How Lokalise enables new feature deployment in 5 minutes for Minna Technologies

Minna Technologies is a fintech service provider based in Gothenburg, Sweden. They provide subscription management solutions to some of the world's biggest financial companies, top tier banks, and merchants offering subscriptions. That “Subscriptions” tab in your banking app?— probably built by Minna. Their 80 strong team serves Europe, mainly, Belgium and Scandinavia, plus the UK, and they’re growing their presence in the US and Australia.

We spoke with two members of the Minna team who are responsible for their localization and translation processes – UX Designer Elise Karlsson and Product Owner Carl Retzner. Elise set up the initial localization process at the company before it began using Lokalise, and Carl played a significant part in implementing the currently automated localization flow. He is now overseeing its smooth operation. 

The search for a scalable solution

Before introducing Lokalise, UX Designer Elise was solely responsible for managing the whole localization process, with no prior solution in place. This consumed about 25% of her monthly working hours, between spreadsheet management and chasing teams to make sure they had provided localization keys. Needless to say – the process was far from time efficient.

“At Minna Technologies, we focus a lot on scalability, so with time, it became clear that this approach was unsustainable. We needed to find a scalable solution that wasn't just one person doing everything,” Product Owner Carl adds.

They soon decided it was time to automate their localization and translation processes. What attracted them to Lokalise was the flexibility offered by the platform. Lokalise made it possible to integrate with code so tightly that each team could perform their localization-related tasks independently. 

Automating the localization workflow

At first, Lokalise served as a repository for copy, allowing the UX team to fix things quickly via the platform, says Elise. But the rest of the team soon jumped on the opportunity to make an automated continuous translation deployment process work to their benefit. Now they're localizing the front-end and user-facing copy of their app's web UI version and the client-facing interface. 

There’s no dedicated localization team at Minna, the process is more of a joint venture between various parts of the company. Pre-Lokalise, this led to internal headaches, but now they can easily coordinate their efforts within the platform. Elise spends significantly less time dealing with localization and Carl's team has assumed responsibility for the pipelines that drive automated localization and running the daily checkups and fixes. 

“It's been incredible, and I barely think about the localization process anymore, which is amazing,” says Elise.

Their localization workflow is now fully automated. When new products or features are developed, the UX team sets the copy and then implements it through Minna's application frameworks with the required localization keys and without much manual work. 

“By the time you commit or update a code change, a new localization key is created. That triggers an automated process, fetching the machine translation on Lokalise. So, within 5 minutes, we have a machine translation into all the languages supported by the specific key,” shares Carl.

Even though the initial result is a machine translation and may require tweaks, they can release a new development across markets within minutes. A touch of human translation is applied to the copy afterward to ensure good quality, but it still greatly reduces the time needed to release new features or services. 

“It highly benefits us as we can release quickly and have short feedback loops for developers. You can make a deployment at 3 PM, and then at 5 PM, a human translation is ready without any extra steps taken by developers.”

Accurate translations = happy customers

Elise and Carl both emphasize that with Lokalise, the company can fix things quickly and seamlessly, which has made a lot of people happy, both internally and externally. 

Elise tells us: “If we find outright usability bugs, we can test them ASAP, which is awesome for us in the design department.”

Adding to customer satisfaction and feedback, Carl says that the fintech industry requires exceptionally high-quality app translations. Poor translations can cause suspicion – users tend to be more wary of anything concerning their money.

Lokalise's API integration plays a crucial role in Minna Technologies’ service quality and growth. It allows the team to create new keys seamlessly. 

“Since we began using the API integration, we haven't had to make major changes from our end – everything follows the same process, which is extremely convenient,” Carl explains.

Elise highlights the ability to communicate quickly via Lokalise. Before, resolving questions was a manual process involving emailing back and forth, sharing documents, and so on. Now the team can simply comment on issues via Lokalise. Moreover, the number of queries the team now faces has decreased due to high-quality translations from the get-go. 

“We can, for example, use automatic suggestions. That and other Lokalise functionalities make our job a lot easier,” Elise tells us.

The importance of flexibility

Minna's clients often use different combinations of the company's services and product features. With Lokalise, the Minna team can localize specific features without translating whole products. This saves time and resources and makes it a lot easier to customize translations for specific customers:

“Even if we have several customers using the same app in English, it can be easily tailored to their specific needs,” says Carl. 

Automating localization and translation has made all the difference for the Minna Technologies team and has significantly impacted the bottom line. Carl adds that companies looking to scale their business will probably seek outsourced services or automation to smoothen the workflow:

“If we hadn’t automated the translation processes, we would've hired in-house staff to do the work for us. But we didn't need to explore the second option thanks to Lokalise.”

As with other developer teams, the volume of work at Minna Technologies differs from month to month. When a new feature is ready, a lot of translations need to be done. However, some months are quieter, and Carl points out that aligning their changing needs with an in-house translation team would've been challenging, and expensive. That's why Minna Technologies seeks flexibility from the tools and solutions it uses. 

“Lokalise supports our flexible workflow – we have the same mindset.”

Asked about other comments on working with Lokalise, Elise tells us that she had worked with other localization tools before joining Minna Technologies. In terms of usability, Lokalise comes out on top: “As a UX designer, I'm very conscious when something isn't user friendly. Lokalise makes it easy for new employees to find their way around the tool, so I don't have to spend weeks assisting new teammates in using the platform.” 

Carl concludes by praising our Customer Success team. They regularly check in with the Minna team to make sure everything is working well and to see what improvements or new features the company could use:

“We always have productive discussions with Lokalise support. To anyone doubting how Lokalise handles customer support – don't, because that's been handled very well.”