Speak to your customers: Add language support to your critical CRM and ERP checklists

(Jan 8 2010) CRM , ERP Blog

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Technologies: Cloud Computing, CRM, CRM Blog, ERP, ERP Blog, Green IT, on-demand, SaaS, web-based

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  1. By Todd R. Weiss    ERP blogger

     

    If you meet someone new on a street while you've traveling in a foreign country, you may not speak each other's languages.

    You certainly can't assume that they speak your language and that you'll be easily able to communicate.

    So why, then, do you likely assume that anyone using your company's CRM and ERP portals to contact your business can communicate with you in English?

    That's a bad assumption, and one that can be limiting your global business efforts right now, even as you are reading these words.

    In 2010, this is something you should look at carefully and then fix in your ERP and CRM systems so customers around the world can place orders, buy your products and services, get customer support and check their invoices while doing business with you. So says Donald DePalma, president and founder of  Common Sense Advisory Inc., a localization and translation market research consultancy in Lowell, Mass. "Make sure that it's globalized so they can find you and talk with you," he said. "If you forget this, you'll neglect potential customers around the world."

    And that is something that you certainly don't want to do – not when it's tough enough nowadays just to sell to the customers you already have as the global economy continues to get restarted.

    Fixing this language divide, according to DePalma, means making sure that your ERP and CRM applications can handle the various character sets required by different languages. That needs to be taken into account for customers in Cambodia, China, Greece, Japan and everywhere else, so that the native languages used in those countries are recognized in your applications.

    This isn't something you've thought about before?

    That's just the point, DePalma says.

    Not many companies think about these kinds of critical details, but they will become larger as companies serve more and more customers around the world, he said.

    "It's the tip of the iceberg," he said. "The first thing that you want to be able to do is make sure that people can read what you're writing" in your customer-facing applications.

    The easiest way to do this is to make sure that your IT applications support multiple scripts or languages using something like Unicode, which helps computers recognize and present characters for any language, program or platform.

    Last fall, according to a post in DePalma's blog, one CRM vendor, RightNow Technologies Inc., of Bozeman, Mont., announced improved multi-language support for its CRM application using language support services from Dublin-based Sajan Software Ltd. "I've seen vendors thinking more globally with their products," he said. So far, RightNow's CRM applications offer support for 33 languages, according to the company. "Rather than build it themselves, they turned to specialist technology companies to provide it for them," DePalma said. Other CRM companies still have some catching up to do in this area, he said. "It's not a widespread trend with CRM."

    Multi-language support is, however, more prevalent today in ERP systems, he said, led by vendors such as SAP, which is based in Europe and is sensitive to the language needs of other users. "In SAP, it’s a given."

    These kinds of global issues with CRM and ERP applications also go beyond just language barriers. There are also fundament differences in the ways that other people do business in different countries that must be kept in mind, DePalma said.

    One client he had, for instance, was a British travel vendor that offered a frequent traveler rewards program for its customers around the world. A problem quickly cropped up when the CRM system used for the rewards program didn't take into account that the same sorts of personal customer information couldn't legally be kept for clients in all countries. "The kinds of information they collected for U.S. customers was much more personal than they could legally collect for European customers, where privacy laws are stricter." Since the applications couldn't be filtered to allow regional use of the CRM application, the British travel company was limited in the kinds of promotions it could offer to its British customers.

    And that's not all, DePalma says. There's yet another place where the need for globalization and localization of your CRM and ERP applications for use in other countries becomes quickly evident: whenever your customer interactions involve time zones or money.

    If your applications use dollars in the U.S., then you want to be sure they can automatically translate those dollars into local currencies for users in other countries, he said.

    The time zone issue occurred with another client -- a large hotel chain that was having problems with its Happy Hour promotions in Hong Kong, DePalma said. "People weren't showing up for the half-price drink and appetizer hours." It turned out that the hotel chain used its CRM application to send promotional e-mail blasts to customers, but that the time clock on their servers was sending them out on a U.S. Eastern Time Zone schedule. That meant they were going out at the wrong time for Hong Kong customers to take advantage of the specials.

    "It’s a simple kind of thing to fix, but if you're not planning on those kinds of [glitches] then you're not going to do a good job communicating to your best customers."

    And isn't that what you're trying to do with your CRM and ERP applications in the first place?

     

     

    Todd R. Weiss is an award-winning technology journalist and freelance writer who worked as a staff reporter for Computerworld.com from 2000 to 2008. He spends his spare time working on a book about an unheralded member of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and watching classic Humphrey Bogart movies. Follow him on Twitter @TechManTalking.

     

     

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