Learn how SSAB improved the digital customer experience and increased lead generation by 500%. With a new global website, LanguageWire helps SSAB speak the local language of their customers with a streamlined translation process.

“I believe we have made industry history when we created a global website in such a short time with an incredibly large scope and impact”
Kimmo Kanerva, Head of CRM and Digital, SSAB

About SSAB

SSAB is a global company that develops high-strength steel products and construction solutions. Based in Stockholm, Sweden, the company employs more than 16,000 people and operates in 50 countries. With an annual steel production capacity of 8.8 million tonnes, SSAB is one of the largest steel producers in Europe.

In 2014, SSAB acquired Finnish company Ruukki and the company began operating under three distinct brands: SSAB, Tibnor and Ruukki Constructions. This made the massive task of aligning business processes and product ranges vital. Key to customers, a major update to the SSAB websites was necessary. “One of the most important challenges for SSAB was to make full product portfolio easy to understand, find and search. The second challenge was to improve and make the digital customer experience relevant for around 2.5 million annual visitors from different countries.” according to Kimmo Kanerva, Head of CRM and Digital at SSAB.

“One of the most important challenges for SSAB was to make full product portfolio easy to understand, find and search”
Kimmo Kanerva, Head of CRM and Digital, SSAB

Putting the customer journey first

For SSAB, it was important to create a new website that is optimised to customer needs. To do this, the company drew on customer interviews, research results and user tests when creating the site. During their research, they discovered that 80% of all online visitors to SSAB are looking for product information. This meant that it was important to make this information easy to find, no matter what language a customer speaks.

SSAB's website renewal goals

Improved lead management

• Capture more leads and identify customers in the purchasing lifecycle
• Digital + Data = Sales productivity

Agile content production and an omnichannel experience

• Dynamic creation of content such as product datasheets made directly from online content

Advanced localisation and translation process

• More original localised content
• Language specific SEO
• Content shown based on location

“The goal with SSAB’s new website is to take the digitalisation of various processes significantly further than the norm to generate higher sales figures and achieve greater cost efficiency”
Kimmo Kanerva, Head of CRM and Digital, SSAB

All business is local

SSAB realises that potential customers are searching for information in their local languages and they expect to be able to find it. Exactly as a salesperson needs to speak the local language, your website needs to speak the visitor's language. Even though the need is recognised, many businesses stick to one or two languages. When it comes to larger companies however, research by LanguageWire shows that they make their website available in six languages on average. Additionally, research by Common Sense Advisory found that you often need around 14 languages to cover the majority of your website visitors’ languages. The need for a multilingual website was therefore clear for SSAB. On top of this, local content was a high priority for SSAB’s respective markets due to its positive SEO impact.

SSAB decided that in their case it makes sense to define global content that can be developed centrally and then translated and published in languages shared among a number or countries. This global content is then combined with local content that is created and published in each respective country. To be able to achieve this, SSAB needed an integrated translation solution for their CMS. One that is compatible with their tech stack and automates as much of the translation process as possible.

“As with a salesperson needing to speak the local language, the same is true for your website”
Kimmo Kanerva, Head of CRM and Digital, SSAB

Speeding up the localisation process

SSAB chose LanguageWire’s Sitecore Connector to automate and streamline the translation process. This is how SSAB can reach their goal of maintaining their website in 20 different country versions by Q1 2017. It acts as a link between SSAB’s CMS and LanguageWire’s collaboration platform. New text items are exported automatically, translated, approved and then automatically re-imported before being published in the new language. SSAB can also track the status of their translations directly in the Sitecore CMS. This adds up to a massive reduction in time spent on translation and reduces errors.

Now this is where we make our shameless pitch – we have the skills and technology to take your multilingual content creation to the next level. And you don’t need to take our word for it, here is what Kimmo has to say: “It has been great to work with LanguageWire due to their professional help, not only with translation, but also with how to make the website relevant for local businesses. The integrated language module has truly streamlined our processes and made it possible to scale up the number of websites.”