Globalization via Performance & Maintenance

KAREN LAKE: Janet, can you give us an overview of what eTranslate offers to the business community and in particular to the ebusiness community?

JANET HEPPNER: We're an enterprise level solutions provider. We help companies build their global communications infrastructure through three areas: professional services, technology and localization services. We work seamlessly with companies to translate their Internet business models into global markets. Companies can also use our services to focus on consumers in the US who are more comfortable speaking a language besides English.

KAREN LAKE: One of the things I read broke globalization issues down into four areas. I'd like to focus on those today. They are performance, maintenance, control and content integrity. When I say "performance," what does that mean to you, Janet?

JANET HEPPNER: That means how fast your website can go global. With eTranslate, all of our technology is about simplification and performance. The quicker we can get somebody global the better. There are lots of things to look at though, and that's where our consulting services come in. For example, it requires a lot more characters for the same English word in German. So we would take a look at how we could we performance-tweak that content using our technology to get it done more quickly. Quicker also translates into less expensive.

KAREN LAKE: Janet, with regard to maintenance, you talk of project management, notification and tracking. Talk to us about how that would be done manually and what your solution is and how that differs.

JANET HEPPNER: Our localization services are supported by the largest network of language professionals. Our language professionals are tested and certified by the Monterrey Institute of International Studies. This insures their knowledge of the languages in their areas of expertise. Using one of our technologies called Ultra, you can manage the translation process. Each document is automatically sent to a translator, then an editor, and finally a proofreader before it is sent back to the client. This three-step process assures that the client's going to receive the best possible translation.

KAREN LAKE: So how would that happen manually? Are most companies that are trying to globalize without going through someone like you doing it all through e-mails - do they publish the English website, send an e-mail to the translator and then the translator sends the translation back in an e-mail to the editor?

JANET HEPPNER: Companies can do this manually. It's very time consuming, and it can also have many errors. Companies that we talk with that have tried to do it manually will usually come back to us to try and figure out how can they start from scratch. In lots of cases we do end up having to start from scratch. How they do it manually is pretty much how you just outlined. They send an e-mail to the translator who would translate it into that local language, and then it's done. The challenge with that is it's now static information. Each time their product changes and they want to make a change to the website, it causes another e-mail to be sent in order to be changed again. By utilizing our technology, you'll know when something has been changed to the content, and you can automatically route it through so you can translate it. It goes back to performance. It's much quicker and it's easier to maintain over the long term. You want a control over the whole globalization process.

Globalization, Centralized Control & Content Integrity

KAREN LAKE: Let's move to control. One of the things you seem to promote is centralized control rather than local control, and everybody has a different take on that. Can you talk about why you push centralization?

JANET HEPPNER: Yes, that's through the experience we are having with many of the Fortune 500 companies right now. At the beginning of the globalization experience, they were letting each country localize into their own areas. However, you have a lot of redundancy, which produces cost. What we're seeing now is that companies want control to be more centralized, from one central location - maybe it's their headquarters or maybe it's wherever their information is put into a database to begin with. They like to have that centralized control. Utilizing our technology, it's sent out into the various countries to really localize it. It's much easier then to maintain over the long term, because as things are changed in the main database, they can be localized for each of the different countries.

KAREN LAKE: When you say "localized," that means I'm making a change to a centralized database, but then you're talking about the next step being localized. What does that mean?

JANET HEPPNER: Let me give you an example. When Chevy came out with their automobile called the Chevy Nova, in Spanish "no va" means "no go." So while that name would have been a great thing to put on their website in the US, it would not have been a good thing to put on their website in Spanish. It needed to be localized for that specific region and that word had to be changed to something else. That's what localized means - to make sure that whatever terms you're using in English still have the same kind of meaning in the various languages.

KAREN LAKE: So that leads to what sounds like content integrity, that what it means here is what it means there.

JANET HEPPNER: Exactly.

KAREN LAKE: Something else that's important is the consistent look and feel, and that the core content is the same and has the same look so it looks like the same company. It seems that would be pretty obvious, but apparently very few companies actually have that same look and feel in different languages. Why is that?

JANET HEPPNER: There are good reasons sometimes. Companies like McDonald's want to get the same look and feel around the world. You go into McDonald's anywhere in the world and it feels about the same. That's what many companies are trying to do to with their whole globalization effort, but there's an art to that. That's part of the experience and the help we can provide.

