Why SaaS Localization Is Key

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Software Localization - A New Reality

What is SaaS or Software as a Service? A SaaS company is a company that hosts applications on its own servers and  makes them available  to customers, usually through a website. This availability usually comes in the form of a subscription  and gives customers  greater mobility as they can use the software anytime, anywhere. 

Since these companies manage all the software, servers and databases, the systems can be easily upgraded when needed. Again, IT expertise has been invested in maintaining all of the above, making troubleshooting  potential issues relatively simple. 

 Localization, in turn, is the adaptation of your product from one cultural market to another, accounting for the differences between them. This includes, especially, language translation, but also any necessary technical and regulatory modifications of your content in order to end up with a product version that is more accessible and natural for users of other nationalities and cultures. Naturally this is a process which demands particular care and attention, and SaaS products fall into the category of services which require such localization to the extent that they hope to expand their target market. 

According to a Forrester report, 56 percent of consumers are less concerned about the cost of a service than they are about receiving the information in their own language, while a study by Harvard Business Review found that 2 percent would never purchase products and services in languages other than their own. 

These studies took European countries as their focus, but this is an issue which is relevant even within a country such as the U.S. where, in a survey carried out by the U.S. Census Bureau, 22 percent of Americans reported that they do not speak English at home, and another 8 percent reported that they do not speak it well. This trend is enough to motivate companies to look for locations, which is why it is important to hire a company with a proven track record. For example, we can consider a company like Idiomatic USA, whose experience in localizing content for the US Latin American market demonstrates the art of translating content for a group  of people from many different countries and  cultural backgrounds on different continents. 

 As expected, software localization increases the complexity of the problem. Localization is not only about getting the right message to consumers, but  also about maintaining the integrity of the software itself; Which one. It will not interfere with the normal operation of the software. This process must  be managed in the future to keep up with possible updates. This requires translation companies to have the resources to provide translations based on precise technical language. 

Any company looking to expand its horizons by tapping into consumers in other cultural markets will find that localization is key to keeping up with or even surpassing its competitors because they are the first to really open up in this way . Working with the right language service providers and localization experts to manage your content is an important step in this, and  at Idiomatic USA we have many options  to help you meet and exceed your translation goals, SaaS  or other language-related needs.

Looking for a bit of guidance? Get in touch with Idiomatic USA here for a non-committal quote.

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