Not that long ago, international expansion and localization were relatively late requirements for emerging companies, but that has changed dramatically with the development of AI-based services. The main reason for this is that AI platforms are often conversant in many languages besides English, which means that users can often figure out how to use them in their language even if the product has not yet been formally localized.
This means that products can start to generate organic demand in markets years before previous generation products would have, which makes preparing for international adoption important. While this is often not a top priority early on, there are a few low-cost/no-cost things you can do to set things up so that when you do see traction in new regions, you can move quickly to amplify and capitalize on that.
A Checklist & Recommended Reading
- Watch for the signals
- Do the groundwork now, easy and cheap to do now, slow and expensive to fix later
- Pick markets with data, not instinct
- Budget it and measure the return
- Decide who owns it
- Know the risks
- Compliance & Regulatory Risks
- Localizing AI Based Services, it doesn’t matter how well localized your AI app is if the AI itself doesn’t perform well in that language.
- When you’re ready to execute
- New To Localization? – to forward to whoever ends up running it
- What Does A Typical Engagement Look Like? – how we work and what to expect