In my work advising companies on their localization strategy, I often hear:
“We struggle to link our efficiency metrics with overall business performance”
“I find it challenging to communicate the impact of localization to our leadership team.”
“We need to find effective ways to justify our localization investments.”
And here’s what I tell them: making the right decisions becomes nearly impossible without data.
Data is the single unifying characteristic of every successful localization team.
When you can track and understand localization metrics; the movement of content, the workflow drivers, the quality levers, and the costs, you can start to make data-driven localization decisions that deliver true business ROI.
The starting point for understanding business impact? Building a detailed picture of localization efficiency.
How to build a detailed picture of localization efficiency
Localization teams must be able to monitor their workflows, identify bottlenecks and delays, and accurately account for their costs. This has the dual benefit of establishing credibility and trust with leadership teams and providing the basis for continuous improvement.
For ambitious localization teams that want to move higher in the value chain and start influencing product or marketing strategy, localization metrics can help open the door.
It is always easier to advocate for increased budget and influence when your localization process is highly optimized, adhering to budgets, and allocating money effectively.
While localization efficiency matters in every context, the maturity of your company plays a role in how you approach it.
For startups, speed is typically the primary goal of localization. While processes may be in flux, keeping track of multiple workflows and content streams can be chaotic if there is no centralized dashboard to monitor activities.
For mid-sized companies and scale-ups, process efficiency and cost control tend to become the key areas of focus. As product and marketing teams deliver content and updates regularly, repeatable and scalable processes are highly prized.
And for larger enterprises, quality and scale tend to dominate the agenda. Whether you are managing a centralized localization function or a single team among many, your ability to influence senior leadership will be based on your control and understanding of quality drivers and how effectively you can scale your process.
How to decide which localization metrics to track
When building a localization dashboard, it’s important to know your audience. If your default localization dashboard and report are laden with acronyms and localization jargon, they will be indecipherable to business stakeholders.
To avoid the risk of becoming side-lined, consider maintaining dual dashboards: one internal, one external.
Internal dashboard to track localization efficiency
For your internal dashboard, this should be your single source of truth for managing localization. Rather than tracking every available metric, think about what data you need to make decisions.
Some of the data you could monitor
- Oversight on turnaround time per project, per language and per localizer
- Allocation of work across different localization methods (AI, human, translation memory)
- Efficiency of automated localization
- Delays in workflow per project
- Wordcount processed
- Budget estimates and actuals
External dashboard to track localization efficiency
Your external localization dashboard may show up in multiple places: business reviews, monthly newsletters, stakeholder discussions and when assembling business cases for senior leadership.
To start, consider the needs of your primary audience and what matters most to them.
Think about their goals and KPIs that they track. While you may not directly interface with your CMO, CPO or CEO, your business stakeholder probably will: your localization dashboard should convey the message you want them to deliver on your behalf.
Here are some examples:
- Product and engineering leaders: they will seek to understand the level of localization completion, error rates, turnaround time, and time to market. They may wish to understand how automated the end-to-end process is, from developer to localizer.
- Marketing leaders: they will typically care about efficiency, market expansion, time-to-market and language quality.
Business stakeholders and leaders can benefit from visibility into the factors that make localization more efficient and reliable.
If your dashboard can shed light on the blind spots in the development practices or content creation flow, you can set the scene for a constructive conversation about how to make improvements.
Which localization metrics to track and why + how to track them
The metrics you choose to track should always be in service of improving your localization function and delivering greater business value.
Let’s review three common scenarios, and how you can use Lokalise Analytics to track the metrics you need.
1. Managing localization operations: running the most efficient localization process
Your team is working with multiple languages, vendors, and contributors. How do you ensure localization is running smoothly and efficiently?
You’ll need to monitor trends over time to identify delays and bottlenecks and take action to expedite your localization workflow.
You’ll also want to understand the relative productivity of different translation methods. According to project and budget requirements, you may wish to rebalance the translation methods you use to prioritize turnaround time or quality.
Finally, when running QBRs with localization suppliers, assessing how turnaround time varies by project and language can enable conversations on how to improve project operations instead of ad hoc discussions of project delivery.
