6 ways to prove the ROI of AI-powered localization

Insights from Summer Zhao, Global Localization Manager at Zoom, and Bryan Murphy, CEO at Smartling

As artificial intelligence reshapes workflows across every business, localization teams are facing a new kind of pressure: show their impact, or risk losing budget. Today’s executive teams want to know how localization drives growth, efficiency, and business outcomes. The responsibility falls on localization teams to draw the connection between the important work they do and their company’s success at large.

In the second session of Smartling’s AI Translation 101 series, CEO Bryan Murphy sat down with Summer Zhao, Global Localization Manager at Zoom, to unpack ROI in the age of AI and how localization teams can prove the value of their work. From aligning with stakeholders to selecting the right metrics, they covered the key moves every localization leader should make right now.

📺 Ready to watch? Stream the full session on demand.

🎧 Prefer to listen? Catch the podcast here.

📘 Want to go deeper? Our new ebook, Navigating the shift: Why, when, and how to adopt AI translation, breaks down the strategy behind successful adoption. Check it out here.

1. Lead with impact, not just efficiency

AI has raised the bar on what’s expected of localization teams. While saving time and cutting costs are major selling points of AI translation, today’s executive teams want more:specifically, they want proof of business impact, like revenue growth in new markets and better experiences for global users. That’s exactly where ROI comes in.

Bryan noted that opportunities to leverage AI to scale company growth is driving board-level interest in localization—but with that increased visibility comes higher expectations. Leaders want to know not just how much content is being translated, but how it’s performing in-market. To address this, teams may want to consider proactively sharing performance metrics like conversions and attributed revenue (rather than more operational metrics like turnaround time).

Summer reinforced the point: to earn continued investment, localization needs to show how it fuels strategic outcomes like faster launches and global customer engagement—not just operational efficiency.

2. Get ahead of the roadblocks

Proving ROI is rarely simple, especially in localization, where impact is often indirect. Summer called out three common challenges:

• Attribution: Localization success shows up in other teams’ metrics, in sales KPIs like revenue or measures of customer success like retention rates. This indirect impact makes it hard to isolate how localization contributes to the success of the business.
• Data silos: Metrics are often spread across tools and teams. It takes effort to build a unified view of your data that illustrates how different teams contribute to overall company goals, but it’s worth it to understand how different teams support each other.
• Localization literacy: If teams view localization as “just translation,” they’re less likely to prioritize it or help track its value. It’s important to reframe localization as a growth enabler that supports expansion, speed, and customer experience.

Pro tip: Begin with an audit that where your data lives. Aligning systems—even manually—will strengthen your ability to connect localization to larger business results.

3. Track metrics that matter to the business

When it comes to proving the ROI of localization efforts, the most compelling metrics are those tied to business growth, not language coverage or volume.

Summer outlined the data points that consistently resonate with leadership:

• Revenue and market growth: International revenue, conversion by locale, new user acquisition in global markets
• Speed to market: Time to launch in new regions, how quickly content scales across languages
• Operational efficiency in context: Time and cost savings can strengthen your case, but only when they support broader goals like scale, agility, or team productivity.

Bryan emphasized the importance of framing results in terms that resonate with executive teams: growth, speed, and scale. When speaking to the C-suite, localization leaders should focus on metrics that reflect business impact, not just internal efficiency.

Summer brought that point to life with a marketing campaign example, where localized Japanese content outperformed the English version in engagement—clear proof of how localization can drive measurable business outcomes.

4. Earn buy-in by speaking your colleagues’ language

Cross-functional alignment starts by getting localization involved early—during strategic planning, not just during execution.

Summer explained that her team now embeds localization into roadmap planning and strategy sessions, rather than waiting until content is finalized. The key to getting non-localization teams on board with localization? Drop the industry jargon (keep the mentions of MQM and LQA internal to your localization team meetings!) and connect directly to other departments’ KPIs.

📘 Want to build your business case? This ebook includes a checklist for stakeholder alignment, data sharing, and success tracking.

5. Start smart with AI and measure everything

For teams exploring AI localization, don’t try to boil the ocean. Instead:

• Start with support content or internal documentation
• Build a baseline: compare traditional vs. AI workflows
• Use a quality framework to track progress
• Choose one clear success metric to spotlight ROI

Summer’s team began with simple A/B comparisons—tracking turnaround time, cost-per-word, and editing effort of AI workflows compared to traditional human translation. When the results showed clear wins in AI’s favor, their adoption of new tech accelerated.

Here’s another example: Gemini achieved 2x faster turnaround times by replacing human-only translation with AI + human-in-the-loop workflow.

6. Make success a shared goal

Localization doesn’t drive business impact in a vacuum. It does so in partnership with teams like marketing, product, legal, and support, which is why alignment across departments is critical.

Summer emphasized that success metrics must be shared. When localization helps other teams hit their goals, it earns its place as a strategic growth driver.

Bryan added that AI is becoming a powerful enabler of this alignment. It opens the door for localization to operate at a new level of scale and visibility. 

The bottom line

Proving localization ROI is no longer optional—it’s the foundation for long-term success of localization teams in the AI era. Whether you’re just getting started or scaling up, the playbook is clear:

✅ Measure what matters

✅ Align with business outcomes

✅ Start small with AI, test, and expand

✅ Make ROI a shared language across teams

Ready to watch? Stream the full session on demand.

Prefer to listen? Catch the podcast here.

Want to go deeper? Our new ebook, Navigating the shift: Why, when, and how to adopt AI translation, breaks down the strategy behind successful adoption. Check it out here.