How HiBob collaborates 70% faster and spends 50% less on language launches

HiBob is on a mission to transform how organizations operate in the modern world of work using its HR platform, Bob. Leading the way for the workplace of the future, Bob offers resilient, agile technology that encompasses all the complexities of HR processes in a game-changing, user-friendly tool that affects every employee across the business.

As the centerpiece of HiBob’s digital ecosystem, the web app represents a critical part of their customer experience. Continuously shipping new languages is key to their international customer engagement and expansion plans.

HiBob’s localization journey

HiBob initially began its expansion in the UK in 2016, and has since grown its presence throughout North America, South America, and Europe. With customer bases in Anglophone countries, as well as others speaking Latin American Spanish, German, Portuguese, and various Nordic languages, HiBob recognized the need for a comprehensive localization strategy.

In search of a flexible and scalable localization platform, HiBob turned to Lokalise and has seen significant success in integrating the tool for localization of their web app, mobile app, help center, and more.

Challenges

Prior to implementing Lokalise, HiBob faced several localization-based challenges caused by limitations of the legacy system:

1. Fragmented communication pathway: The previous localization tool didn't provide a streamlined platform for quick communication with the language teams, resulting in slower response times and delayed translations.

2. Lack of bulk actions and complex plurality support: Localization tasks (such as uploading screenshots or dealing with ICU plurals) required more manual effort and distracted the team from focusing on and shipping work that matters.

3. Time-consuming translation cycles: The old localization process was slow and did not leave enough time for strategic planning, project management, or handling additional languages simultaneously.

Unstructured communication pathways and slow translation turnaround time

Before Lokalise, HiBob was managing localization through a different translation management system. As a result it was hard to navigate, operate, and communicate effectively with language teams, which slowed down the entire translation process.

Localization is especially challenging when content is spread out across emails, files, cloud services, task managers, spreadsheets, chats, meetings, and so on. Things get lost, you don't know where to look for things, and people put the right information in the wrong place.

Pavel Riazanov, HiBob’s Senior Localization Project Manager, explains why communication with translators was tough: “it was difficult to chat and comment on the project at hand, and response times were long. With Lokalise, communication has become much more fluent and efficient.” 

Manual localization processes, susceptible to errors

Prior to Lokalise, handling localization tasks like uploading screenshots or working with ICU plurals required more effort.

Pavel says: "In the previous tool, it was all manual. Bulk actions were less flexible, so it took days versus hours to get stuff done. When I switched to Lokalise my performance increased by about 50%”

Ultimately, higher volumes can be processed at the same time and into multiple languages with an increase in productivity.

Solution

Centralization, integration, and quicker turnarounds were all important considerations in HiBob's decision process. Lokalise met these expectations by providing:

• An all-in-one solution that integrated with the tech stack
• Seamless communication between stakeholders
• The ability to scale a number of languages fast and support a rapidly growing company and team

Streamlining processes with a collaborative, fully integrated tool 

By adopting Lokalise, HiBob has been able to streamline its localization processes and improve internal communication. Pavel says Lokalise saves him days of work and improves efficiency through features like the search engine, API integration, and screenshot functionality.

"It helps me deal with daily hands-on tasks much quicker, and frees up a lot of time for me to do more strategic planning and project management. I now have the time for meetings with two or three in-context reviewers in one week instead of spreading them over the entire month."

He adds: 

"Communication with language teams is much more efficient because of the comment mechanism in Lokalise. It works really well… and because I can react to queries a lot quicker and provide context and examples, they can deliver faster."

Here’s how it works: 
 

“We have a weekly cycle model with our language service provider. Every Monday, they take all of the new keys that need translation or all of the updated keys that need review, and they just add them to Lokalise and create tasks. And the next week, we start all over again.”

HiBob’s localization approach: Splitting product and marketing localization

One key to HiBob’s localization strategy is splitting the localization process into product and marketing localization, each handled by a dedicated team.

Within product localization, Pavel Riazanov is responsible for managing all non-English content in the product. He works alongside developers, content writers, and language service providers to ensure the highest quality translations.

Lokalise has allowed HiBob to efficiently manage translation cycles, balancing the work between in-house linguists and external language service providers.

This approach helps maintain fast turnaround times while ensuring quality translations and a consistent brand message across all languages and content types.

One particular area where Lokalise has been instrumental in HiBob’s localization strategy is their help center. This was the first major project undertaken with Lokalise, serving as a pilot to evaluate the platform's capabilities before adopting it as the primary translation tool. Today, HiBob’s help center is available in 4 languages (and growing), providing valuable support to its international customers.

The results

HiBob can now deploy new features in 14 languages. They also have a single source of truth from which to easily launch new languages and manage existing ones. 

In addition, Lokalise drives tangible business benefits while helping HiBob create a better multilingual customer experience across a range of touchpoints, from their website, to their app, and beyond.  

Lokalise has helped HiBob:

• Speed up internal communication by 70%
• Save costs of almost 50%, which means tens of thousands of dollars per year
• Speed up workflows by 50%