of the last 510 years, like what we choose to localize, has definitely expanded in scope. And so in that regard, I think that the return is expanded because we are bringing more content to market at an affordable price, because we're able to give it a lower cost to them to something I think in that way, like, that's the real value of MT is like, I could do more with the similar investment as before.

Rodrigo Cristina 54:07
Perhaps quick views of Barry and et I think Igor is looking from above.

Carrie Fischer 54:16
I know literally, he's in my upper right hand corner. So Gary Morris

Chris Englund 54:26
apps,

Carrie Fischer 54:27
yeah. Okay. I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure what was happening. Okay. So yeah, like, you know, again, it's, oh, boy, we don't, we don't think about ROI, in terms of localization. But I would completely agree with Chris that allows me to do a lot more content a lot faster. So for me, it's about showing the savings and showcasing you know, again, the value that I bring to the company and it's, you know, I think Sun Microsystems says have used empty for over 12 years. I remember Melissa Biggs presenting on it way back when. So I know it saved them time and money and therefore increasing their ROI. It's it's, it is a conversation point. For many, but for subway it for me it just Allah, it allows me to do more with less. There we go.

Igor Afanasayev 55:26
We have a lot of time. So if you want to add something, you'd have a chance to do so.

Iti Sahai 55:31
Okay, thank you. I must apologize for my bad humor. It was an excellent question that Catherine put. And I enjoyed answering that as well. I love Katherine. But that was just my bad humor didn't mean anything by it. Anyways, going back to the question, I really feel that you know, like any tool that comes to market or comes as an invention comes about as an invention, it creates an efficiency in allowing the folks who interact with the tool towards the throughput. For instance, when a calculator was invented, it perhaps helped or supported the accountants in in being more efficient in the throughput of their jobs, it didn't eliminate the need for an accountant to be there, right. So machine translation has the opportunity to be seen in that same light it, it helps with our throughput, it helps create efficiencies and more content to market and more time perhaps. But then again, there's a time and a place for that use, and how we choose to implement it, there is no way or no world in which I see that MT would truly be able to replace humans in in the workflow of localization because language as we are having this conversation here out in the world is actually evolving in a chatroom somewhere or in a conference room somewhere. So language is very organic, and it's constantly evolving or devolving. But there is there is an organic element to it. And there is no machine in real time that could perhaps capture and eliminate the need for human interaction in that process. But definitely there is opportunity to you know, implement it in in your workflow, depending on your use case.

Rodrigo Cristina 57:20
Thank you all. Thank you, Igor, for keeping us on check as well. I think it's definitely very, very useful or else we will be continuing this conversation throughout the evening here in Manchester, and probably the afternoon and mornings somewhere else. It's been an absolute pleasure. And I hope to see you all in the networking session. If you're not fed up of me. Take care guys.

Igor Afanasayev 57:45
Yeah, I just want to thank everyone on the panel, every every person who had a chance to ask the question, and yeah, have a great afternoon, evening or night, wherever you're located. Thank you so much.