Tapping into the Power of Localized Data

Get ready for an enlightening journey into the intricate world of localization and data measurement with Giulia Tarditi, Head of Global Experience at Qualtrics. Julia shares the two types of data they monitor - operational and stakeholder-related, and how they've linked these metrics to their overall business strategy. 

Episode Transcript

Antoine Rey (00:18):
Hi, i'm Antoine Rey and I will be your host today
for this Global Ambitionspodcast episode, and my guest
today is Giulia Tarditi, andGiulia is head of Global
Experience at Qualtrics, andtoday we're going to be talking
on how to measure success ofyour localization approach.
Julia, welcome to the program.

Giulia Tarditi (00:36):
Thank you very much.
It's great to be here.

Antoine Rey (00:39):
Great, i'll dive straight into it.
So you and I had a conversationand you built a very
interesting language dataprogram at Qualtrics where
you're measuring bothoperational data but, more
importantly, measuring how ontrack you are to becoming a
global company and howsuccessful your internal
stakeholders are with theirinternational OKRs.

(01:02):
Can you tell us about whatyou've built and explained a
little bit?

Giulia Tarditi (01:07):
Yes, of course, our team owns the strategy and
governance for how we localizeour offering at Qualtrics.
And, of course, delivering tothe market products and services
that are culturally,contextually and linguistically
relevant to prospects andcustomers and meet their needs
is vital for us to be a globalsuccess story.
We knew, though, that, withoutdata, this would only be a nice

(01:31):
sentence placed somewhere on ateam scope description, and so,
when we started, the goal was tobuild the center of excellence
from scratch, and one of thepillars was a data program.
We divided the data that wewanted to track into two big
buckets.
One was operational, sort ofwhat we call black box data We

(01:55):
got everything related to, oncethe content enters our ecosystem
, what do we do with it, howfast we translated, how much we
spend, how many errors, etcetera, how much we pay for
words, and this is stuff thatour stakeholders may or may not
want to hear about.
We know that our customersdefinitely don't care, but
sometimes people don't realizethat your colleagues don't care

(02:17):
either.
Of course, they're marginallyinterested that you do the right
things and have an interest assoon as that content enters your
ecosystem, but they don't wantto be in the nitty gritty of it.
Then the second bucket of datathat we knew we wanted to track
was data that do matter to ourstakeholders.
They're the things that ourcolleagues want to hear about,

(02:39):
starting from peers in themarketing team all the way up to
the CEO of Qualtrics.
What if you get stuck in theleft with the guy and you want
to give him your elevator pitchexplaining why he pays your
salary?
And so I guess, even withinthese two buckets, there's two
different things you want totrack.
One is the perennial KPIs.

(03:00):
Those don't change very often.
There are the things that andthey will be slightly different
depending on the type ofbusiness you're in, but for us
there are things like annualrecurring revenues and expansion
of business with existingcustomers, top spending, and
this data is data that we wantto track over and over again.

(03:22):
Then there's other things thatare more contingent and are
linked to, perhaps, companystrategy for the next 12 to 24
months, like growing monthlyactive users or decreasing the
number of escalations related toa specific vertical, and we
knew that what we wanted to dowas doing two things First,

(03:45):
showing a picture of how thosedata was looking like in English
versus non-English markets, andthen we decided to try, because
we wanted to give theorganization a leadership, a
good picture of where we were atin our journey to become a
global company, which also meansa global customer base and a

(04:05):
global revenue stream, not justcoming out of a single country
for as powerful as it can be.
The second thing we wanted to dowas showing a clear impact of
every dollar we were spending inour organization.
How was it affecting thosemetrics?
Could we find patterns andcould we check what metrics?

(04:28):
were we or were we not moving?
For example, one of ourlocalization work streams is
directed at making digitalmarketing events multi-lingual.
We knew that the goal for thoseevents was pipeline.
We wanted to see does pipelinegoes up in non-English-speaking

(04:52):
markets when we localize, anddoes it go up more or less,
depending on how we do thingsLocalize everything from the
get-go, do it with humans, do itwith machine, etc.
We knew this were veryimportant talking points because
we wanted stakeholders, wewanted the C-suite to take it
seriously.
We also wanted to understandbecause the localization

(05:16):
function was new metrics what wecould impact the most.
This is something that everyteam needs to discover for
themselves and that only areally good data program can
flash out Again, bucket oneproductivity internal black box
doesn't matter to anyone besidesyourself and your team and
maybe your immediate reportingline.

