Localization Management

Localization is actually Globalization.

Localization is the activity to get documents, marketing materials, products, events, etc. adapted and marketable to local market conditions. Localization professionals believe that Localization is all about Translation of documents. From my experience, it is not so. Localization is about taking an entire business, its practices, its documents, its IT infrastructure, it strategies, and products /services, etc... and turn them into workable solutions that can effectively be sold and/or marketed in a foreign market, local to a foreign area.

For example, a DVD developed and recorded for the market in the USA needs to be adapted to local European market conditions if an organization wants to market it there. In the USA, the frequency for color identification is NTSC and in Europe it is PAL.

My localization management activity consisted of adapting marketing brochures, books, booklets, DVD's, Audio CD's, electronics, kitchen equipment/appliances, contracts, terms & conditions, membership forms, banking transaction processes, printable business paper and envelopes with letterheads, ring binders, beverages, nutritional supplement, liquid dietary supplements, and training events.

Without going more into detail, below are a few examples of how complex a localization project can be:

Localization Example

Marketing Brochures and Banking Procedures

The European Union consists of more than 20 countries and more than 12 major languages. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom were far the largest markets for both fortune 500 companies that I worked for. Norway and Sweden also represented  a strong economy. In my experience, Norway and Sweden outperformed Germany percentage-wise in Network Marketing Sales in the nutritional supplement industry. That is why brochures were provided for these markets as well.

The question arose in which languages the brochures, etc. should be printed. In Norway and Sweden about 90% of the business community is able to communicate in English rather fluently.

In localization, the manager must consider following issues in order to make these items available in a given desire market, or multiple applicable markets:

Usually for Europe the photos of people on the marketing material are exchanged to comply to European culture and races (appearance). The content is adapted to EU regulatory functional claim requirements.

An European office and contact phone number must be registered and allocated on the material. The call center must know when to expect the start-up of inbound phone calls, must be trained and be ready, while of course the IT department must have all processes in place to take applicable orders. And the HQ / Call center must hire adequate personnel that speaks the applicable languages.


The product must be available for the diverse markets and labeled with the appropriate labels in the applicable languages. Some savings can be allocated when consolidating some product labels in multiple languages, if room on the labels is available. Warehousing must be organized, and shipping and transportation of the product ready to ship . All this has to be in place prior to begin the campaign.


And the organization has to have a way to charge the customers appropriately and safely for the product they wish to purchase. And distributors / commissioned sales associates need to be able to receive their commissions safely. And this activity has to be managed from the USA.


And the localization manager must also consider matters such as "What could go wrong?" For example, in one company the organization was unaware that payment received from customers for product could be retrieved by the customer the following 60 days after the order. And there were no processes in place to pick up unwanted product due to errors, incorrect shipping of products, or falsified sales by distributors who had straw contacts or not-ready-to buy customers who gave their banking and personal shipping info prematurely before they knew what they were agreeing too.


As a result the company lost several $ millions of dollars over a period of 6 months. I was put on a task team to retrieve the money, or the product, and investigate the fraud issues then to be taken to external legal departments for collection or legal action. We were able to collect most of the money and most of the product. Luckily lot of customers were honest. Overall, it was a very expensive learning lesson for the organization. And all that happened because of poor planning before opening a market.