Companies want toolbars across the top and their logo a certain way and in a certain color, but in different countries where that logo is placed or what that logo or color means may be different. For example in China, if you've got the color red around a name, that implies a bad thing is happening to that person or a bad thing is happening to that name. In the US they use red or green as a real positive thing. Green is good in the US, but it's not in some of the Buddhist countries or Israel. Colors mean a lot.

KAREN LAKE: So when you're talking about look and feel, it's beyond just having the same navigation. You have to even worry about your logo and the colors.

JANET HEPPNER: Exactly.

KAREN LAKE: How does McDonalds get away with that? Do they have some kind of localization? Do they not have red when they go to China?

JANET HEPPNER: They do, but that's a little bit different because it's not printed. It's different than a physical presence.

KAREN LAKE: So your globalization process takes you through not only the localization process, but also takes you through the maintenance process so that is more of an automated system than a manual system.

JANET HEPPNER: Absolutely. The whole globalization process can be rather expensive and time consuming. The more we can streamline it, the more we can reduce the overall project cost while maintaining the data integrity, and the better it is for everybody.

Janet's History and Company Culture

KAREN LAKE: Janet, I understand you just became CEO, and you came from SAP and before that IBM. Can you talk about some of the differences that you felt in going from a very, very large company to a smaller company?

JANET HEPPNER: There is a difference in the number of people that actually work in the organizations and that are running around in the different offices around the world. However we're very similar in terms of what we provide to the customers. I think this is the key to sustainability in an organization over the long haul. We provide value to our customers in terms of helping them to increase their sales, helping them to be more productive, helping them to get into international markets, which gives them more revenue, more presence, more brand recognition.

If you take a look at what SAP does, it's very similar. They've got real value that they provide to their customers. You look at what IBM does, you see the same real value. It's interesting that they're very different companies, however I think whenever you go from one company to another and you're going after a value-based offering, there are a lot of similarities. Here at eTranslate we really do touch our customers throughout the entire organization - very much like SAP and IBM do.

KAREN LAKE: What is the cultural difference in meetings, in turn-around times, those kinds of things, in working for a smaller company rather than a larger company?

JANET HEPPNER: We're an international company, so you still have some of the differences of time and language barriers that will come into play just like you do in a larger company. The beauty of a smaller company is that you can make decisions quickly. There aren't as many steps to go through and so if we see something in the market, we can quickly react. We don't have to go through a lot of different committees. That's a real benefit.

Globalization Tips

KAREN LAKE: I read about one of your customers, GE Global eXchange Services. They mentioned they had done a couple of things to make their globalization process easier. One of them was to minimize the use of graphics. Why is that something that would be recommended to somebody that wanted to go global?

JANET HEPPNER: Graphics are something that take a lot of time to translate into another character set. Also graphics are most important in terms of what it means here versus what it means in another country. It's very difficult to localize. What looks like a mailbox to us here, may not be recognized as a mailbox at all to somebody in another country.

KAREN LAKE: Ah, so even if they're not words, the graphics are carrying a communication.

JANET HEPPNER: Right. They've got meaning.

KAREN LAKE: So that communication going to a different country requires that much more work.

JANET HEPPNER: Absolutely. GE, by the way, is probably the best example of a company that's globalizing their overall company today and increasing revenue. You probably saw the recent quote from Jack Welch about their double-digit increase in revenue. They credit a lot of that to their overall globalization strategy. We're working with them right now on five of their different divisions.

KAREN LAKE: Where was their pain? Why did they come to somebody like eTranslate and say, "We need help"?

JANET HEPPNER: In each one of their divisions it's a little different. Global eXchange Services had a unit that needed to achieve multilingual functionality so they needed to have their site in French, English and German. One of the key business challenges revolved around the fact that not all of their seventy-three products and exchange services would sell to every one of their international markets. There are a lot of cultural differences that affect the buying behavior in those markets. The product descriptions had to be culturally localized.

We were called into the project at the beginning. We were able to suggest the best globalization practices including minimizing the use of the graphics, separating some of the translatable text from the code and storing most of the text in a database. Our localization engineers also worked with GE Global eXchange to internationalize their database and prepare their architecture to handle the new languages. Then we developed a test site for them so that they could see how the translations were impacting their site and which applications were really included in their Oracle database. It's a little different for each division. But for every one of them, there's been an impact afterwards.

KAREN LAKE: One of the things you mentioned in the best practices other than minimizing the graphics is separating the text from the code. Why is that important and how difficult of a process is that?

