By Anna N. Schlegel
Truly Global is a book about enterprise globalization and it is based on Anna Schlegel’s experience working in geo-alignment, translation, localization, global digital experience, product QA, globalization strategy, and technical publication teams across a handful of Fortune 100 American enterprises. It has twenty-three small chapters. Each is designed to encourage thinking, from different angles, about what is needed to run a corporate globalization strategic team to support international expansion. It is aimed at globalization senior managers, directors, and other executives. It is also meant to provide a basis for debate in classrooms, where students learn theory and often need a bridge into the real corporate world with “how do you…?”
Most companies operate inside a small geographical area or within the borders of a country. Until a few decades ago, it was almost unthinkable to expand a business across borders and oceans in a fast and consistent manner. Today, globalization is tied to almost every aspect of our lives, and no company set on growth can avoid thinking about it. Going global means to expand your business into new markets, but getting there is much more complicated than simply opening a shop overseas. Globalization in a business is multifaceted, complex, and not to be instigated without careful and experienced management. Globalization is not just a single concept, or two or three.
If you work for a serious global company, no department will escape the need of globalization. Your CEO will want you to evaluate each corner of the enterprise. Your VPs and general managers in each geography will want you to examine every aspect of how the enterprise does business in their countries. Product managers will seek you out. If your company does not have a globalization mandate, most of the work will fall on you to draw your plan of attack on a blank canvass and start selling it to the executive.
Companies selling internationally often do so with independent bodies making decisions on their global approach liaising directly with a GM for a region of the world. They will have a mandate or plan to sell in a set of countries. Ideally, this can happen with the support from a centralized body, which typically will sit in a corporate setting. The lack of globalization plans across headquartered departments can slow down this GM as her or his team will miss what could be coming in from HQ, leveraging content, programs, discounts, ideas, and resources. A globalization team allows you to reach for a truly global set-up that will benefit your customer, but only if the team believes in geo alignment and is invested in learning the local realities. This team will end up being part of decisions on country and language selection, local support models, what products to globalize, what compliance is needed where, and what internal communications need to be localized. It can’t all be decided independently by trusting that each departmental VP will know how to do so. The truth is that all these elements need to be coordinated for the company and presented as a cohesive plan.
Schlegel explains that for your product to be successful, you need carefully orchestrated plans ahead of time to export, place, enter, market, and reach the ultimate customer in these countries in a manner that will stick, be supported, and see steady growth. It is common for companies to push a product, a project, or a program to market without having crossed checked and prepared a good geo alignment strategy. Going global requires tight alignment between all headquarters (main and geos) and the final and successful penetration of your offering into a specific country or key account. This concept assumes that most key corporate offerings are created by folks in the corporate headquarters or a geo HQ. They are responsible for taking the program to the global level. But how often are these programs created in a vacuum, with only a few people, and behind closed doors? In one example, she observed that more than seventy-five percent of the programs that received zero or little input from the field in their design phases failed, launched in country late, or were not taken seriously. They were then re-written, re-built, repositioned, or ignored if there was no clear mandate to fully support them, with an end to end agreement to push, and an acceptance plan to make the most of the launch locally. Here, Schlegel, introduces the concept of Geo Alignment. Geo alignment means that all parties in the creation and final push of a program into market are coordinated, including all the leads in the field that need to run these programs locally. In this scenario, there is full upfront disclosure and buy-in from the teams who will actually have to sell and push this product in front of customers.
Timelines are agreed, product is global ready, marketing plans are set, sales plans are in place, and support plans are ready to go. A team can get ahead of the creation of any program that needs to succeed in the market. What that means is that the geo aligners will know what programs are in the incubate stages, and they will make sure that our field counterparts would be able to participate in the requirements gathering phase. Otherwise, why create it? You can have a say in requirements from a field perspective and involved key field personnel in the decision-making process. In doing so, you get the buy-in at market and performance time. In this process, you begin to understand what will make a product successful in a particular country. Creating a program that will succeed internationally is complex, but doable with a geo alignment program checking the details systematically. Typically, countries receive a number of programs they are supposed to support and promote, and a geo alignment team will organize and manage this across borders. Geo aligners are people who have lived in a few countries, speak different languages, and can be a bridge between headquarters and country offices. They are often diplomats, well spoken, clear in conversation, meticulous in scheduling, successful as great brokers, and efficient at making sure no one is left behind. If your product is not selling well internationally, you need to figure out why. A process like the geo alignment flow will help decipher where the key issues are. It might be a licensing or pricing issue, a localization issue, or if there is an insufficient advertising budget. Maybe the support center is not open long enough hours.
Geo aligners are well respected and typically hold senior roles. They understand the company’s vision and the quarterly and yearly plans, and are excellent mediators. Often, they set up a cadence of geo-alignment calls to get organized and get to know those in charge of all the pieces. They learn the programs to launch and carry the success all the way to launch day. They will have a methodical way of going through all the pieces for both the HQ and the field teams. They will identify whom to team up with, and will think for the business with each of these local leads. Making sure a product sticks internationally takes many parallel and long-term activities, and careful planning with a clear goal will ensure success. A team organizing all the pieces will help speed up international acceptance and introduction for the mass market. You might not call the folks in charge of this practice “geo aligners”, but the thoroughness and coordination to go to market is key. Do not leave it unattended.
Another main area in the book discusses how companies focus resources on the largest growth opportunities, mainly in enterprise accounts and countries where these accounts operate or where the growth potential is well understood. For this, the company needs an enterprise readiness plan, portfolio investment mappings, pathways plan, and global growth strategies. Mapping globalization for an enterprise can be done properly if you are clear on your company’s country focus. Which countries is the company willing to invest in? Typically, companies put countries in groups that will receive different globalization entitlements or tiers, and this simplifies execution. Sample groups can be around top enterprise countries like Japan, Germany, or the US, or grouped for opportunistic investments. Once you have the sets defined, you will be able to accelerate a particular country’s growth and dedicate several teams to support its portfolio. One group may focus on capitalizing on the China opportunity. Here you would size your market, understand competition and go to market models such as OEMs, decide on breakeven financial models, and define competitor take-out plans and joint ventures. Once these plans are understood, you can then map your globalization needs. Not each country your company invests in will receive the same level of globalization entitlements. Globalization teams need to understand these mappings and then create tiered approaches. Language tolerance, e-commerce, expected revenues, legal compliance, and what type of product you are selling will dictate these entitlements. If your product is solely sold via e-commerce, you should localize the full experience and offer support like chat in the right language. If your product is for systems engineers, you will find that English tolerance is much higher and chances are you will need to localize much less. Each grouping gets similar entitlements. For example, group One gets a globalized website, localized field and partner portals, internationalized and localized product, a professional linguist on site, a dedicated localization manager, a specific type of legal contracts localized, a support center that offers live personnel in the country’s language, and so on. Mapping globalization to groupings is not an exact science, and there will be exceptions made, but it will ensure that your budgets go to the right countries and top activities where your company wants you to invest.
About the Author
Anna N. Schlegel—named the first globalization innovator by SDL/Fortune—is the author of Truly Global: The Theory and Practice of Bringing Your Company to International Markets. Currently the Senior Director of Globalization and Information Engineering at NetApp, Schlegel is also co-chair of the company’s Women in Technology program.