Bossard: 600 work hours saved – AI translation for 17 languages in B2B
Philippe Surber
Bossard supplies customers on four continents – 33 countries, 17 languages, over one billion Swiss francs in annual revenue. For this global B2B distributor, localization is not a feature but a business foundation. When Bossard partnered with Unic to build a new digital platform, content translation proved to be a bottleneck. The answer: AI Actions in Contentful. The result: 600 working hours saved in four months. What this means in practice, where the limits lie – and what other B2B distributors can take away from it.
In Brief
Starting point: 17 languages, 38 locales, a global marketing team of 30 people, an editorial process involving Word exports, emails, and manual copy-paste.
Lever: AI Actions in Contentful handle the first translation draft. Field-level localization keeps content consistent across all markets.
Result: 600 translation hours saved during replatforming.
Key insight: AI translation doesn't deliver miracles — it delivers a reliable first draft. That's exactly what global marketing teams need.
Context: The new platform unifies the website and eShop on a single codebase — Contentful provides the content layer. Localization is one of several levers enabled by the new architecture.
Why Translation Becomes a Business Bottleneck for Global B2B Distributors
As a Swiss specialist in fastening technology, Bossard supplies OEMs around the globe — 3,300 employees, 82 locations, and over one billion Swiss francs in annual revenue. At this scale, a single language workflow simply isn't enough. You need one that works across 17 languages, 33 locales, while maintaining technical precision.
In practice, this used to look like this: an editor exported the article to a Word document. Sent it by email to a translator. Got it back. Proofread it. Copied it into the CMS. Multiplied by 17 languages, multiplied by dozens of pages per month.
From our project work, we know: people don't work too slowly — system boundaries are the problem. Every interface between steps costs time and quality. Every system boundary is a breaking point.
The New Foundation: A Content Layer That Scales
Together with Bossard, we built a new digital platform that unifies the website and eShop on a single codebase. Contentful serves as the central content layer. Field-level localization means in practice: product names and technical designations remain identical worldwide, while marketing copy is adapted per market. That's the structure B2B distributors truly need.
On this foundation, AI translation presents itself as an obvious option. Because only when content is cleanly structured can AI deliver reliable results.
AI Actions in Practice: What They Deliver — and What They Don't
Contentful's AI Actions translate master content into all target languages per entry at the click of a button. No integration, no additional tooling. The editorial team reviews the draft, adjusts nuances, and approves it.
Corina Sulzberger, responsible for Online Marketing Projects at Bossard, puts it plainly:
With AI Actions, we can automatically translate existing content in a few clicks. It's key to getting the first draft fast – and that's super helpful.
Two configurations are critical for B2B contexts:
Custom translation rules. Bossard has defined product names and brand terms as "do not translate" for the website. This ensures that article numbers, product names, and technical terms remain identical across all markets — a must when buyers research across national borders.
SEO and alt text as a byproduct. The same AI generates meta descriptions and image alt texts. This sounds minor, but it scales enormously. Accessibility and search engine visibility come along almost as a bonus.
An important note from our experience: For legal and regulatory texts, professional translation remains necessary. For all other content, AI delivers a solid draft — saving specialist translators time for genuine quality review.
Expert Note: Locale Design Is What Makes AI Scalable
The real lever wasn't just translation at the click of a button — it was the question: Which locales actually need to be maintained independently?
We therefore worked with 17 primary languages (without fallback) as the linguistic backbone, and built market locales with fallback on top of that.
Result: AI delivers the first draft where it has the greatest impact — and local teams step in selectively, rather than having to maintain every market variant from scratch.
Workflows: The End of Microsoft Teams Pings
The second lever is automating handoffs. Clear workflows are essential — otherwise even the best AI stalls, approvals get stuck, and processes slow down.
For global content, the workflow is deliberately started manually — so that content is created, translated, and approved: reliably and on schedule.
Global content is created and reviewed in the master language (EN).
AI Actions generate translation drafts for the target locales.
Local teams proofread and approve per market (Market Validity).
Authorized personnel then publish the content (role- and rights-based).
Each approval triggers the next step. No one needs to remind, follow up, or escalate. On the technical side, we automated the publish process: every time content is published in Contentful, a build is triggered. The new content is live within minutes — no IT ticket required.
Governance: Two Roles, Clear Responsibilities
Bossard deliberately keeps governance lean — with two clear areas of responsibility: creating and managing globally (content creation/review/translation) and approving local content (proofreading per market).
From our projects, we know: governance rarely fails due to too little control. It almost always fails due to too much complexity. Two roles are enough — as long as each role has a clearly defined area of responsibility and the tools reflect the processes.
What the Numbers Show
Metric | Result |
Translation hours saved during replatforming | 600 |
Primary languages (without fallback) | 17 |
Contentful locales (editorially maintained) | 33 |
Locales ≠ markets: 33 encompasses all actively editable locales in Contentful, including market variants/fallback structure.
The savings figures are taken from the Contentful case study on Bossard: contentful.com/case-studies/bossard
The real value, however, lies not in the one-time savings. It lies in the new scalability: entering new markets now means configuring a locale, running content through the pipeline, and reviewing it locally.
What B2B Distribution Companies Take Away From This Project
From our work with Bossard, we take away five principles that we recommend to every B2B distributor before a content or platform project:
Localization is an architecture topic, not a tooling topic. Bolting on a plugin is short-term thinking. Anchoring localization in the data structure — think field-level localization — is sustainable and creates the foundation for genuine scaling.
AI belongs in the workflow, not alongside it. Standalone translation tools offer isolated time savings. AI integrated into the content workflow changes the way teams work.
AI needs clear rules. At Bossard, technical terms were configured as "do not translate." That's not magic — it's structure. Without explicit exceptions, AI will translate what it shouldn't.
Keep governance lean. Two clearly defined roles work better than five blurry ones — as long as each role has an unambiguous area of responsibility and the tools reflect the processes.
Content audit before migration. Carrying old, flawed content into a new system is costly. Better: run a content audit in parallel with the migration — it pays off twice over, including in translation costs.
Conclusion: Scalable Content Is a Competitive Advantage
Anyone selling internationally can no longer afford to handle content manually. The Bossard case shows how AI translation, clean content structures, and clear governance work together. The question is no longer whether AI belongs in the translation workflow — but when, and with what architecture.
Thinking About a CMS Replatforming or a Unified Commerce Platform?
We support B2B distribution companies in the DACH region from evaluation through migration to ongoing operations. Talk to us about your case — we're happy to share what has worked in our projects.
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