Renato Beninatto and Donald A. DePalma, widely recognized professionals in the localization and globalization industry, are the two key principals in Common Sense Advisory, Inc. According to its Web site, Common Sense Advisory "is a research and consulting firm committed to improving the quality of international business and the efficiency of the online and offline operations that support it." Recently, DePalma and Beninatto shared their thoughts on the company, the industry and other key issues with MultiLingual Computing & Technology.

Donald A. DePalma	Renato Beninatto

How did the founding of the company come about?

DePalma: I founded Common Sense Advisory in 1999, shortly after leaving Forrester Research. Our original focus was on helping companies during the go-go years of the "new economy" integrate the Internet into their overall business strategies. Our tagline was "a pragmatic approach to e-business."

After a very successful run in 1999, all of my clients offered me jobs as a strategist. I took one of them at Idiom Technologies, effectively putting Common Sense — the company, not the attitude — on the back burner.

During my travels for Idiom, I met Renato who was at Berlitz. When we both found ourselves independent last year — me to finish writing Business Without Borders, Renato to luxuriate in the freedom of having had his contract at Alpnet bought out — we decided to collaborate.

We relaunched Common Sense to help companies make rational decisions about localization and globalization — in other words, a pragmatic approach to global business. Our theme hasn't changed, just the focus.

When was the company founded and what are some key dates in the company's history?

Beninatto: Don and I started working with clients on globalization strategy and workshops early in 2002. The most important date is July 31, 2002. Over the course of the two weeks preceding that date, four firms asked us to conduct custom research, and an industry organization asked Don and me to manage different parts of its research effort. These companies wanted to know what their customers were thinking. Some told us that they were concerned about what the buyers and users of their products wanted, and others were localization service providers who wanted some insight into future market directions.

DePalma: These requests got us thinking about what kind of research was available for the localization industry. Other firms were answering questions like "How many translators can Bowne fit on the head of a pin?" and "How big will the owner's manual translation business be in 2009?"

We did a gap analysis and realized that most of the research out there described what the supply side was up to, but there was very little buy-side research. People kept asking for more information about best practices and more business focus. This was the sort of analysis that I did for over six years at Forrester as a principal analyst.

Beninatto: So we quickly put our strategy consulting aside. To be honest, this wasn't difficult because in this market people weren't knocking our doors down on executive-level strategy consulting. But they did want actionable, insightful research on best practices.

What credentials do both of you bring to the fields of global business, technology and services?

Beninatto: I was born into a global family. I lived in seven countries before I got my first job, and, if I wanted to have girlfriends, I needed to get along in the local languages. This was my first practical exposure to localization.

But seriously, I went to business school in New York and in Rio de Janeiro, worked as a tax consultant for Arthur Andersen (when that was still a glamorous job), and decided to start my own business in the early 1980s. I eventually made the business into an international organization and sold it to Berlitz.

I have been exposed as an executive to international business integration issues, sales in multiple continents, localization requirements from the user's and the vendor's perspectives. I have logged thousands of hours of face time with clients, which have given me a good idea of how to do things right. But my experience pales in comparison to my partner's credentials.

DePalma: Give me a break, Renato! I trace my concern with global issues back to being a child of the Cold War. I remember having to crouch under school desks during air raid drills, in preparation for the day when the Soviets decided to bomb the village in New York where I lived. That national phobia led to my own curiosity about the languages, cultures and politics of the Soviet Union and then of Czechoslovakia. Before I knew it, I was a specialist in Slavic linguistics.

The economy raised its ugly head then, and I segued into software at Digital Equipment Corporation where I worked on database management and 4GL projects for enterprise applications. From there it was on to Interbase where we built a great database server, focusing on the embedded systems market. I parlayed this software experience into a long stint at Forrester Research where I wrote about analytics and warehousing, application development, content management and globalization — and consulted with large clients that were implementing enterprise systems.

It turns out that one of the reasons I was hired was because of my global perspective, although I always found it tough to get global topics into the reports. Forrester remains very US-centric in its perspective on technology change, despite buying research firms in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Common Sense Advisory has been described as a "boutique consultancy." What is meant by the word boutique?

DePalma: Blame that on Andersen Consulting. For a few months this year there was a real backlash against the larger consulting firms. To differentiate ourselves in the marketplace, we described ourselves as a boutique, pushing the notion that what you saw — that is, me and Renato — was what you got.

Although it's still the case that you get me and Renato, we've found that the word boutique isn't necessary. In fact, our affiliate in Brazil, Edge Group, told us that the word didn't play well in São Paulo. Buyers there want scale, which is one of the reasons that we teamed up with the leading local research firm in South America. So the only boutique you'll hear us talking about now is the one where we'll be shopping for our wives' Christmas presents!

Can you provide general information about the upcoming series of reports that Common Sense Advisory will be launching? Who will be writing these reports? What are their titles, and what are the target dates for their publication?

Beninatto: We are researching the market from the perspective of buyers and practitioners so that focus will determine what we write. We did have to lay out the details of our subscription for prospective clients. There we've described reports such as the localization life cycle and the shape of the market. But to be honest, both Don and I are very buyer-driven and market-aware. We will conduct the research and write the reports that we believe will be of greatest value to our clients, so expect whatever we produce to be very topical. Our clients will have to trust us that we will deliver what they need.

