The LISA Forum - Geneva
Industry Consolidation: Managing Global Business Challenges

Geneva, 3-5 December 1997

Held in LISA's home city of Geneva, the fourth-quarter 1997 Forum and the Press Conference and Executive Round Table connected with it offered a chance both to take stock and to set the agenda for the future of the localization industry. Over 160 people discussed the latest developments in the industry and their consequences for service vendors and publishers alike.



In the first international Press Conference on the localization industry, held immediately before the Forum, Jim Lewis of Berlitz, Julia MacLauchlan of Microsoft, Henri Broekmate from Trados, Jo Lernout of  Lernout & Hauspie and LISA Director Michael Anobile emphasized the new maturity of the localization industry. Industry sales were now running at something like USD 2.5 billion, while a total of some USD 500 million in external funds had now been invested. Those companies who were not in the localization business today would be in it tomorrow, since localization was affecting everything.  
Also before the Forum, an Executive Round Table of roughly 20 leading companies, representing a cross-section of LISA's membership, gathered to examine where the business was heading, and what the wave of mergers and acquisitions meant in terms of productivity, objectives, improvements, and standardization. The result was a clear commitment to cooperation. Big might not be better, but it was the prevailing model and was a positive sign for the business, strengthening the infrastructure and above all providing increased financial underpinning of the industry. 
Keynote speaker Florita Mendez of Lernout & Hauspie's translation division, who explained her company's policy on mergers and acquisitions. Florita said that vendor globalization had been driven by global clients wanting global suppliers, but had to retain a local flavor and offer homogeneous management to ensure low overheads. There were three stages of integration: intra-country, inter-operating company and lateral and vertical integration with the corporate owner. Integration was not easy and required a shift in perspective from that of the owner-manager; in addition, it was affected by national and company culture. Mendez tried for consensus; this took longer but produced decisions which were easier to implement.
In the Panel Discussion on managing global business challenges that followed, the moderators of the subsequent breakout sessions gave an overview of their objectives. Following this, the Forum split into workgroups before breaking for lunch. The afternoon was devoted to tools and technology workgroups, followed by the Forum Invitation Dinner. 
At the start of Day 2, ExCom member Claude Pesquet of Digital asked for feedback on benchmarking requirements, after which Michael Anobile introduced the first panel on the Multilingual Internet.  Presenter Hatsi Delori of Translate International introduced panelists Nikolai Puntikov of Star Russia, Philippe Bellintani of LionBridge and Bernard Gateau of ILE. Nikolai Puntikov showed the project model used by his company to get information to customers at high speeds, and introduced the UNL - or Universal Networking Language project - designed to create an interlingua to make Web content accessible to speakers of any language. 
Philippe Bellintani described LionBridge's approach to knowledge databases, while Bernard Gateau looked at the use of the Web in virtual localization teams. A number of different methods of varying levels of sophistication were available. While the industry was supposed to be getting ready for the 21st century, Bernard said that it was still being measured against a 19th century manufacturing model and asked whether new methods were needed. In the ensuing discussion, attendees noted the speed of transfer and security as potentially limiting issues.
In the next panel discussion, Frans Bruinsma (Compaq), Tom Blondi (LMI), Bernard Gateau and Jon Malone summarized the results of the vendor- and publisher-only sessions of the day before. Vendor selection by publishers was a two-part process, in which a general overview was followed by specific process and organizational analysis. A long-term approach made ongoing measurement - and trust - essential. The benefit of M&As to clients was not yet clear, and good communications were required. Promotion of the localization industry had to be both internal (i.e. helping publishers) and external (i.e. to the world at large). Hard data were needed that emphasized the ROI of (good) localization, not just costs, and that clearly demonstrated "hidden" in-house costs. Business awareness needed to be raised, and more industry data needed to be collected by a neutral instance.
After lunch, the World Radio interview with Michael Anobile made following the LISA Press Conference was played. Following this, the panel on quality assurance models - Robin Bonthrone (F&B), Marc Jonckers (Jonckers Translations), Steven Forth (Fact Media) John Benzinger (LMI) and Gary Jaeckel (Interverbum) - reported on their session the day before. The LISA QA model had to be updated and its visibility and scalability improved via training materials, seminars, etc. Quality needed to encompass all areas of an enterprise, and vendor-subcontractor relations were very important. Also, more publishers had to get involved.
Following this, Olaf Ramm of PeopleSoft gave a case study on outsourcing and internal project management. Internal technical and language translation services teams had been formed after bad experience with "black box" translations. Frozen code and US texts were received for translation, including into international English. The main challenges were finding the right people, developing the right tools and procedures, and communication. This had resulted in the creation of a central repository, which had improved quality, consistency and teamwork. Standards and tools had also been developed.
The second case study was delivered by Joe Ryan of McQueen, who presented the company's PACE(r) (Product and Cycle Time Excellence) approach, adopted to facilitate localization growth. McQueen aimed at a cross-functional project team model in which project management was a key focus, with senior management developing core competencies, quality standards and people skills, and teams which defined and implemented their own budgets and focused on timely delivery. The four main elements of the PACE(r) system were core teams, structured processes, phase reviews and project tools. Since implementation, overall project time had dropped by 18%.
Wrapping up with the Forum evaluation session, Michael Anobile introduced Theodora Landgren and Claude Pesquet, former and present ExCom members, who emphasized the need for members to provide feedback to LISA Administration and the ExCom. There was a new level of maturity in the industry and LISA could and would evolve to meet its changing needs.