Rockwell Automation: Melting-pot mayhem

A company-centric view of the world denies local logic.

The Site

Rockwell Automation, a US-based industrial power and control systems manufacturer, has an Email Contact option as the default setting in its site’s Contact utility. A dropdown menu enables users to choose a country and then complete an online form that includes options for defining their type of enquiry as well as spelling it out. The language of the form is automatically set by the choice of country. However, for many European countries this does not produce a match with the local language; for example, select Greece and the form is in Italian, Latvia is matched to Danish, Romania to Austrian German.

Similar mismatches are presented in Contact’s Worldwide Locations files; for example, the country website link for Greece connects to the Italy website.

The Takeaway

At first sight Rockwell appears to be the archetypal US-centric company of global myth, with only a hazy idea of large parts of the world map. But the root of the problem is not a blinkered world view, it is a Rockwell-centric one. The reason that Greeks are expected to send e-mails in Italian or Latvians in Danish is because that reflects the way Rockwell’s operations are set up in Europe: Italy is the hub for a region that includes Greece, Denmark for one that encompasses Latvia and so on. This is indicated (in English) on Worldwide Locations country files, though it has not prevented perpetuation of inappropriate links.

Rockwell’s localisation of Email Contact works well in parts but breaks down where the customer viewpoint is not programmed in. What it needs to do is work back from the customer and adjust language delivery accordingly, using English, the accepted universal business language, as a default if it cannot support the local language. Or, as the strapline in its website says, “Listen. Think. Solve”.

First published on 15 August, 2006