Reducing Emerson’s Annual Localization Costs

Emerson’s translation requirements had significantly grown in recent years as global expansion and product innovation has fueled business growth. With expansive localization requirements and various stakeholder across multiple worldwide departments, Emerson’s language service provider (LSP) vendor list and associated spend had become challenging for the sourcing teams to manage and maintain. Translation projects and their budgets were often spread across functions, including digital operations, technical publications, training, legal and other teams. The decision-making and spending authority was very decentralized, leading to an inefficient process that included manual file transfers and no defined review process across languages for example.

To help enable the internal localization decision making processes and introduce industry best practice tools, Emerson contracted with United Language Group. ULG was to work side by side with Emerson’s regional procurement leaders and business unit teams to consolidate its vendor list and take advantage of associated cost savings and process efficiencies.

United Language Group partnered with various internal stakeholders to identify content formats, determine how to automate the file submission process, and define the approval matrix. ULG also worked with Emerson leadership to determine SLAs and corresponding KPIs that were tracked on a quarterly basis. A comprehensive onboarding plan was developed and launched in a matter of weeks without requiring an upfront capital expenditure. The implementation and onboarding activities included:

• Migration of legacy content to XML, while populating information components into the repository
• Design of automated workflows to streamline the editorial, translation, and production processes through ULG APIs.
• Implementation of a client review process via ULG’s proprietary Octave portal, which provides an in-context review for Emerson’s SMEs
• Development of automated style sheets to replicate Emerson’s existing production standards for print and online help delivery
• The use of centralized Translation Memories (TMs) and glossaries, which were set up and maintained on the client’s behalf by ULG, to improve translation leverage for reduced cost and increased consistency
• Training and support for end users at no cost to Emerson.