Kimble Applications PSA is now available in five new languages. The application now supports French, Spanish, European-Portuguese and Brazilian-Portuguese language packs. These are likely the first of several with Salesforce supporting a far larger number of languages.
The first customer to use its German language version is the SAP and Salesforce consultancy firm entero AG. entero AG has used Kimble PSA since 2015. CEO Henning Heesch said: ”We very much welcome this new feature. For obvious reasons, many DACH-based and multinational companies are reluctant to offer a software solution to their employees which requires them to use English. This investment by Kimble represents a real commitment to making the application more international and user-friendly.”
In its Winter 20 release notes for language support Kimble cautions against customers just switching on the language packs. This is because customers that have already created custom labels on field names may lose them. However, once implmented, consultants and other service professional can enter time and expenses data in German. Importantly new users will utilize their native language within the application. This should help with on-boarding and application adoption. Additionally, users are able to set their preference. Thus for international organisations with employees working abroad employees can change their setting to make their task easier.
Kimble co-founder and CTO David Scott said: “We are delighted to be able to make this new feature available to our customers. Kimble supports many enterprise companies who work across national boundaries. They are keen to offer employees the option to select from a range of languages in their user profiles and this enhancement comes in response to customer requests.”
Not such a simple task
All Kimble Objects, Labels and Menus in the application are translated. Business data, such as the names of Products, Purchase Order Rules and Usage behaviour rules are not. This is therefore the first stage only of localisation. Kimble with work with customers such as entero AG to improve the translations.
The translations presented some challenges with Kimble finding it was not always a matter of just words changing. Scott explained: “Because Kimble is native to the Salesforce platform which can be easily configured to offer interfaces in other languages, it was relatively straightforward. We did have to change the layout of some of our screens due to the length of some of the German words. In some cases, we have used abbreviations. As with every Kimble feature, we are led by our customers and will be happy to tweak the German language interface in line with their feedback.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Kimble PSA is one of the leading Salesforce ISVs headquartered in Europe. That is has chosen these languages is interesting. It also raises a couple of questions.
Firstly, will Kimble look to extend its footprint to South America, specifically Brazil after this announcement? Secondly, will it look to open offices in France, Spain or Portugal as it expands in Europe. It already has staff in Germany, but has not yet officially opened an office there. With Brexit looming it seems likely that it will open at least one in continental Europe this year.