(05:39):
But then there's all this stuffthat matters way more Because
your company doesn't really payyou to be productive.
They pay you to be productivebecause it has an impact on the
company's bottom line.

Antoine Rey (05:51):
On revenue.

Giulia Tarditi (05:52):
Yes.
Now, the biggest challenge wasnot getting people to listen,
because as soon as we had thedata points that were ready to
listen, we were showing that wewere already an international
company and that that componentwas growing.
The challenging thing wasgetting the data out of the
various systems, because I don'tknow in other companies, but at

(06:13):
QuiltTrace we would havedifferent sources of truth for
different data coming out of,like whether it's a product data
or marketing data or supportdata, financial.
They're all in differentsystems.
Although the North Star wouldbe for us to have a dynamic
dashboard that callsautomatically all of this points

(06:35):
and can give you a picture thatis live, we are not that.
So there is work that goes intoupdating a static version of
that dashboard, pulling in thedata that we have chosen with
cherry picked across the varioussystem, slicing it through with

(06:55):
a language lens.
Discadences could be monthly orfortnightly or quarterly,
depending on what we're lookingat.
It doesn't make sense to lookat annual recurring revenue
figures every week.
You would perhaps want to keepan eye on them on a quarterly
basis.
Usage data, on the other hand,can be a bit more frequently

(07:17):
pulled Then, if we want to lookat things like pipeline data.
We got to wait 60 days or soafter the events, so it has
specific cadence that isdependent on a specific launch.
But, yes, this is how we do itright now.
It's not perfect and we'redoing things to make it more

(07:38):
automated.

Antoine Rey (07:39):
That's the holy grail for a lot of companies.
To your point, getting theoperational data is very easy.
You have a TMS and that allowsyou to measure your suppliers,
your translators, to measureyour spend and keep finance
happy.
I guess to a certain extent.
But then that second bucketyou're talking about is the

(08:01):
difficulty seems, for a lot ofpeople Where do you get the data
?
Whose door do you push to getaccess to the data?
And then the second questionout of this once you've managed
to gather that data, how much ofthat do you attribute to
localization?

Giulia Tarditi (08:18):
Yeah, i don't think you need to attribute it
to a single thing, you're justshowing it right.
Of course, if you're able toshow that, if you localize it
moves by X, and if you don'tlocalize it moves by half of X,
then all the better.
Of course, there may be otherthings at play, but to me, the
localization function has a verybig mission, which is to

(08:42):
surface this data withoutnecessarily claiming them for
yourself, but to make aware yourcolleagues of their existence,
of this way of slicing throughthe data and this way of just
helping the organizationalleadership to build a habit of
looking at this data on aregular basis.
No one else is going to careenough to surface this data

(09:08):
because they will all, at leastin initial stages of a company's
maturity, they will all befocused on the English-speaking
markets, which are the biggestmarket.
But it's your mission tosurface this data.
You don't need to claim thesuccess of it, the success in
and how you build the profile ofbeing the leader who brings

(09:30):
this stuff to the table, whoputs the executive in front of
this data and says this stuffmatters.

Antoine Rey (09:40):
I guess I always advise clients it's not
necessarily who do you attributeto, but certainly, if you
present it, it's going to beattributed to you somehow.
I always advise clients togather the information, create
your dashboard and present it atevery opportunity you have to

(10:01):
your C-suite, to your all-hands,to your stakeholders, wherever
that might be.
I think indirectly, then, it'sgoing to be associated with
localization, which is what youwant to to a certain extent.

Giulia Tarditi (10:13):
Exactly Great leadership is not claiming Yeah.

Antoine Rey (10:18):
I think I like your idea as well.
At some stage where I believeyou unplugged localization to
see how they would react.