DePalma: To start out, we'll be writing on a quarterly basis. The first report is on return on investment (ROI) and is available now. We're targeting February for the next report, but we've already written a couple of Quick Takes — shorter pieces on a particular topic — that we've made available to clients through our Web site. One of them is about localizing for Japan, a problem that we heard repeatedly in our interviews for the "Beggars at the Globalization Banquet" report. I should emphasize that it's "we heard" — Renato and I are conducting the research and writing the reports ourselves. For this first report we interviewed practitioners at 50 companies based in the United States.

Tell us in particular about "Beggars at the Globalization Banquet," the first report in the series.

Beninatto: As you know, Don and I approach this research from different perspectives, so what interested him wasn't necessarily what I found intriguing and vice versa. As Don mentioned, we interviewed 50 client companies that localize products, documentation, marketing materials, commercial applications, transaction systems or Web sites. In our interviews we found that localization projects yield a wildly disproportionate return on costs, so projects typically enable companies — for a very low expenditure — to participate in a range of lucrative international markets.

Besides analyzing the results of these interviews, we also outlined the practices of market leaders for establishing and measuring the return on localization investment.

We also plan to follow the lead of J.D. Power and start grading suppliers on customer satisfaction. This report takes a first step in that direction.

DePalma: The hands-on experience of users always fascinates me, so it was a fun exercise to get on the phone and sit across the table from people who make globalization work for their companies. One finding from our interviews was that many companies haven't taken advantage of the computer-aided translation, workflow and global content management systems (GMS) available to them. In fact, few have even considered GMS technologies at all. Having spent 18 months at Idiom fighting the good fight for GMS, I found this particularly interesting. This low acceptance of all localization software solutions points to a non-strategic role for the technology vendors in corporate globalization plans.

How does one get copies of these reports?

Beninatto: We decided that the only way we could get into this business was by asking companies to make a commitment to a steady stream of high-quality research. So the only way to get the reports is by annual membership. You can get details about how to subscribe at www.commonsenseadvisory.com/subscribe.

DePalma: What I really want to do is raise the level of discourse in the localization industry. One way to do this is by bringing to the space the same kind of analytical rigor that I applied while I was at Forrester. One of our vendor prospects mentioned that he was both excited and concerned that we are approaching this industry in the same way that we used to work at Forrester. He's happy that we're tackling the job, but nervous that we'll call things exactly as we see them.

There's been too much vendor-sponsored analyst white papers masquerading as research. We're planning to change that.

Common Sense Advisory at a Glance

Office: Chelmsford, Massachusetts Web: www.commonsenseadvisory.com E-mail: info@commonsenseadvisory.com Phone: 646-286-7975 Fax: 661-461-4344

Talk about the International Site User Experience Assessment. What kind of companies would most benefit from this assessment?

DePalma: The ideal company for a site assessment has built some international sites and is concerned with issues such as suitability for a given market, usability, performance and benchmarking against the best of the Web. We've done this kind of analysis for companies in the United States and Brazil. It's the offshoot of some work that I was involved in at Forrester when I was a principal analyst with a research group focused on interactive design and development.

Beninatto: This assessment is a starting point, a benchmark. We look at several indicators and typical areas for improvement and give our clients a roadmap to take advantage of the global characteristics of the Web.

What are the goals of the Business Globalization Workshops? Who would most benefit from taking these workshops? When and where are they offered?

Beninatto: Our workshops are designed to help companies move from international to global. Our interviews showed that still one of the main tasks of localization managers is to educate senior management on the benefits of building internationalization and localization into their organizations' DNA. But they don't have the business perspective or access to management to do it. It is a mixture of consulting, benchmarking and training to several levels in the organization. Our clients have ranged from huge corporations in the technology area to smart small software companies, including financial services and retail companies trying to conquer the US ethnic markets.

DePalma: These workshops tend to be a lot of fun. We have seen that companies need a catalyst to unleash a movement towards globalization. Being global is a mindset. Many among your readers enable millions of dollars of revenues for their companies through localization, but are not able to leverage that. Our job is to look at processes and business drivers for these organizations and teach them how to implement a 90-day plan to become global.

What is the philosophy behind your business consulting as you work with clients?

Beninatto: We see ourselves as enablers. Most companies have all it takes to be global, but they don't know where to start or how to justify it. Smart business people "get it" when we talk to them. Globalizing the right way is not only cheaper, but probably one of the best investments a company can make. Note that I say investment, not expense.

DePalma: That's right. The value of internationalization and localization should be measured in terms of how much additional revenue it enables and not by how much it costs.

Beninatto: So, if you are fighting for dollars for your budget, it's time to call us!

What is ahead for Common Sense Advisory in 2003? Beyond?

DePalma: Next year we will increase the frequency of reports, add in some more quantitative data analysis of things that matter to practitioners and do more on-line. I have a lot of ideas about things that we can do on the Web that haven't been done yet by research firms, so that should be pretty exciting. Meanwhile, we'll be speaking at more conferences as we share the results of our research. Both of us have a passion about globalization and what it takes to support it, so we're committing ourselves for the long haul.

Beninatto: I would like to fill the information gap in the localization industry. There is a lot of information that I always wished was available to help me strategize and make investment and marketing decisions. Now our subscribers will get it. Regularly.