Enterprise Going Global, Global Communication and Collaboration, DingTalk is Enough!

Expanding into global markets, establishing localized teams, and facilitating global communication and collaboration are an essential part of the daily work for companies venturing overseas. In June this year, while announcing its overseas strategy, DingTalk launched a series of globalized innovative product experiences aimed at helping enterprises overcome time zone, language, and geographical barriers to enhance cross-border communication and collaboration efficiency among employees from different countries speaking different languages. On November 27, DingTalk officially established itself in Hong Kong, China, taking a new step forward in its overseas strategy.

Expanding into global markets, establishing localized teams, and enabling global communication and collaboration are integral parts of daily work for companies expanding overseas.

In June of this year, DingTalk announced its overseas strategy while unveiling a series of globalized and innovative product experiences designed to help enterprises overcome restrictions related to time zones, languages, and geography to improve cross-border communication and collaboration efficiency for employees from different countries using various languages.

On November 27, DingTalk officially launched operations in Hong Kong, China, taking a new and significant step in its overseas development strategy.

If you, our reader, have read the article "Inside DingTalk's Product Experience: Resolving 6,000 Global Language Adaptation Issues in Three Months," you must have already felt DingTalk's sincerity and resolution regarding globalization—however, if you didn't, it means our efforts still aren't enough. This article will introduce DingTalk's global product experience through the daily work of employees at multinational enterprises.

1. Cross-time Zone Communication | Display Chat Partner's Time Zone

Jakarta, Indonesia, at 16:00 local time. Ahmad, the manager of the sales team in Indonesia, plans to message Emily, the head of the product team based in the U.S., asking for the latest design progress via DingTalk. He notices that DingTalk's interface displays the local time in the U.S. as 03:00 AM, so he decides to contact Emily at a more appropriate time, avoiding sending an instant message that she might not receive promptly and preventing disturbances to her rest.

Key Takeaway: The thoughtful design of showing the time zone's current time during cross-border communication not only improves communication efficiency for multinational teams but also enhances mutual understanding and respect among international employees.

2. Cross-time Zone Meetings | Intelligent Meeting Time Suggestions

China headquarters plans a global market strategy meeting. Cheng Yu, the market team lead at headquarters, will organize the discussion with attendees including leaders from the market teams in Indonesia, Vietnam, the U.S., Germany, Mexico, and Chile.

When Cheng Yu initiates a meeting across time zones, DingTalk Calendar intelligently recommends an optimal meeting time based on the current time and availability of participants in their local time zones. Once the attendees accept the invite, the meeting time is automatically converted into the respective time zone for each participant.

Key Takeaway: DingTalk's intelligent meeting time recommendation feature efficiently resolves potential time confusion in cross-time zone meetings and saves the organizer from manually calculating time differences, significantly improving the efficiency of international "meet-ups."

3. Cross-time Zone Attendance | Unified Global Employee Attendance Management

It's 8:00 AM Beijing Time. Zhang Ming clocks into work at the China headquarters. Meanwhile, Rizky from the branch in Indonesia has just woken up (7:00 AM local time), Anna at the research institute in Germany is resting (1:00 AM local time), and Diego at the manufacturing facility in Mexico is preparing to finish his shift (6:00 PM the previous day local time).

Leave and attendance management has always been a core basic product capability of DingTalk. With the international edition of DingTalk's attendance management feature, enterprise administrators can set different leave and attendance policies for various time zones and locations. Employees in any country can punch in/out per their local time zone, and data is automatically synchronized into the central backend management system.

Key Takeaway: DingTalk's cross-time zone attendance experience enables enterprise managers to better understand and manage human resources worldwide.

1. Instant Messaging | Automatic Message Translation

Florida, U.S., 8:00 AM local time. Emily, the product team lead in the U.S., receives a message from Ahmad, the sales manager in Indonesia, composed in Bahasa Indonesia. Not fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, Emily relies on DingTalk to automatically translate the message into English. She understands the intention from Ahmad and responds in English, which DingTalk then automatically translates into Bahasa Indonesia so Ahmad can easily understand it.

