With over three decades of experience, VSI is one of the world’s most sought-after localization providers, with a global presence, multiple facilities and coverage of more than 80 languages. While it continues to pursue an increasingly marked international expansion, the company's premise remains intact: to help the client take their content globally by ensuring the localized version resonates in every market and safeguarding the integrity of the original.
At the beginning of this year, the company announced that Mark Howorth was joining the company as Group CEO, while VSI’s Founder and previous CEO, Norman Dawood, transitioned his role to Chairman. A couple of months before this reorganization, VSI had announced the promotion of Cornelia Al-Khaled to Group COO, followed by the appointment of William Russell, formerly the General Counsel, as the new Managing Director of VSI London, allowing Al-Khaled to focus solely on her new role.
“The experience of fully transitioning to the COO role has been very positive. It allowed me to focus on the VSI Group operations, mainly looking into ways to optimize our operational capabilities, increase efficiency, spearhead strategies into our daily operations to support our wider company objectives. It has also involved looking at how we can meet the long-term growth strategies and our continued effort to provide excellent service to our clients,” Cornelia Al-Khaled, Chief Operating Officer at VSI, told Señal News.
Operating in over 25 countries around the world, VSI was set up based on both organic and strategic acquisition, a strategy the company still follows. Now the group is focused on further investment in its current facilities by increasing its studio capacity in various locations, like key countries in Europe and the Americas. Moreover, this year the company is looking at opportunities to better serve clients and audiences in Asia as part of its continued global expansion.
“Our expansion plans are usually driven by market and client needs, combined with our vision of being a global player with local reach and expertise. Furthermore, localization continues to be quite a niche industry and one that requires unique expertise, especially when it comes to dubbing. To have a footprint owned and operated by us, where possible, has always been key to our strategy. It has enabled us to maintain creative, linguistic, and technical integrity and consistency, and reduce the complexity and often the lead time to localize content for global distribution. At the end of the day, our clients’ content is what drives their revenue and subscriber base, and quality of product is paramount to this,” Al-Khaled assured.
● SHIFTING TRENDS
With the increasingly proliferated use of streaming platforms and the constant changes in user consumption behaviours, Al-Khaled discussed the shift in viewer trends and demands. “Global content has been travelling like never before with a significant increase in the global consumption of non-English content. That means that there has also been an increased demand for multi-lingual subtitling and dubbing, and for a multi-language localization company like us, that provides the client not only with consistency and quality, but also simplicity,” she explained.
VSI believes that the quality of work is not a minor aspect, and for the Chief Operating Officer, ensuring that each project has the highest possible quality is what distinguishes the company. “We always focus on and strive to provide high-quality and we are really well known for that. Quality is often an overused word, but when it comes to dubbing, for example, you cannot underestimate its value in attracting, retaining and growing global viewership. Successful localized versions closely replicate the original quality and experience,” the executive emphasized.
By Federico Marzullo