Giulia Tarditi (10:26):
Yeah, this is something that I've done at a
couple of companies, sometimesto prove that localization does
have an impact in the absence ofa lot of data points, etc.
All you got to do is pull theplug and say, okay, so let's
find two comparable things,whether it's two events or two
product launches or two landingpages.

(10:47):
For one we just localize thehallway and the other one zero.
We launch it across all marketswith no localization in place.
And you need to be very firmand very strict, because your
stakeholders don't want to hearit, they don't want to risk it.
So I guess, if you want to seethe glass hour full, it means

(11:08):
they know that localizationmatters because they don't want
to go without it.
But you're like, well, you'realways questioning how much it
matters, so let's go without itand let's see what happens.
So you got to have the guts topull the plug, because pulling
the plug shows very clearly thatno localization means way

(11:29):
lesser an impact in certainmarkets, and we're not talking
about simply denying you tospeak in markets.
I think this is a perhaps thebiggest mistake that people make
when pitching localizationinternally, especially within a
B2B space.
It's not just people outside ofyou know, big spending power

(11:50):
markets like the US and the UKand Ireland who benefit from
localization and are going togrow as a result.
What about your top spenders?
They may be based in Seattleand have a big budget, but they
have customers across the globe,and if you can't provide those
localization capabilities, theywill seek them elsewhere.
So you will grow by investingin those localization

(12:14):
capabilities.
You will also have an impact onhow much the big spenders spend
and how much they stick around,and so it's very important
because otherwise, if you arethe localization owner, there
will be people in the businessthat will try and push you in
that corner.
You only belong in the nonEnglish corner.

(12:35):
This is an English initiative,but this is an American
initiative.
It's wrong.

Antoine Rey (12:42):
I think a lot of our listeners on the client side
are struggling ways to get tothat data.
It's like whose door do youpush, how do you build that
sphere of influence you're goingto need And where do you get
the data, and it's like thosekind of advice and tips of what
you've done.
That is very useful, i think.

Giulia Tarditi (13:01):
Well, you've got to be good at building
relationships right, becauseit's the best way to get someone
to listen and to care enough togenerate an export from a tool
you don't have access to.
Hey, would you mind giving methat?
You can only do if you've got agood relationship.
You've got a map out, who hasaccess to what you know
generally, an intranet and a bitof chats around the coffee

(13:25):
machine coming very handy, butwith some people it doesn't work
, with some teams it reallydoesn't.
And you've got to be the badguy And you've got to say you
know, if you don't give me thedata, if I don't see what
happens and the impact after Isend you the translations, i'm
just not going to give you thetranslations.
What we did in an earlier phasewas pulling the plug and saying

(13:46):
no KPI on a service.
You don't want to measure thedata.
We're just not going to do it,and that made them give you the
data.
You just got to be able to.
sometimes, you know, sometimesyou got to be the bad guy And
it's something very challengingfor localization.
Somehow we invest into buildingthis brand to be everybody's

(14:08):
friend and buddy and, you know,to be super available, to be the
one always saying yes.

Antoine Rey (14:16):
Did you feel you needed to have the support of
your management or the VP aboveeven that before you take such a
drastic, you make such adrastic move somehow?

Giulia Tarditi (14:27):
I would say, rather than asking you, inform
the leadership that this iswhat's going to happen, right,
and you're like, as long as youposition it as a strategic move,
you're like it's a means to anend, right, the goal is not not
to give localization to thoseguys.
The goal is for them tounderstand that they need to
give me the data.
Nothing matters if you can'tmeasure it.

(14:48):
You can't throw money at aproblem and let it fall into a
dark hall.
You got to see what happens,because otherwise you can't
iterate, you can't finance, youdon't know if you're on the
right path, you just spend andspend And so, even if you've got
really good gut feeling orexperience, there's a lot of

(15:10):
waste.

Antoine Rey (15:11):
Yeah, all right, we've come, unfortunately,
because it's a greatconversation, but we've come to
the end of our episode there.
But, julia, thank you so muchfor participating in this
podcast.
I'm sure there'll be a lot ofinterest in that episode.

Giulia Tarditi (15:24):
Thank you so much.
It was great to participate.