Salt Lake City-based technology innovator inWhatLanguage helps its customers be global but sound local.
“In this ever-shrinking world, the need to manage content globally is increasingly important,” said Cody Broderick, CEO of inWhatLanguage.
The company translates, manages and distributes content for companies from Apple to Johnson & Johnson and individuals worldwide via a global network of linguists supported by software and AI. Their flagship product is UNIFY, a cloud-based translation management solution that allows companies to collaborate across decentralized teams to translate and manage foreign-language content seamlessly.
Founded in 2011, the company has a truly global footprint that spans customers, employees and translators around the world.
“Our global footprint is felt via the people that we hire,” explained Broderick.
With translators and project managers in 130 different countries, its geographic reach exceeds that of many large corporations.
Overseas markets are an important and growing component of inWhatLanguage’s business. Right now, roughly 15 percent of its revenue is from overseas markets, but “there is a crazy amount of potential, so we will be looking at deploying more of a global sales force,” said Broderick.
He added that, “50 percent of the world is online right now and more than 90 percent of consumers live outside of the United States, so what we do is in-demand and that demand will continue to grow.”
Broderick’s ability to export its services internationally and assemble a unique global workforce is part of the company’s secret sauce that enables inWhatLanguage to maintain 30 fulltime employees in Salt Lake City and 2 in Dublin, Ireland.
In order for linguists and customers to connect with one another and utilize inWhatLanguage services, it is essential to have a globally-accessible internet.
“We are cloud-based,” said Broderick, adding that, “our technology is not a software that is downloaded onto your machine, so it only works where the internet is available.”
While the company serves as a cloud platform to support other internationally engaged companies, inWhatLanguage also relies on a suite of technology platforms to streamline its business and allow it to engage effectively overseas. Broderick cites the cloud-based version of QuickBooks, which allows his team to automate connections to their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to streamline the finance side of the business. For marketing support, inWhatLanguage utilizes Pardot, a Salesforce marketing platform, which integrates well with the company’s other cloud-based systems. LinkedIn also allows the company to narrow and target individuals and industries that might be interested in their services.
Broderick ticked off an array of challenges he and his team have faced going global from tax considerations to complying with local labor laws to finding trusted banking and payment partners. Those issues did not pose an insurmountable hurdle for their business, and he suggested it was important for the company to understand the implications of doing business in a specific market and comply with the different rules to succeed. He suggested that expanding connectivity and access to developing countries in Africa and elsewhere would be good for development and for business.
inWhatLangugage has benefitted from an array of government and private sector programs to help make sense of global markets, including the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Economic Development Cooperation of Utah, World Trade Center Utah and the U.S. Commercial Service. Broderick explained how the US Commercial Services Gold Key program provides support when entering a new market by doing “a deep dive on your goals, objectives, needs and then they start lining up great people to make immediate impact and immediate progress.”
He noted that the advice is often free or at low cost and that these advisors “want to help businesses think, act and succeed globally.”
More broadly, Broderick noted that, “trade agreements are complex, but if there is any way we can foster trade and simplify it on both sides of the fence, it’s going to have an impact.” The positive economic impact of closer trading relationships may start with companies like inWhatLanguage, he said, but ultimately carries downstream to individuals, families and communities.
For entrepreneurs looking to venture into foreign markets, Broderick stresses the importance of not being afraid to ask questions.
He suggested that tapping experts from the beginning can help entrepreneurs succeed quicker in global markets, saying, “don’t waste any time – get in there.”