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Eileen Sheridan
former Web Globalization Manager at Siebel Systems, Inc.

1. What is your background and how did you end up in web globalization?
I have a Bachelors Degree in European Studies and a Masters Degree in International Management. I have studied in Spain, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I have studied Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese.

I previously worked as a Web Designer at Borland International, then as the Website Manager at PointCast. After a stint as International Site Manager at Novell, I became the Web Globalization Manager at Siebel Systems.

I got into the web about six years ago when I worked for a telecom start-up in Los Angeles that needed a web site in order to attract high-tech venture capital. I had to figure out what the "web" was and build the site from the ground up. I remember when Earthlink was our ISP and they only had four employees!

2. How many languages does Siebel's web site support? What is the popularity of the different language versions?
Presently, Siebel.com is available in seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and Castilian Spanish. The site contains 150+ pages per language version (more in English).

German and Japanese seem to be the most popular languages. This goes hand-in-hand with the marketing efforts contributed by our in-country staff in these two countries. There definitely is a strong correlation between a department's commitment to leveraging the web to its fullest and the fact that visitors come back to the site again.

3. Access to Siebel's translated sites is provided through a Global Web Sites pull-down menu; what are the perceived advantages of this approach (vs. an international home page or a list of each country in the footer, etc.)?
A drop-down, country-toggling method was chosen for a couple of reasons. One was the look and feel of our site. It was perceived as "crowded" and "too much content" to list out the language/country versions. Also, we felt the toggling method was (at that time anyway) the corporate web site standard for listing global versions.

4. At Siebel, is web globalization seen as a part of the marketing effort, customer support, or something else?
This is strictly seen as a marketing effort and our Web Group falls under Siebel's marketing function. Almost 40% of our revenue is derived from customers outside the United States, with roughly 27% being from the EMEA region. The foreign offices needed native-language online content to support their sales efforts.

Planning is a team effort. Together with the marketing officials from EMEA, Asia Pac, Japan and the Americas, we decide in what direction the web sites will go. However, both the US Web Manager as well as the US VP of Corporate Marketing must approve all final plans.

In my opinion, though, the Web Group should fall within the IT organization, because as a site gets more complex and technologically advanced, IT's role in the site's growth becomes crucial. Also, it is sometimes hard to recruit talented developers. The technical expertise within marketing departments is perceived to be minimal, so it's not a good thing when during the interviewing process you tell applicants that their position falls within a marketing organization.

5. Does the same team that manages software localization also manage web globalization? Why or why not?
No, web globalization is separate from product localization. The manager of international product marketing and his team manage product localization. While we work closely together, we each follow very different processes and philosophies.

We are planning a company-wide meeting of department representatives who are responsible for localization. We will demonstrate best practices and processes, including recommended vendors and tools. To goal is to develop localization and globalization standards for the company as a whole so that we are leveraging current vendor resources and lower overall costs.

6. How large is the core web globalization team? Is everybody located at HQ or do you have a distributed group?
The Web Group consists of myself plus one assistant. He is a producer and is responsible for the coding side of the sites. In addition, we are trying to recruit for two similar positions, one based in the UK and one in Japan. These persons will be responsible for the EMEA sites (French, German, Italian, and Spanish) and for Japanese, respectively. All of these positions will report to me.

Siebel uses a centralized web globalization model. As the headquarters drives all marketing efforts, the headquarters also dictates all content, servers, and design. The content that in-country offices can add is usually limited to local events, press releases and job listings.

7. What skills and backgrounds should be represented in the web globalization team?
In my opinion, the following are must-haves:

• ability to code HTML with a text editor
• can create original graphics with Photoshop
• speak at least one of the languages in which our web site is implemented

Unfortunately, this is a combination that is rarely found in US-born employees.

8. Does Siebel use any content management software such as Vignette or an in-house solution?
No, we are not using any content management system yet. We are currently evaluating Interwoven and Documentum.

9. When expanding an organization's localization efforts from software only to both web and software, what are some of the pitfalls?
Web globalization is a publication effort while software localization is a manufacturing process. The web localization cycle is much shorter and the results on the web can be seen by people who might not even own the software. Careful QA is definitely required in both mediums.

10. The education of internal constituents is a time-consuming yet critical component of many web globalization efforts; how is this handled at Siebel?
Yes, this is the hardest part of my job. I am constantly confronted with justifying why we should translate content, as well as "enable" our web forms, etc. to be globally accepted. I hope with the upcoming corporate localization meeting, we will begin to educate our internal constituents on a more widespread level.

The other problem is also always trying to figure out from which budget the translation moneis will be allocated. Even though we all fall within the "same pot of money", there is often disagreement over who should pay. Many of these arguments are simply settled by canceling projects totally. The latter here should never be a solution in order to serve our global customers better. In my opinion, a truly globalized web site is the pinnacle of excellent customer service.

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