How an E-Commerce Brand Halved Time to Market and Scaled Worldwide

In a recent webinar hosted by Comactiva Language Partner, Annica Heuermann, Head of KAM & Client Strategy, and Sofia Johansson, Localization Success Manager, shared the inside story of how a global e-commerce brand overhauled its translation and localization processes and halved its time to market.

Expanding into new markets opens doors to growth,  but it also brings plenty of challenges.

This e-commerce giant had big plans to grow from 10 to 15 markets, creating a huge demand for multilingual content across campaigns, marketing, and platforms like webshops, CMS, and PIM.

Their existing translation methods were slow and expensive, prompting them to initially experiment with AI tools on their own, only to run into a new set of challenges.

Challenges with Unmanaged AI Translations

High Costs and Limited Resources:  Even after investing in an AI translation tool, the company struggled with rising costs. Managing localization tasks demanded significant time and internal resources, especially as the AI often produced low-quality translations that required careful review and correction.

Inconsistent Quality and Brand Tonality: Maintaining consistent brand tonality and quality across all projects was a struggle.

Complexity of Localization: Finding the right level of localization and adaptation for diverse target markets proved to be a very complex process.

Slow Speed to Market: Managing communication for 15 markets and having it ready in time was a constant battle, hindering speed to market.

Lack of Specialized Expertise: While they possessed some AI expertise, they lacked in-house knowledge specific to localization and how to effectively leverage AI in this domain.

A Tailored Approach to Localization Success

Comactiva Language Partner has been operating in the localization field for nearly 30 years. By tackling these challenges with a structured approach,  focused on careful analysis, asset preparation, and streamlined workflows,  we built a sustainable process that reduced costs and cut down the time our clients spend managing translations.

Current Situation Analysis: A thorough analysis of the company's existing situation, identifying pain points, understanding current systems, and determining which AI-based solution would best fit their needs. 

Asset Preparation: One key step was preparing “assets”, i.e. -translation memories, glossaries, and other validated language data gathered from web pages, brochures, and product manuals. While our client already had assets for some existing languages, we helped them build new ones for their target markets. These assets are essential for improving translation quality.

Smart Workflow Setup: Comactiva optimized the client's content localization through intelligent workflow design. We analyzed their content types to build efficient, customized processes, including developing custom AI models built on the client's quality-assured language data.

Our platform integrated seamlessly with the client's systems, facilitating various levels of translation. For high-stakes content like marketing campaigns, a distinct workflow with human validators ensured quality.

Incorporating AI: Custom-built AI engines served as the foundation for projects, with human involvement adjusted based on content type and validation needs.

Advanced AI tools integrated into the platform eased the workload for validators by automating routine checks and, in some cases, removing the need for human validation altogether. This significantly reduced the time spent on internal reviews.

Outsourced Quality & Localization Management: A key element of success was the outsourcing of localization management to Comactiva. This ensured a dedicated resource responsible for workflow, processes, quality framework, and overall strategy.

Overcoming Implementation Obstacles

Implementing a new solution is rarely without its hurdles. Initial expectations for instant results were high, but fine-tuning the AI and achieving the right tonality takes time and patience.

Challenges also arose with translation quality for new languages where pre-approved language data was unavailable. Comactiva addressed this by building new terminology, glossaries, and language data, and by involving local market validators to improve quality.

Results After Implementation

With this modernized, future-proof approach to translations, the results have been remarkable:

Cost Control: A significant 50% reduction in translation costs, attributed to better control over the entire process.

Speed to Market: The streamlined process has led to a noticeable increase in speed to market.

IT Security: The client now has full control over their data within a secure system.

High Quality and Brand Consistency: A centralized process provides better control and visibility into workflows, resulting in improved quality and consistent brand messaging. Only controlled and approved data is saved, benefiting both AI and traditional workflows.

Time Savings: The internal resources of the e-commerce company have saved 60% of their time, allowing them to focus on their core competencies.

Scalability: The implemented solution is easily scalable for adding new markets, languages, or workflows.

Long-term Partnership

The collaboration is an ongoing process of refinement and building on language data as new products enter the market.

There are also exciting discussions about leveraging the curated language data for other internal AI initiatives, such as creating AI chatbots and other AI solutions.

This business case demonstrates that with the right strategy, expertise, and a willingness to adapt, companies can achieve significant improvements in their localization efforts, leading to cost savings, increased efficiency, and stronger brand consistency across all markets.

Are you ready to modernize your translation processes and achieve similar results?

Book a free consultation to review your current processes and explore how we can help you optimize your global communications.

 

Annica Heuermann

Head of KAM & Client Strategy