JANET HEPPNER: Separating the text from the code is difficult. It goes back to overall maintenance.

KAREN LAKE: Are you saying that it really requires a database in order for this to work appropriately?

JANET HEPPNER: Right. It allows for easier overall globalization.

KAREN LAKE: Are most of your clients using the same tools or are they using a variety of databases?

JANET HEPPNER: There are a variety of databases. It doesn't matter to us. We're not database dependent.

Design and Globalization Implementation

KAREN LAKE: Would there be some advice that you would give to a small business on design? Let's say they're redesigning their site now. Would there be any advice that you would give to them before they do this? If they want to go global in a year or two years and maybe can't afford to do that now, what are some of the things they can do now that will make it easier when they're ready to go global?

JANET HEPPNER: One of the things they can do right now is get globalization help. Get a specialist in there early. That's important because there's no generic blueprint to follow. There are guidelines, but rather than spend more money on it than necessary, it's best to get a globalization expert in there, such as an eTranslate, to take a look at what they've got, what they want to do, and to give some ideas. Even if they're going to wait on it, it's better to start laying the foundation now because many times companies are saying, "We've got to get more of our revenue from the international and foreign markets." I heard this just yesterday from an account. They are now getting 30% of their revenue from foreign markets and they need to get to 50%, which is right in line with what IDC says - that American-based companies have got to get their revenues from foreign markets. They need to start today. If they're just going to start in bits and pieces, then they need to make sure they're starting properly so they're not wasting that investment down the road.

KAREN LAKE: What would be some of those generic guidelines that the specialist would address, even if not all of them didn't apply to each client?

JANET HEPPNER: As they're first starting out in terms of an overall globalization project, they need to look at what countries they want to go into and what kind of a physical presence they have in those countries today. Then we would take a look at the actual text they're trying to use in those countries. And what are the real business processes? Are they ready to be globalized?

KAREN LAKE: Sometimes we focus a lot on the translation aspect. What other aspects of globalization do companies seem to forget about or ignore?

JANET HEPPNER: Translation is one small piece of it, but there are common misconceptions about translation when you're developing a global website, such as once you translate the words, your site's ready to launch. That's really not the case. Most Fortune 500 companies understand the differences in the international markets, and they've adjusted their content and product offerings for each market. Some goods or content could offend people in some countries. For example, Yahoo! had a French auction site selling Nazi artifacts, which caused a lot of controversy.

It's important to localize. Many of the Fortune 500 companies already have. They've got the physical, global operations in the international markets, but their web operations are not really supporting that in-country presence. To maximize the value of their in-country investment, companies need to add a complementary website to provide both a physical and a virtual presence.

KAREN LAKE: Let's say I represent a Fortune 500 company. I'm using a solution like yours. I have a browser or management tool. Can I check or uncheck products based on what is appropriate for that language or for that area? How can I do that in a seamless fashion?

JANET HEPPNER: It's not quite that easy. You can't just check or uncheck, but we do have tools that do simplify that process like GlobalLink, which is one of our web-based localization management tools. The goal is to reduce overall project management resources and reduce costs anywhere from 10-50%. What happens is the files are returned to the proper location for each language. This eliminates the need for the project manager to be familiar with each target language. What GlobalLink does further is link our customers to our Ultra technology. This gives them access to the largest network of language professionals. It's a huge benefit for customers because quality translation resources are very difficult to find.

Globalization Predictions and Translation Problems

KAREN LAKE: Janet, one of the things we didn't talk about was some of the trends that are happening in the industry. I read that two areas outside of the United States are leading the world in ecommerce: Western Europe and Japan. What are some of the trends you've seen that will be affecting decisions that will be made for the next one to five years?

JANET HEPPNER: IDC has done a report showing many US companies are missing the international ecommerce explosion. They're focusing sales and marketing efforts exclusively on a US-centric audience. For example, about 70% of US companies are doing business online, but they draw less than 10% of their revenues from overseas markets. They are projecting that Internet spending outside the US is going to explode to $913 billion by 2003 - two thirds of the projected worldwide total. That's huge.

KAREN LAKE: One of the things that's interesting and that our audience may not understand is the complexity of using languages outside of French, Italian and Spanish. Can you talk a little bit about the complexity of languages using multi-byte characters like Hebrew, Japanese, or Chinese?

