How IBM accelerated global marketing across 170 countries with Smartling and watsonx

Overview

IBM is a global technology company operating in more than 170 countries, with a constant flow of product launches, platform updates, and digital experiences supporting its clients worldwide. Within IBM, the marketing, communications, and citizenship organization is responsible for delivering consistent, localized content that supports awareness, demand, and long-term growth across every market.

To support that mission, IBM’s marketing teams rely on translation to move quickly while maintaining accuracy, brand consistency, and relevance. As content volumes grew and publishing cycles accelerated, IBM needed a translation approach that could keep pace with modern digital marketing. By combining Smartling’s automation with IBM watsonx as the AI foundation behind translation memory and post-editing, IBM was able to build a scalable solution that integrated seamlessly into its existing technology stack.

“We’re a huge company, and we’re always evolving. There are new products, new product names, refreshes, relaunches. The localization engine has to be on all the time.”

— Denisa Despa, Globalization Leader, IBM

Herausforderung

IBM’s globalization team found itself at a turning point as the company modernized its digital ecosystem. After moving to Adobe Experience Manager Cloud and introducing Adobe Workfront, the team needed a translation solution that could match the speed and structure of these platforms.

IBM.com’s homepage delivers localized messaging and content in 18 languages.

“Our priority was speed and quality,” said Denisa Despa, Globalization Leader for IBM.com. “We were looking for a translation partner with a native or close-to-native integration with Adobe Experience Manager.”

Before Smartling, translation workflows relied heavily on manual steps. Files were submitted and tracked across multiple systems, status updates required constant checking, and teams often lacked the context needed to translate efficiently. As content volume increased, this approach became harder to manage and harder to scale.

The challenge was not limited to web pages. IBM needed to localize a wide mix of assets, including campaign content, partner program content in Structured.ai, and e-learning materials, all while meeting tight publishing timelines and supporting frequent updates.

“We’re a huge company, and we’re always evolving,” Despa explained. “There are new products, new product names, refreshes, relaunches. The localization engine has to be on all the time.”

IBM needed an approach that reduced manual effort, improved visibility across teams, and allowed localization to operate as part of the marketing workflow rather than alongside it. Without a deeply integrated solution, translation risked slowing down launches and limiting IBM’s ability to respond to global opportunities.

Lösungen

IBM selected Smartling for its ability to both automate localization at scale and bring localization directly into existing workflows, using native integrations with Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Workfront. “It was a stroke of luck,” Despa said. “Smartling could integrate with both Adobe Experience Manager and Workfront natively, so we could simply plug it in and get started.”

Smartling was implemented quickly, with translations underway within weeks. As integrations expanded, IBM and Smartling worked closely to build an automated, end-to-end workflow that connects content requests, translation, and publishing.

Through the Workfront integration, globalization tasks are created automatically and follow each request through the full lifecycle. “When a task moves to translation, the source files and reference materials go automatically,” said Despa. “That was the biggest reduction in manual work for us.” The completed translations then return to structured folders in Adobe Experience Manager, ready for publishing.

IBM’s Italian-language watsonx website page, localized with Smartling.

By combining watsonx with Smartling’s AI Human Translation and centralized glossaries, Smartling and IBM created a cycle in which terminology, style guidance, and linguistic data continuously improve outcomes. As new products and naming conventions are introduced, updates flow into each system, keeping translations aligned across markets.

Today, Smartling and IBM support millions of translated words each month across hundreds of assets. IBM can publish localized content in days rather than weeks—with consistent, measurable quality—by putting Smartling's automations, connectors, and AI solutions to work alongside watsonx.

“Having content live in the market faster impacts the entire company. We don’t miss market shifts or an opportunity to share our perspective on key issues, because we’re there for the conversation.” — Denisa Despa, Globalization Leader, IBM

“Having content live in the market faster impacts the entire company,” Despa shared. “We don’t miss market shifts or an opportunity to share our perspective on key issues, because we’re there for the conversation.”

The Smartling difference

With Smartling, its Adobe integrations, and IBM watsonx working together, IBM achieved measurable improvements across its localization program:

• Reduced average time to market by roughly 50%, from around 20 days to under 10 days
• Improved translation quality by approximately 40%
• Consistently achieved MQM scores in the high 90s
• Achieved 99.5% automation by eliminating manual file handling via Adobe Experience Manager and Workfront integrations
• Scaled to support millions of translated words per month across web, marketing assets, and e-learning content

Beyond efficiency gains, faster time to market enabled IBM to support global launches, ensuring time-sensitive content was in market and ready to deploy whenever opportunities arose. Localization became a strategic enabler, helping teams respond quickly to global moments and business needs.

Reflecting on the partnership, Despa said, “Smartling as a company is represented by its people. The team is collaborative, always rolling up their sleeves to get things done, and the tool itself is easily adaptable and integrable. It’s easy to connect it to basically anything, and that was number one in what was important to us.”

By bringing together Smartling’s AI-powered localization solutions and watsonx, IBM took translation from a manual process and turned it into a fully integrated, AI-enabled part of their marketing engine. The result is faster publishing, stronger consistency across markets, and more time for teams to focus on what matters.