How Netskope saved hundreds of thousands with Smartling's AI translation

Overview

As a leader in modern security and networking for the cloud and AI era, Netskope helps enterprises safeguard data, applications, and users through a cloud-native, zero trust platform. With rapid expansion across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, Netskope recognized the need to make its digital presence—and brand—feel local in every market. The company wanted not only to translate but also to localize, ensuring that its global website and marketing assets resonated with audiences culturally and emotionally.

“Now we have the ability to stand up web content within a matter of days, whereas before it would take us months—that’s a big win.”

— James Yokota, Senior Web Manager, Netskope

Défi

Before Smartling, Netskope’s translation process was highly manual and fragmented. Each of their regional websites existed as a separate instance that had to be updated individually, so even small content tweaks required repeating the same edits across multiple versions of the site—a labor-intensive process. The team relied principally on human translation, another element that made the process manual, costly, and slow.

In addition, as Netskope expanded globally, the team wanted to create a stronger presence in new markets. Part of its intended strategy included tailoring content and design to ensure that every piece of content felt natural and culturally relevant. The company wanted localization that extended beyond words to include culturally relevant visuals and design elements.

“We want people to feel welcomed when they visit our site,” explained James Yokota, Senior Web Manager at Netskope. “Something as simple as changing an image to better represent a region can make a difference in helping content resonate.”

Finally, Netskope’s small team needed to operate with the efficiency of a much larger organization. Manual workflows wouldn’t be sustainable moving forward, especially as the company aimed to add more languages and expand into new regions.

Netskope’s fully localized German website, delivered through Smartling’s Global Delivery Network, featuring translated navigation, messaging, and regionally relevant content.

Solutions

Netskope began partnering with Smartling in 2020 and quickly found the automation and scalability they needed. Smartling’s Global Delivery Network (GDN) tool, which automates website translation for any CMS, made it easy and fast to stand up translated and tailored versions of Netskope’s website in additional languages. This process used to span multiple quarters and now takes only weeks—roughly a 95% improvement in turnaround time—without sacrificing on quality.

The GDN website translation solution also supported localized imagery to go along with the translated content; meanwhile, Smartling’s glossaries, style guides, and translation memory helped Netskope maintain brand consistency while accelerating content delivery. The team is now able to update content and have it translated across multiple language sites—including French, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, and German—within minutes.

“Smartling gave us capabilities we always wanted. It works on top of our platform, so I don’t have to manage things manually. The efficiency gains are incredible—it’s a force multiplier for us.”

— James Yokota, Senior Web Manager, Netskope

Yokota and his team worked closely with their Smartling Customer Success Manager to make efficient use of their glossary, to maximize their ability to benefit from SmartMatches, and to accelerate the training of their preferred translation engine, propelling them to near real-time translation. “Every day, changes on the website get ingested, translated, and published, and we couldn’t have achieved this level of productivity without Smartling,” Yokota shared.

As Netskope’s confidence grew, the team began piloting Smartling’s AI Human Translation (AIHT) workflow, combining AI translation with human proofreading to ensure high quality translations for their thought leadership pieces and technical blogs. “It’s been fantastic,” said Yokota.

Lastly, with their website translated automatically, the team now has the bandwidth to make an additional, forward-looking shift from traditional PDF collateral to fully translatable, web-based assets, making information more accessible and improving search engine discoverability across regions.

Netskope’s French-language eBook landing page, localized with Smartling to ensure marketing assets resonate with regional audiences.

Pourquoi Smartling ?

The impact of Smartling on Netskope’s localization program has been transformative. By adopting an AI-first approach, the company has reduced translation costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single year while improving turnaround time by ~95% et maintaining translation quality.

Netskope can now stand up new sites and content within weeks instead of months, giving the company a competitive edge and greater agility, and content updates take only minutes to localize. Regional teams now have localized websites and marketing materials that feel genuinely native, improving engagement and content downloads across markets.

“The best outcome is when users can see what we’re doing in their own language and it feels like home,” Yokota said. “That emotional familiarity is what Smartling helps us create, and it really helps drive our message to more audiences worldwide.”