Context

In 2018, a global provider specializing in content localization for film, TV, and interactive media managed thousands of concurrent translation and dubbing projects across 30+ countries.

Internally, the organization had outgrown its infrastructure. Each regional office maintained its own workflow tools — spreadsheets, databases, and locally scripted automations. A single project could pass through five disconnected systems before completion, each interpreting metadata differently.

I was brought in to design the unifying operational platform: a single enterprise tool capable of supporting every localization workflow while introducing automation, visibility, and governance across the network.

This wasn’t a UI redesign. It was a system redesign of how a distributed organization executed its core operations.

Platform Management space showcasing a list of all specification templates configured by the members of specific team/department.

Challenge

At kickoff, I defined three competing forces the platform had to reconcile:

1. Global standardization vs. local autonomy — each client imposed unique specs; regional leads needed flexibility to adapt.
2. Automation vs. control — efficiency gains couldn’t compromise delivery accuracy.
3. Adoption vs. disruption — replacing familiar workflows would fail without a clear, incremental migration path.

Existing workflows exposed real pain:

• 8% configuration error rate in project setups.
• >4 hours per day spent reconciling mismatched task data.
• Low traceability — no shared visibility or accountability across regions.

The team also faced technical debt from outdated APIs and non-standardized databases.