Let’s start with you telling us a bit about IAR Systems and your role there
I’m Erik Thor, and I joined IAR a year ago as CRM Manager, overseeing Salesforce. One of the key initiatives I’ve led since coming on board has been a partnership with Venizum to translate our Salesforce knowledge base articles. Due to this, we can now deliver information and support across multiple languages, truly extending our global reach.
You joined IAR just a year ago. Did you already have Salesforce experience, and how long has the company itself been using the platform?
Yes, I came in with a solid Salesforce background, having worked with it for over five years at Rituals and Wehkamp in the Netherlands. As a company, IAR has been using Salesforce for nearly 20 years, so it’s deeply embedded in our operations.
How do you use Salesforce at IAR? Is it mainly used for the knowledge component, or does it support other areas as well?
Salesforce touches nearly every aspect of our business. We’ve customised it extensively to fit our needs. It does everything from handling license management, customer portals, sales, operations, order processing, and support, which makes it a true all-in-one platform that keeps everything centralised and connected for us.
What’s the bigger vision behind adding a translation layer? I imagine it’s closely tied to your global presence.
Exactly, we operate worldwide, with a footprint that spans markets from Japan and Korea to the U.S. While we work in a specialised, niche field, our technology plays a critical role in countless products and services used around the globe. That means our customer base is incredibly diverse, and to truly serve them effectively, we can’t rely on English alone. It’s essential for us to provide support and information in the local languages of our customers, ensuring they can access the help and resources they need, no matter where they are.
What was your approach to translations before Venizum, and how did their solution transform your ability to provide multilingual support?
Before Venizum, we didn’t handle translations at all, everything, including product documentation and knowledge base content, was only available in English. While some of our website content was localised through tools like HubSpot, when it came to technical resources and support materials, English was the only language offered.
Partnering with Venizum marked our first major leap into true multilingual support. It also aligned with a broader shift we were making, moving away from static PDFs toward a dynamic, searchable Knowledge Base within Salesforce Experience Cloud. We began building out the Knowledge Base about three years ago, focusing on highly practical, specific articles, such as how to debug, troubleshoot, and resolve common issues, rather than just providing general product manuals. Venizum’s solution allowed us to take that content and seamlessly scale it across multiple languages, reaching customers more effectively worldwide.
Since implementing Venizum, have you noticed tangible improvements?
Absolutely, the translation process has been impressively fast and smooth. With just a few clicks, we could push articles through for translation, review them internally, and go live. We were able to deliver materials in Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, something we simply couldn’t have done without a solution like Venizum.
Did you need to change your internal setup, or were you able to manage everything in-house?
We were able to keep everything fully in-house. Our existing teams took on the translation process efficiently, without the need to hire extra staff or outsource additional work. Once we had the right tool in place with Venizum, our internal support team was more than capable of managing the entire process smoothly.
How did they adjust to using Venizum?
Very smoothly. We provided training and live chat support, and the learning curve was surprisingly gentle. The main questions that came up were about technical details, things like handling code blocks or setting up exceptions for certain product names. But overall, the system worked beautifully right from the start.
Were there any major challenges during implementation?
The biggest hurdle was updating our legacy articles, about 500 older pieces of content that needed to be adjusted to support translation. That took about a week and a half. Once that was resolved, things moved quickly.
Venizum includes a glossary database. How has that helped you manage product-specific terms?
It’s been a game-changer. We’ve already set up over 20 exceptions, mainly for product names, and it’s incredibly easy to control how and when specific terms are translated. Best of all, we can handle this directly in-house, without needing external support or manual work from our side.
So overall, Venizum has given you not just a translation tool, but a full translation system that fits into your Salesforce environment?
Exactly. We’re no longer dealing with fragmented tools or scattered processes. Venizum gives us an end-to-end translation solution, fully integrated into Salesforce, that allows us to scale our multilingual support efficiently and confidently.
What’s next on your roadmap?
We’re continuing to expand, we’ve just introduced the Venizum Translation Workbench, and we’re looking at translating page titles, banners, and other Experience Cloud elements with Venizum. One technical challenge we’re addressing is that Salesforce doesn’t allow logged-in users to change their language settings on Experience Cloud, so we’re adding some custom code to make sure every user can access content in their preferred language.
So your vision is to keep broadening language access, step by step?
Exactly. Step one was making sure the articles were available in all the needed languages, properly formatted, and functioning smoothly. Now we’re moving further into the Experience Cloud layer, and down the road we’re even looking to expand into full case management, so we can offer end-to-end customer service in multiple languages.
And with Venizum, you already have a strong foundation to support those future steps.
Absolutely. Having a one-stop translation shop fully embedded in Salesforce has been a huge advantage. We love that we can manage everything in a single system, without needing to jump between tools or platforms. It simplifies our workflows, consolidates our data, and makes scaling much easier.
Having a one-stop translation shop fully embedded in Salesforce has been a huge advantage.
That’s a fantastic success story. You’ve really set yourselves up for long-term global success.
Thank you! Yes, at IAR, we’re big fans of Salesforce, and partnering with Venizum has been a perfect fit for helping us serve our global customers better.
Partnering with Venizum has been a perfect fit for helping us serve our global customers better.