Whether at home or at work, expectations for making a purchase are changing. From ordering food to buying a car: online services, automation, and process simplification are happening in all areas of life. To evaluate how such trends are affecting the language industry, CSA Research ran a survey with buyers of translation services across a broad range of vertical markets, company size, and localization maturity. Executives and sales managers should carefully examine the data in this report for potential areas of change – and opportunity – for their company.
 

Every year, CSA Research charts the future for language services in the context of technology advancements and global content trends. Early 2020 was no exception, but then the pandemic happened and made us question whether the overall principles we had outlined for the evolution of language services remain valid. Upon further analysis, we determined that the core principles driving industry transformation won’t change but that COVID-19 presents another set of challenges and requirements to consider in long-term planning. This report presents guidance for language services providers to rethink what kind of company they want to be – and the steps it will take to get there.

You can’t meet today’s global market expectations or outpace local competitors with old-school practices. A more demanding business landscape requires more responsive localization. Sophisticated procedures and behaviors that previously characterized more advanced levels of performance have become basic enablers for earlier stages of localization maturity.
Managers and directors with new responsibility for globalization, as well as their more experienced colleagues, will learn why it is urgent for their teams to advance more quickly through the phases of localization maturity. They will also understand how to do so.