Our Analysts' Insights

Multimedia, transcribed audio, and AI-generated content in all the world’s digital languages join more traditional content types in filling up data centers. Together they create challenges and opportunities across organizations, raise the alarm for more oversight of content, and further the case for aligning enterprise content strategies, investment, and operations.

It’s planning time once again, but this task is especially fraught this year as companies are facing another year of turmoil just as large-scale pandemic woes seemed to end. But now, looking at hyperinflation levels not seen in the US and western Europe since the 1970s, companies are naturally cautious. Localization groups – usually treated as a necessary evil in the best of times – may find themselves the target of bean counters eager to save money. So what are you to do when executives and ...

Ask people working in the localization industry if the move to working from home affected them, and many will tell you that they were already “remote” – set up to work from home, due to the nature of their jobs. Language service provider have no physical products to ship, no warehouses to store goods, and no fleets of trucks or ships to coordinate for deliveries. Coordinating language services in this day and age is essentially an ebusiness. On the surface, the switch to working from home app...

2020 started out with great financial momentum. The MSCI All Country World Index of large-, mid-, and small-cap stocks across 23 developed and 26 developing markets had risen almost 24% over 2018, an ounce of gold was worth 18% more than 12 months prior, and private equity groups had accumulated US$1.5 trillion in funds to invest. Businesses were primed for a stellar 2020, but by March, COVID-19 pushed most of the world to shelter in place. Companies shut down, employees were furloughed, and lif...

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...

CSA Research surveyed freelance linguists worldwide in mid- to late April to see how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them as providers of language services. These are the overall results from the 1,228 responses received from 100 countries.

After taking temporary measures and expedients to continue operating during the pandemic, companies must now develop plans for what happens after COVID-19. They will do so against the backdrop of the two biggest concerns that CEOs of language service providers expressed in CSA Research’s mid-March survey: the existential threat of decreasing demand and uncertainty about how long the pandemic will last. While CEOs wrestle with those two issues, they have an immediate business challenge – how ca...

Loyalty will rise to the fore after the COVID-19 pandemic runs its course. People will remember the brands that reached out in meaningful ways during the crisis. Start planning now to take advantage of loyalty to retain premium customers through the crisis and beyond as you strive to support them during the ensuing ramp-up or recession.

The sudden change from office-based to remote workforces forced by the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a rethink of computing strategies at many organizations. For example, businesses and government agencies that so far have distrusted cloud-based information technologies have suddenly and necessarily embraced them to keep operating. Is your translation management system (TMS) immune?

Following online group meetings with Leadership Councils and CEOs representing LSPs of various sizes, CSA Research has been speaking with directors of enterprise localization groups over the last few days to hear their perspective on the impact of COVID-19. They identified two changes in their business requirements – their internal and outward-facing content is evolving to become remote-friendly, and they would like their language service partners to respond to quick-turnaround requests without...