Breaking the Concrete on Inherited Tech Stacks
Senior Director of Localization and Global Content at Workday, Loy Searle and VP of Solutions at Welocalize, Darin Goble discuss some of the challenges of inherited tech and how to instigate change.
Most localization and translation professionals don’t have the luxury of building a tech stack from scratch. Chances are they’ve inherited someone else’s tech (the ‘concrete’). Maybe they’ve created some concrete of their own in previous roles 😊
Popular Welocalize webinar ‘Breaking the Concrete on Inherited Tech Stacks’ brings together key industry figures Loy Searle, Senior Director of Localization and Global Content at Workday and Darin Goble, VP of Solutions at Welocalize. Together, they chat through some of the challenges of inherited tech and how to instigate change.
Click here to view the on-demand webinar
Key Takeaways from the Webinar
The problem we’re trying to solve… We’ve all been here…
Most professionals in the localization industry have come across a tech stack that looks or feels like this. Chaotic workflows, managing politics, multiple stakeholders, different tools, the clash of futureproofing and keeping the program running. How do you break this apart and bring in some order and best practices?
First, why do you want to change your localization tech stack?
“If I think about a tech stack that’s pretty old — it’s probably not got MT in it, and if it has got MT, it probably hasn’t got neural MT. It may or may not be set up for AI, machine learning or to manage SEO. So, all the things that we’ve matured on over the last 10 years, if your tech stack was done prior to then, you’re probably not able to take advantage of. “- Loy
“Change to a localization tech stack can be instigated on the basics of data. If your tech stack is not supplying you with business-critical data to help decision making, there may be a case to think about modernization. You have to ask yourself — why do I need to break out a jackhammer, destroy this either good, slightly good, or terrible system, break it apart and rebuild it?” — Darin
What should and shouldn’t be automated?
“What are the common workflows that should be automated? Decide what to automate before you go and completely undo a tech stack. If you automate, you can free up and upskill talent.” — Loy
How do you future-proof a tech stack?
“Content lives everywhere and continues to grow. Futureproofing is stepping back and looking at the world of localization that we’ve known for so long and realise it is changing. Customer engagement is moving in different and exciting directions, such as multilingual chatbots. These emerging interactions and content types require different work surfaces.” — Darin
Try to think about emerging areas such as AI enablement, machine learning, and SEO. Learn new skills
“Meet the machine learning teams and help them train engines in all the languages. Learn new skills and collaborate, train your people to upskill and take on more challenging work.” — Loy
And finally… Who owns the tech? Client or vendor?
“I think it has a lot to do with where are you in your business and what type of business are you in. If you are in the software business, odds are good you’re going to have a higher level of tech ownership because you’ve probably got engineers in your company. However, if you’re not a tech company, maybe you’re a marketing company or a medical company or a financial services company, then your first go-to is probably talking to your main vendors and seeing what they can help you with.” — Loy
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You might also like Welocalize webinar Automating the Localization Workflow — What Works? featuring Alfonso Carrillo, Senior Manager of Globalization and Translation Services at Cisco.
For more global insights, you can view all of Welocalize’s on-demand webinars here.
Originally published at https://www.welocalize.com on August 12, 2021.