JANET HEPPNER: Double byte characters require an enormous amount of effort. They're a special case. German is also. Words are much longer in German than they are in English. There are lots of others that are the same way.

KAREN LAKE: What are the top misconceptions about translation, globalization and localization?

JANET HEPPNER: I think the biggest misconception is that people think that globalization is just simply translation - translate the words and you're done. It's not. It's much more than that. It's really not only doing the translation, but it's making sure that you pay attention to the graphics that are on the website, like the mailbox we talked about a little bit earlier. In Paris that mailbox looks like a breadbox. Is that what you want to tell people if you put a mailbox on your website? There's just so much more to it, and that's where a company like eTranslate can really help a company get off on the right foot rather than wasting money on an investment that isn't going to go somewhere for them.

KAREN LAKE: Do you think there's a misconception in the marketplace that the United States is really the only place they need to worry about and that other people really aren't serious about buying things?

JANET HEPPNER: No, in fact the IDC said a lot of the spending is going to be outside the US. They find that people are much more apt to purchase something if it's in their native language. So the Internet explosion is going on. It did catch on in the US first, but now it's going into the international markets at a much faster rate than it is in the US.

KAREN LAKE: Do you feel people understand that and appreciate that? You and I know that because we read the reports, but do you think that business in general in the United States accepts that as fact?

JANET HEPPNER: It's very much an accepted fact, and I almost think there's a pent-up demand. I've been here at eTranslate now for month, and as I have been out on executive calls talking with companies, whether they're big or they're small, all of them have on their minds - especially since the market is in a down turn a little bit right now - where are they going to get additional revenue? How are they going to reach out into other markets? Globalization is the key to that. If they can reach into other markets and have people looking at their websites to purchase their products or services, they're going to increase their market share.

Costs of Globalization

KAREN LAKE: One of the things we have heard repeatedly during the interviews for our globalization feature month is the expense involved in going global and making something localized and taking your business to people outside of the United States. Is this something that small or even small-medium sized businesses can really touch with the funds that they have available to invest?

JANET HEPPNER: Absolutely. You first have to look at the value that you're getting from it. If you're trying to go into a new market and reach an area that you haven't reached before and if you can increase your sales there, what's it worth in terms of the cost? So far, of the return on investments we've seen from small companies to large companies, it's much higher than the initial cost. It's almost like, " How can you afford not to?" And the way that we price the product and the services, you don't have to go big bang up front with all your products and everything in your organization. You can start out with different products, maybe start out with the key product you want to get out to other markets.

KAREN LAKE: Is your pricing system an ASP (application service provider)? Does it sit on a server? How does it look and how is it priced? Is it based on how much you use the service? Is it a flat fee for software?

JANET HEPPNER: Our software has a flexible pricing scenario. The software has an initial license charge like most technology software companies do, with maintenance, and then our services are pay-as-you-go. So depending on how much of the service you use is how much you would pay. But it's very flexible.

KAREN LAKE: Are most of the people using your service also using your localization people and your people to do the translation?

JANET HEPPNER: Most of them are. You can purchase our product separately if you've got your own localization and your in-house translators, but you're going to get the most value from using some combination of our technology, our consulting and our language services.

Closing Advice: Globalization

KAREN LAKE: Last but not least, I'd like to ask you my favorite question. If you had a neighbor who was starting a new business or buying out an existing business and was taking that business and making it Internet-enabled, what would be the three top tips you would give him or her with regard to running a successful business or more importantly a profitable business? What should they concentrate on? What should be their top three concerns running that company?

JANET HEPPNER: If they're thinking of going into a foreign market, how much do they know about it. If they're thinking of going into Japan for example, how many customers have ordered from Japan or how many people have really expressed interest in their products. It's important for that company to have somebody on the ground in Japan who'll learn a little bit about the culture, learn what's going on there. From a technology perspective I think they need to engage an eTranslate-type of company early. You need to get some help whether it's a small amount of help or a large amount of help. You need to get some education early so you're not trying to go back later and cover for costly mistakes.

KAREN LAKE: Wonderful. Is there anything that maybe we haven't talked about that you feel we need to address before we leave our audience?

JANET HEPPNER: I guess the last thing I would say is just a reinforcement: since right now with the markets being down, and with the expectation that in the next two years 50% of all US companies revenues have got to come from foreign markets, now's the time.

KAREN LAKE: That's great. We sure appreciate you joining us on the show, Janet.

JANET HEPPNER: Thank you, Karen. It's my pleasure.