Signal vs Noise. Using KPIs to improve Localization; my thoughts after collaborating in a nice Webinar!

Wednesday was a good day, and it did not start being a good day!

I got up at 6 am and still missed the train I wanted to take in the morning to go to Barcelona; a series of technical incidents in the subway caused me to lose it, and then I kept losing things 🤦, I lost my phone and my Kindle on the train, yay! What a way to start the morning! When I arrived at the office I sent an email to the lost and found office at the train station to notify the lost.

Afterward throughout the morning, things improved; Firstly, I had a good meal with a friend in which we talked about everything, there are people who unfortunately due to different circumstances we can not spend as much time as we would like to, but there's always a good connection and feeling being around them, no matter how long we don't see each other it feels good being with them; Secondly I had a 1: 1 with people from the team that came out good ideas, quite promising and thirdly, I had the opportunity to participate in a webinar that the WordBee team invited me!

WordBee has solutions to make more bearable the challenges (which are not few) of our localization industry; you can check here more information about Wordbee.

The webinar was a subject as exciting, as complicated. Signal vs Noise. Using KPIs to improve Localization.

KPIs in our industry are always problematic, not only to know what KPIs to create, but also because it is an industry that has traditionally struggle to measure things. We have always spoken from a subjective point of view, "this translation sounds weird" and despite the different efforts over the years through different standards: Lisa, Taus, DQF nowadays ... the KPIs in the Globalization industry have room for improvement. We are even in diapers I would dare to say. We need to be able to create a solid data collection that helps our Localization team determine the added value that Localization brings to the benefits of the company; and we also need KPIs that allow us to improve our internal processes, make them more efficient, and with fewer problems to define what is quality and how to improve the quality of our services, of our processes.

The subject of the metrics is fascinating to me, so there I was in the webinar, without my phone, wondering where my faithful Kindle Paperwhite would be now and also a little bit sleepy; but very, very excited to be able to chat for an hour about metrics with 2 industry colleagues Ameesh Randeri and Andy Johnson plus Wordbee hosts Tanja Falkner and Rober Rogge

In the webinar, I felt super comfortable, and Tanja and Robert have a lot of blame for it! excellent hosts, kind and friendly; and the interventions of Andy and Ameesh sharing their wisdom, their tricks and their advice made of that time that we were virtually together a very pleasant moment. During the event, there were many questions, and I wanted to take advantage of this little virtual corner that I have in my blog to elaborate a little more about one of the statements on which the audience pronounced towards the end of the session.

The main reason why the KPIs in our industry do not finish coagulating is that the process of defining and implementing KPIs is not clear.

Tanja / Robert did a live survey during the webinar ... and of these questions, the one that got the most votes was "we do not have a good process for it"

So today, without haste and with the tranquility that I get from listening to my Spotify playlist of Deep Focus and this intense Colombian coffee that I am tasting, I am ready to give some ideas on how to implement the process of defining and monitoring KPIs. They worked for me in the past, so I hope that these slides that I have created will help you

I also leave here the Webinar link that Wordbee has kindly shared with all of us

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A 4 steps process to define your Localization KPI program www.yolocalizo.com

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Click HERE to download the slides

And that's for the week, I wanted to take advantage of this blog post to reflect a little a bit more about KPIs, and today after reading for a while on my Kindle I started writing this post ... yes, yes! you read correctly, the Kindle and my phone! They appeared on the train! So a day that it started weird losing the train, losing the phone and the Kindle had a great ending after having a nice conversation, with nice people on a very interesting topic and finding my iPhone and my Kindle 🕺🏻

Hope you find this post useful and do not hesitate to comment below relevant KPIs you use in your Globalization program plus any tip you might have to overcome obstacles in the measurement journey!

Have a good week!

@yolocalizo