Changing the shape of the business and rationalising the organisation has concentrated on core competencies and skills. Many service functions were perceived as overheads and have been obliterated or outsourced in the search for cost savings, improved profitability or new business initiatives. Empowered field management have rejected centralised services as being either too inefficient or unresponsive. As a result many highly skilledcentral services have been disbanded or radically pruned to become skilled service arrangers.

The translation industry has benefited enormously from these changes. Many companies outsourced all their translations while developing a highly competitive purchasing approach to the translation business--often on a tactical, project by project basis. The translation industry responded by developing more competitive translation services and providing additional project services to manage the entire localisation process where this opportunity arose.

Translation costs dropped dramatically as information technology and re-use of terminology helped to automate the translation process, reducing the time to market and the maintenance costs. While the client's conventional localisation work became substantially more manageable the surrounding process became more complex with the variety of wordprocessing, DTP and electronic communications - and the increase demand for more localised versions.

A new localisation industry is born. Everyone is happy - client organisations have reduced thei costs and achieved more for less - and the translation businesses have changed thier shape and increased their business and profitabiltiy. This is typical of the development of many service businesses.

The question is where to now? Can the evolving localisation process add value to an organisation's business aspirations? What part does localisation play in the business engineering infrastructure? What new opportunities does it bring to the client?

While the localisation element has become an integral part of many business processes, many organisations do not recognise the changes that have occurred in localisation capabiliy or the opportunity that these changes can bring to their business.

Localisation is often viewed as a channel or client issue and addressed by the marketing or product development processes - often ignoring the internal language or cultural issues that can be barriers to effective change. Many organisations have a dominant culture and single language policy for their internal business effectively restricting their business practices and competencies, sometimes building in confusion and misunderstandings. The development of a multi-lingual and multi- cultural organisation is considered to be too costly to support.

The ability to communicate with clients and staff - anywhere in the world - using their own language and applying the cultural overtones will ensure that an organisation can create truly global operations.

To harness the power of the organisation client and localisation managers need to consider some of the following issues in their business engineering programmes.

• When will localisation services become commodity facilities that can be applied to our organisation external and internal communications?
• What impactwill this capability have on the organisation business?
• What impact will the development of other communication technologies have on our organisation?
• If we change our business strategy will there be an impact on our localisation process- if so what changes need to happen?
• Can outsourced services respond?
• Can the localisation quality be improved to be locally transparent?
• How can our salesman inGermany work with the salesman in Japan on an international account?
• How can our designer in India understand our market in Portugal?
• How can our business plans be synchronised globally to ensure an aligned business?
• What new companies will use localisation in our markets to gain market leadership?
• If our Chief Executive can communicate effectively and directly in the respective language with client Chief Executives on the other side of the world how can we use that capability to become more effective?

The IT industry is continuing to face many of these issues. Any organisation with global or mulyi-lingual businesses needs to consider how the changes in localisation technology will impact their clients business, the management of their own business and each and every person within their organisation.

Localisation is too important to purely outsource to the localisation company.

To consider these issues we need to understand the evolving global aspirations, business strtategy and processes of an organisation with the business engineering framework and infrastructure needed to support it.

To achieve the global market economies of scale then all barriers to geographic market entry and management have to be obliterated. Empowerment has enabled management to remove the decision making barriers, information technology has enabled the removal of trading barriers and translation technology has enabled the removal of some cultural and language barriers. Business re-engineering has become the method by which to achieve vast economies of scale and rationalisation.

Today one EC company can operate effectively in all European Community countries with only one country based operation. By using agents and distributors organisations can reach their end clients directly, provide off-shore support services and manage their localisation process by distributed outsourcing. Costs are reduced - the quality has improved - the price is competitive and everybody wins.

The reasons for these changes are simple. Advances in communications services, logistics and client management systems means that directdistribution and administration can be just as easily managed from one location as several separate countries. As localisation can be managed through outsourcedby services in each country the need for their own local personnel starts to recede.

Meanwhile many organisations can and do get their business dynamics wrong. Empowerment of country managers can lead to fragmentationr and lack of critical global mass markets. Empowerment of business managers can lead to confusion, lack of local cultural knowledge and conflicting market aspirations. Obtaining buy-in to re-engineering projects across many countries is nearly impossible.

Organisations are keen to explore any business engineering activity that can remove empowerment conflicts and yet ensure continuous access to localised market skills.

The global alignment of their business processes will ensure that their business objectives are achieved consistently and that they are using the best practice process for all markets.

The emergence of business process re-engineering tools and techniques to define and manage all business processes in an organisation is leading companies to develop best practice global processes and destroying local practices as they strive to develop more profitable ways of doing business.

Although it is well recognised that designing products with localisation built in can be a critical success factor in many markets. A similar principle applies to the business processes.

Unless an organisation designs its business processes and infrastructure to include localisation then it will become increasingly ineffective and fail to spot critical market changes. Therefore localisation as a critical supportive business process needs to be an integral part of the business engineering framework and programmes.

Information technology is enabling organisations to build business engineering frameworks with the capability to manage change and be responsive to their clients. Information technology is also the critical enabler of localisation. Put the two together and the business engineering framework can provide the localisation framework to enable everyone to work within the business without language or cultural restraint.

Localisation could be the most significant step forward in the history of man.

Any organisation that can create a multi-lingual and multi-cultural environment for their clients and staff can harness all the skill and knowledge known to mankind both now and in the past.

Here is the dilemma--due to the outsourcing trend there is little localisation knowledge available inside organisations. Building a localisation framework for clients is a strategic service outside the scope of most localisation companies today.

How will the client address the localisation opportunities? Will the localisation companies be able to build their own business engineering framework that will seamlessly adapt and integrate with client business engineering frameworks?

The business opportuntities are there. Japanese industries recognise the strategic importance of multi-lingual and multi-cultural businesses and are making huge investments in language technology to support these business developments.

And when they get it right then Japanese companies will have the competitive edge to manage global businesses transparently and ensure that their business engineering framework and processes are the best in the world.

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Judith Jones was a LISA founding member and the former Director of Business Devopment at ICL United Kingdom.

At present, Judith is the Managing Director of Process UK and the Director of the Business Engineering Partnership.