The Internet's ability to give companies worldwide reach—and enable the processes that support it—have helped transform e-business globalization from the darling of musty management journals into a staple of corner office planning. The result? Localization professionals have gained a new confidence and are reinventing themselves as e-business specialists. With years of experience under our belts, we're ready to walk into the boardroom and claim our role in helping to chart the global online strategies of employers and clients. And rightly so—globalization expertise is at a premium.

But too often, when we walk into that boardroom—or speak at a conference, write a white paper, or talk to a technology reporter—what we have to say about e-business globalization isn't terribly compelling. As an industry, we spend too much time repeating calls to action that are tired, simplistic, and of little real value to companies examining the Internet's global potential. Two typical messages:

• "Hey! The Internet has made you global!" This mantra is no longer news to any high-level Internet executive. Everything from daily site traffic reports to headlines about Yahoo!s difficulties in the French courts reinforces the awareness that even domestically-focused sites reach an international audience.
• "International opportunities are huge!" By now, we've all suffered through e-business globalization presentations that begin with the same three slides. The titles often go something like this: 1) "e-commerce is growing!" 2) "international Internet use is growing!" and, therefore, 3) "International e-commerce is growing!" Particularly in this age of Internet caution, executive eyes roll or glaze over at the sight of yet another hockey-stick growth curve accompanied by hyperbolic growth predictions.

It's Time To Change Our Tune

As a former analyst for Forrester Research in Europe and the US, I've spoken with hundreds of companies that use the Internet to increase sales and extend their brands globally. Although these firms vary in size, industry, national origin, and ambition, they often have common needs at the highest level. The most serious players don't want us to just parrot the size of the overall market opportunity. They want us to tell them how to think about the opportunity and how to follow through successfully. This requires:

• A framework for e-business globalization. For companies accustomed to piecemeal globalization—having a Web page translated, a product localized, or a graphic altered—getting a sense of its enterprise-wide scope is a challenge. Executives therefore need to know: Where does globalization begin and end? What products, services, departments, structures, and roles will it impact along the way, and how? And how does one measure the results?
• A systematic process. Companies also need a detailed roadmap for understanding the planning, organization, implementation, and measurement issues and milestones they will face along the way. What resources are needed, and at what cost?
• Best practices. E-business globalization is still too new to have produced a stable of well-known best practices. But among the pioneers, which companies are worth emulating and what results have they seen? What lessons have they learned that will save peers time and money, while increasing efficiency?

The good news is that the localization industry is in an excellent position to provide these resources, based on years of client work both before and since the rise of the Net. Leave the international e-commerce hype to the analysts—we can increase our value and impact among clients by shifting focus to the messages and tools that help companies learn how to globalize at the highest levels.

Making Executives WorldWise

To take a step in that direction, Idiom, Inc. sponsored the launch of a new online resource in October 2000. The site is called WorldWise, offered free with registration at http://www.idiominc.com/worldwise. Although Idiom has contributed the resources behind it, it is fiercely "agnostic"—focusing only on globalization issues, not the products and services of any particular industry player. Developed by a team of former analysts and globalization industry veterans, WorldWise currently includes:

• A step-by-step guide to the globalization process, including an interactive tour and checklists of important action items for companies to address along the way;
• Over 70 pages of analysis designed to help companies plan, implement, and measure their efforts;
• Columns and interviews that highlight best practices among e-business globalization leaders and pioneers such as Monster.com, Nortel Networks, and Bertelsmann Online.
• Links to more than 300 of the Web's best and most current globalization information—distilled by WorldWise's own team of analysts;
• A tool called the Globalization Quotient, which enables companies to walk through 15 statements about their e-business globalization readiness, determine where they stand and receive a grade and full report on likely next steps and action items.

Getting Globalization on the Corporate Agenda

WorldWise is one tool that localization professionals can use to help push globalization up the corporate agenda—by bringing clients and prospects to the site, walking them through the relevant analysis, and educating them about the scope, urgency, and potential rewards of their efforts. Early response to the site validates this type of effort. WorldWise registrations have been brisk, dominated by executives from traditional firms, members of the press and analysts who spend an average of ten and thirty minutes there—while influential online business directories sponsored by The Economist and The Financial Times have linked to the site from their mainstream management sections.

But to accelerate e-business globalization's change from buzzword to established business practice, there are still missing pieces that we as an industry must strive to provide. Organizations such as LISA can serve as a focal point, building on efforts such as WorldWise by encouraging:

• Industry-specific globalization analysis. Product strategies, target market considerations, organizational imperatives and regulations vary enormously according to whether a firm is selling cantaloupes or car parts to international customers over the Net.
• Growth paths based on country of origin. What are the patterns that should guide international expansion based on country of origin? American firms are often criticized for targeting the UK during their initial online expansion—but does any other path make more sense? And what is the progression for achieving the much-hyped pan-European Internet strategy?
• Data, data, and more data. Industry efforts to quantify where corporate e-business globalization efforts stand to date suffer from fuzzy methodology based on unreliable sources. Research efforts with more integrity must be made—including the involvement of organizations such as LISA—to make sure that companies approaching e-business globalization can realistically assess where they stand, the road that lies ahead, and the potential rewards and pitfalls that await.

This transformation won't happen overnight, or even a year from now. But it does need to happen. Think of these efforts as developing e-business globalization standards—equipping companies with the tools to justify their efforts, build the business case, and follow through successfully—which will in turn boost the "adoption" of our industry. With these resources, we can earn ourselves the place we deserve in the boardroom and help shape the corporate agenda, as business continues its transformation through the Internet.