I have many fond memories of those good old days when clients were loyal to their localization suppliers. We didn’t have to do much to keep business coming in. Competent resources were scarce, which meant clients were happy just to hear you say you could handle their list of languages.

Larger suppliers got all the business from cash cows like Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. After all, large clients could only do business with large localization houses. Clients paid invoices promptly without reading them. What a time! Then came the world economic downturn. Suddenly, corporations began evaluating everything, including their localization efforts. Purchasing departments started looking at creative ways to reduce costs. Project management fees or paying for 100% matches were eliminated. Online bidding became a fad. Larger vendors were no longer the sole suppliers for big clients. Relationships were not as important anymore. . .