✅ Best practices
- Identify highest priority project delays and bottlenecks. Focus your effort there first. Consider reallocating resources to slower projects
- Measure your vendor performance. Share your findings and work with your vendor to improve pockets of poor performance. I always encourage clients to set the agenda in their vendor QBRs—bring your own data to ensure you are making steady improvements
- Shift from ad hoc localization operations to regular cadence or agile localization, based on your observations of project trends
How to track localization metrics with Lokalise Analytics
To measure your localization operations using Lokalise Analytics, there are three main charts you should focus:
- Volume overview chart
Review the chart by filtering for each project to identify delays and bottlenecks. This chart will help you optimize your workflow for each project by finding opportunities to batch work, consolidate similar projects, and prepare forecasts for future work.
- Translation methods chart
A key resource for gaining an understanding of the relative productivity for each translation method. If you are introducing new translation methods, such as AI localization, the Translation Method dashboard will help analyze the performance difference historically or across languages.
- Average time on task dashboard
This chart is essential when running QBRs with localization suppliers. In particular, filtering the dashboard per task size and language will enable you to assess completion time and how this varies by project and language. The related Contributor dashboard can be beneficial to assess the work of individuals for each project.
2. Stakeholder engagement: showing the business impact of localization
Your product team, marketing team, or leadership is frustrated with translation timelines. They don’t understand why things take time or how their requests impact localization.
To help improve stakeholder engagement, you’ll need to bring structure, oversight, and historical trends to your regular meetings.
By tracking where time is spent and how much time is being spent on tasks, you’ll be able to start conversations about how project efficiency can be improved.
You’ll also want to educate stakeholders on the impact of source updates and how this affects scheduling and cost overruns, opening the door to thoughtful choices around project management and budgetary controls.
✅ Best practices
- Create reports to share with key stakeholders that track project throughput, review trend, and forecast ahead
- Use task and volume insights to pivot from transactional conversation to strategic: how can the objectives of your stakeholder be improved through changes in localization?
How to track localization metrics with Lokalise Analytics
- Time on task chart
This chart helps you review project completion time for your stakeholders. For projects that are deemed slow, you can drill into where time is being spent and start a conversation around how the efficiency of the project can be improved.
- Volume overview table
This helps educate stakeholders on the impact of source updates (i.e. modified base words) for the localization project.
3. Business reporting: showing ROI of localization
When telling the story of localization to business leaders, it’s important to choose the metrics that will be understood and will resonate. Low-level, operational detail can complicate and confuse, so proceeding with simplicity is always best!
✅ Best practices
- Create monthly/quarterly reports showcasing progress, efficiency gains, and areas for investment.
How to track localization metrics with Lokalise Analytics
- High-level volume chart
This can be useful to demonstrate the overall throughput and capacity of the team. This can be a great way to tell the story of “doing more with less” or explain how you have the technology and workflows in place to scale your localization process.
- Tasks chart
Use this chart to highlight the continuous improvement in turnaround time for high-priority projects. Spotlight some noteworthy releases to underscore the localization contribution. For projects with sub-optimal turnaround times, this chart can boost your credibility and provide a jumping-off point for seeking improvements.
- Translation method chart
To highlight the connection between time-to-market and different translation methods, use the Translation Method chart. You can tell a great story of how your team is adopting more efficient, modern translation methods over time, and educate your business leaders of the value of certain translation methods for special projects.
Start measuring localization efficiency & connect it to business ROI
As you improve the efficiency of your localization process, centralizing and automating your localization metrics will provide you with the means to track progress, set goals and react to changes when needed.
If your existing localization analytics consist of custom Google Sheets or special requests from key individuals, this is the ideal time to consolidate your most important metrics to one place.
Lokalise Analytics can become the focal point of your localization metrics analysis, minimizing the need for time and effort across multiple external tools.
A dashboard only becomes useful when it helps inform and drive decisions. Make a practice of reviewing your dashboard weekly, monthly, and quarterly to monitor projects and trends, conduct forecasting, and determine improvements.
If your localization process tends to follow a “one size fits all” approach, start exploring how budget can be allocated differently, how some projects may be prioritized over others, and the most appropriate use of different translation methods.
When your localization operations are highly optimized and you can fine-tune your processes and methods, you can start to transition your focus toward greater business impact.
The path from cost center to growth driver always begins with a highly optimized localization process.
Start celebrating the efficiency of your localization process and identifying ways to connect localization to business impact.
- Highlight the cost efficiency of new translation methods to promote the low cost of market expansion
- Demonstrate how your fully automated localization workflow enables a faster time to market
- Use your cost tracking and budget adherence to make the case for consolidating localization into a centralized team
A comprehensive set of localization metrics can amplify the maturity and capability of any localization team.
As John Doerr said, “Measure what matters”.
For localization teams, start measuring your efficiency, then start measuring how you can drive greater business impact.
