Our Analysts' Insights

You’ve taken some deep collective breaths as an organization, and now you’re partway through pivoting and starting to gear up for a post-vaccine world. Along the way, international markets have moved much more firmly into the limelight. As you plan for this year, make building a globally integrated organization one of your goals. You’ve worked hard to gain customers in various markets worldwide, so now is not the time to cede market share to savvy competitors that are more adept at executing ...

During a time of uncertainty, hearing from peers and leaders helps and we have been sharing feedback from multiple constituents to help organizations focus on what really matters as well as find opportunities in the middle of a crisis and get ready for the re-entry phase and growth in the post Covid-19 economy. In this final post of 2020, we share analysts’ thoughts on the toughest year to date, and what to carry with us into 2021.

Globalization managers and directors work hard to raise the visibility of their teams. However, this responsibility extends beyond expanding awareness of what these teams accomplish to communicating successfully the value of what they deliver for their organizations. There are many roadblocks along the way, but the good news is there are ways to avoid and bypass them.

In a recent blog we updated the changing M&A landscape for 2020. We also noted that respondents to CSA Research’s annual Global Market Study (GMS) have shown consistent interest over the years in buying, selling, or merging in response to the question, “How important will the following actions related to merger and acquisitions be in 2020?” Of the 356 respondents from the representative sample of 462, 29% said they wanted to sell, 34% would like to buy, and 30% preferred a merger.

Recently CSA Research launched the third edition of our oft cited “Can’t Read, Won’t Buy” research. We originated this topic of research in 2006 and continue to provide companies worldwide with the reliable data they need to plan and execute effective international growth strategies. When you encounter data like this from us or any other source, put on your data scientist hat and ask these two questions: what is the population and is it a representative sample?

With over 222 million Arabic-speaking web users, and an online economic opportunity of 2.5 trillion US dollars in 2020, Arabic is an attractive option for global brands. Nevertheless, it appears on far fewer sites than its potential would indicate. Part of the reason is that localizing into Arabic is not a simple task as it is not a single digital language for content marketing and customer experience. The languages used in the Arabic-speaking world for conversation, social networks, messaging, ...

With no country’s economy able to predict accurately whether it’s entering a recession or cautiously rebounding, you might expect companies to be cutting back their translation and localization budgets. However, that doesn’t match our analysis based on virtual group meetings with Leadership Councils, interviews, and the results of a survey of 63 global enterprises in 19 countries that CSA Research conducted in mid-April 2020.

One of the most heartbreaking results of COVID-19 pandemic has been hearing about people falling ill, suffering, and too-often dying, without their family and loved ones around them. Imagine how much more terrible this must be if the patient – or family members – cannot easily communicate with caregivers, nor fully understand what they are told. Combine these challenges with statistics showing COVID-19 disproportionately affecting racial and ethnic minorities and the picture is grim.

Most people frown upon the idea of talking to machines, yet they are already encountering them in everyday conversations. For example, when you call a bank or utility company, you probably start the conversation with a bot that triages the request and escalates the conversation to a human call agent when it reaches the limits of its capabilities. There is no longer a need for a human to tell you your credit card balance. Likewise, there is no need for a human interpreter if a nurse checks on the...

No one can predict when the ripple effects of COVID-19 will end. However, the results of our survey of 63 global enterprises in 19 countries indicate strongly that now is the time for organizations to plan for the scenarios that they will have to handle, whether under conditions of a prolonged recession or a cautious rebound. The effects on regional and local economies are already playing out in different ways at different speeds. Teams should prepare for the competitive landscape to look substa...