welcome to support your globalization strategy with well-planned localization another in our best practices series in this video you'll learn what localization is and why it's worth investing in you'll learn the best practice steps for creating a localization strategy and you'll leave this video armed with a list of actions you should take to get started let's start with some definitions globalization involves all the tasks and activities associated with delivering an end user experience in languages other than english globalization includes three components internationalization ensures that a process or application works without any language or locale dependency for example an application to buy a laptop will follow a work process that is agnostic to the purchaser's location localization includes adding elements to a process or application specifically for its region without impacting its intended functionality using the same example localization means offering this functionality in the purchaser's language local currency or local date format translation is rendering text into another language either by machine or human in this video we'll be focusing on localization and translation there are three key business benefits to localization first there are over 6 500 languages around the world today enabling users to interact in their preferred language will improve their experience imagine trying to order something from a website where the currency is japanese yen whereas you earn and spend in us dollars second localization can improve your outcomes by reducing the impact of miscommunication miscommunication can create roadblocks that will affect efficiency such as taking longer to complete tasks and third some countries or regions have language regulations this is particularly likely with hr and customer service management implementations many companies require hr content to be offered in the local language for employees others require externally facing content to be in the local language localization ensures you comply with these types of regulations start thinking about your localization strategy as early as possible during your application implementation it will impact everything from governance to solution design to your user interface decisions we recommend three steps to planning your localization strategy first develop ownership and accountability for decision making next establish your language and translation strategy and third implement and measure your localization strategies let's dig into each one the first step is about your goals are you trying to improve engagement efficiency or improve your outcomes next create a global platform team that partners language and development this is critical to ensure that your localization efforts will be consistent and scalable lastly identify language leads to own the language concept within each in scope translation these local language leads must be completely fluent and ideally have relevant business experience the second step is to establish your language and translation strategy start by determining what is in scope for localization what languages will you start with and what will need to be in scope the portal the knowledge base or everything in the platform meanings in english can vary across different regions for example 0102 2021 means the 1st of february internationally and the 2nd of january in the u.s momentarily in north america means it will occur very soon but in the uk it means it will occur only for a very short time don't just think about languages identify your same language localization needs engage your local language leads in your solution design phase to ensure you design the ui in the right context and then look at servicenow plugins and make decisions about machine translation using machine translation can save you time and money the last step is to implement and measure your localization strategies first establish development requirements use servicenow's five tables for localization to comply with development best practices reference our product documentation for more information next create a localization testing strategy start your functional testing in english and then extend it to other languages make sure to conduct per language user experience uat lastly create a maintenance plan localization is not one and done be sure to establish a process to collect the feedback and compare usability between languages to make sure you are meeting your goals there are three key insights we want you to remember from this video first determine if you will offer multiple languages as early as possible to make sure your build supports language plugins making this decision later can result in significant rework second embed language leads in your platform team platform changes need to go through the localization steps we've talked about here scoping translation ux and uat language leads will ensure you maintain the intended meaning and third conduct per language ux and uat testing localization adds an additional layer to your release cycle so make sure to include language requirements in these cycles to drive consistency and accuracy so what should you do next first take time to review the resources we have on the customer success center these materials will provide details and insights from experts on how to implement localization second take a look at all the languages supported by servicenow plugins finally listen to our globalization webinar in now community remember servicenow can deliver enterprise transformation and localization can be a powerful part of that effort for more information or advice contact your servicenow team thank you for watching