Our Analysts' Insights

How Do You Predict Potential Return on Investment (ROI) when Adding Languages?

Far too many companies rely on anecdotal data; rough measures based on GDP, and the number of people who speak languages, or even less precise guides such as executive gut feel or a knee-jerk reaction to loud or political feedback. These methods risk making ineffective decisions for language strategy, instead of using the linguistic portfolio to grow business, increase revenue, and make advances over the competition. Shifting to data for language ROI helps set up realistic expectations and goals that can be tracked and measured.

Many factors and data points play a part in whether a language strategy is successful. What languages are used in the target market – and are the customers who speak them comfortable with English? What is the competition doing? Do you expect your buyers to have large amounts of disposable income, or is the offering applicable to more modest earners? The Global Revenue Forecaster ™ from CSA Research delivers predictive business analysis tailored to your company’s business and vertical for the revenues expected for different languages.

For example: your company sells a gaming app and already has an online presence in the USA, UK, France, Germany, and Japan and the marketing and products are translated to French, German, and Japanese. The marketing team wants to expand into Korea, but the European director considers it more important to start selling in Spain and Italy. Your CEO was at a conference in Dubai last week and is now asking why your product is not marketed there –in Arabic. The support manager is complaining about receiving requests for help in Spanish, even though you don’t do anything in that language, yet. The sales team in the USA are unhappy about missing their targets for California and Florida. George in development thinks it would be great to see the app in a language that none of the competition have – like Berber or Aramaic – because he thinks the characters look cool. Budgets for the next fiscal year will be set during the next few weeks, and there’s likely to be enough money and staffing for the addition of two new languages. How do you make the best decision for the company?

What is Your Language Strategy?

Choosing a language strategy is a big challenge for most businesses. While many factors are part of the decision to move into new markets – including logistics, market size, company presence, and other considerations – provision of local language plays a huge role in enabling revenue growth. Depending on your offering and organization, the right language in the right place will differ from another company’s best decision. Which language will bring the most benefit?

Without data tailored to your company’s unique profile, the choice will most likely be made on generic market and language information, by copying your competition, or simply because one executive has more influence than another. There is a better way – using forecasts of revenue customized to your business. Let the numbers do the talking to make an informed decision.

The data-driven predictions from the Global Revenue Forecaster ™ help you to:

• Calculate the ROI of languages
• Benchmark against your industry sector
• Set sales targets by language and country or territory
• Prioritize international markets
• Validate strategic planning decisions
• Determine which countries or territories are performing above or below expectations
• Build a business case for expanding language coverage
• Run sanity checks for the more outlandish language requests.

Benefit from predictive analytics tailored to your company’s business, competition, and vertical for the revenues expected from different languages. Find out how CSA Research’s Global Revenue Forecaster will help you predict potential ROI when adding languages.