2. Video Conferencing | Real-time Multilingual Translation

It is 21:00 Beijing Time. Cheng Yu, the head of the market team at China headquarters, initiates an online video conference through DingTalk. During this meeting, Lukas, the marketing manager in Germany, speaks in German. DingTalk's subtitles for video conferencing translate Lukas' German speech into Chinese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, English, and Spanish, enabling participants from China, Indonesia, Vietnam, the U.S., Germany, Mexico, and Chile to effortlessly understand Lukas' remarks. Similarly, when Maria, the marketing manager based in Mexico, speaks in Spanish during the conference, DingTalk video conferencing interprets her speech into all other languages for the relevant attendees.

Key Takeaway: The real-time multilingual translation capability during DingTalk video conferences enables seamless participation and efficient communication among international attendees, ensuring accurate and efficient information exchange at multinational meetings.

3. Full Interface Translation | One-click Translation of All Interfaces

The HR department at the China headquarters selects "Ku Academy," a third-party partner of DingTalk, as the employee training platform. However, since the functional interface of "Ku Academy" is only available in Chinese for the time being, overseas employees face language barriers when using the platform. If HR has to manually translate all training materials into multiple languages, it would significantly increase both workload and costs.

DingTalk's "Full Interface Translation" feature efficiently solves this issue. When activated for free, a floating "Translate" button appears on the interface. Clicking it instantly translates every text element across the entire product interface of "Ku Academy" into the specified language preferred by overseas employees.

Key Takeaway: DingTalk's full interface translation capability breaks down language barriers completely, significantly lowering the entry threshold for multinational employees using DingTalk.

4. Email | One-Click Translation for Multilingual Emails

Within scenarios of global communication and collaborative work, email remains an important communication tool. It is especially crucial for formal document exchanges, interdepartmental collaboration, and external communications, and is an indispensable communication method for enterprises. "Email" is an essential component within the DingTalk globalization product suite and currently supports one-click translation for emails in 30 languages or regions.

5. YiDa | One-Click Publishing in Multilingual Applications

The DingTalk low-code platform "YiDa" allows enterprises to rapidly build customized business applications tailored to their needs based on their own requirements. YiDa supports the one-click publishing of multilingual versions, whether deploying project management applications in Southeast Asia or setting up sales processes suitable for Europe and America – all can be achieved quickly on YiDa. This feature supports enterprises in responding flexibly and swiftly to changes in global markets.

1. Login/Register | Multi-Type Accounts and Multilingual Interface

Login/Registration is the first product experience users encounter when using DingTalk. Whether they can successfully complete the registration or login process directly impacts overseas users' perception of the DingTalk brand and may even influence their decision to continue using it. In September this year, we enhanced the global capabilities of our login and registration features—overseas users can now register or log in using a variety of account types beyond +86 phone numbers, including email addresses and corporate accounts. Furthermore, users can switch the system language on the login/registration interface to their preferred language, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for international users.

2. Parent-Subordinate Organization | Managing the Entire Global Organization

Via DingTalk's parent-subordinate organization functionality, administrators of multinational organizations can associate branches and subsidiaries across different countries and regions under a single group organization structure, creating a unified global employee directory for seamless communication and collaboration across the globe. Applications and processes installed by the group organization can be authorized for use by employees worldwide based on actual requirements—providing a unified platform for collaboration and management of cross-border teams and complex business processes.

3. Global Network Acceleration | Stable and Seamless Internet Connection

A stable and seamless internet connection is the foundation of global communication and collaboration and the core guarantee for efficient communication among multinational teams. DingTalk has deployed independent network acceleration nodes in 16 cities across 11 countries, which significantly reduces cross-border data transmission latency and enhances the smoothness of file sharing, audio-video conferencing, and instant messaging.

Conclusion

Above is what DingTalk has been doing to help enterprises overcome the challenges of "cross-time zones, across languages, and across borders." Like any business strategy, venturing overseas doesn't happen overnight and requires companies to continuously explore, adapt, and evolve in the market. DingTalk is accelerating global product development to create a global communication and collaboration experience marked by "no time zone lag, no language barriers, no borders, and reliability." Through continuous improvements, DingTalk provides strong support for enterprises expanding globally.

Key Takeaway: For enterprises going global and requiring global communication and collaboration, one DingTalk is sufficient!

Thank you for your attention to DingTalk's global product experience.