Analytics in Trados: Four powerful ways to unlock localization data
10 mins read
Data isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore - it’s the power source behind every smart business decision. For localization leaders, project managers, translators, and analysts, having immediate access to the right insights can mean the difference between seamless delivery and costly delays.
That’s where analytics in Trados comes in. With powerful reporting, a comprehensive and flexible Data Bridge, and AI-powered Smart Insights, Trados puts all your localization data at your fingertips. From instant insights from an LLM-powered virtual assistant to deep-dive custom reporting, you can track performance, monitor costs, and uncover patterns that help you work smarter, not harder.
And because every role relies on data differently - whether it’s project managers monitoring progress to prevent bottlenecks, linguists ensuring accuracy through quality metrics, executives evaluating growth and ROI, or analysts connecting localization with company-wide KPIs - Trados delivers the right insights to the right people.
Let’s take a look at the different types of analytics available in Trados.
Custom Reports: Build dashboards tailored to your organization’s needs
Custom reporting transforms raw data into actionable intelligence, enabling organizations to optimize every aspect of their localization workflows. It provides the flexibility to design dashboards and reports tailored to the exact needs of your business. With a modern, intuitive interface, powerful charting options, and access to rich data sets, Custom Reports makes it possible to create precise, meaningful analyses without waiting for IT support or business intelligence developers.
The ability to design Custom Reports addresses some of the biggest pain points that teams face when trying to measure localization performance. Without it, organizations often rely on static, generic reports that fail to reflect their specific priorities. Time is wasted exporting and formatting data manually in spreadsheets, and insights are delayed because specialized BI teams must be called in to create the reports. These challenges limit visibility into trends that can make a real difference to cost control, quality improvements, and efficiency gains.
Custom Reports solves these problems by placing the power of analytics directly in the hands of localization teams to quickly build reports. Dashboards can be tailored to focus on the metrics that matter most, whether that’s translation volumes, cost savings, quality scores, or turnaround times. Visualizations can be adapted to suit the audience, ranging from tables, KPIs, charts, and heat maps or explore additional advanced visual options from the Highcharts core library for even more ways to present data.
Secure collaboration is built-in
Creating custom reports is straightforward. Report Authors can build analyses in the Report Designer, keep them private, or share them with other authors in shared folders - enabling teams to collaborate on report design, maintain consistency across dashboards, and easily re-use templates to maximize efficiency.
Once dashboards are published, they can be placed in either General or Restricted folders, giving organizations full control over who sees what. This flexibility ensures that sensitive information stays protected while keeping teams aligned.
Role-based access ensures security, with Report Authors able to design and share dashboards, while Report Readers securely view the reports relevant to them. With secure data hierarchy, users only see the data they are authorized to access, ensuring compliance and confidentiality.
What you can measure
Custom Reports unlocks rich data sets across all aspects of localization performance. Some of the most valuable metrics include:
- Volume: Monitor translation volumes by customer, project or language for better forecasting.
- Time & Capacity: Track on-time deliveries, average job durations, and editing times, while managing linguist workloads to ensure balanced resources and timely project delivery.
- Quality: Compare human TQA results against AI auto QA scores and analyze errors by type, severity, or provider.
- Cost: Understand spending patterns and ensure budgets are optimized.
- Savings: Monitor the performance and value of your linguistic assets and localization technology, such as machine translation and AI-powered features, in real terms.
- Leverage: Balance time, cost, and quality by analyzing how different technologies contribute to outcomes.
Detailed descriptions of each data set, including their granularity and content, can be found in the RWS Documentation Center here.
When to use Custom Reports
Custom Reports are especially valuable for Project Managers and Localization Managers when:
- You need to create recurring or ad-hoc reports, such as weekly KPIs or executive summaries, without requiring coding-level knowledge.
- Multiple data sources must be consolidated into a single dashboard.
- Specific formatting, compliance, or audit requirements must be met.
- Long-term trends need to be tracked, analyzed, and shared across teams.
By unlocking the full potential of your localization data, Trados enables organizations to maximize efficiency across workflows, enhance translation quality with detailed insights, control and reduce costs through greater transparency, and align localization strategies with broader business objectives.
Data Bridge: Use localization data in your Business Intelligence tools
For enterprises that already have dedicated analytics teams and BI tools such as Power BI, Sisense or Tableau, Trados offers a Data Bridge. This allows organizations to connect their own tools directly to Trados, so you can automatically access up-to-date localization data that can be combined with company-wide data streams from financial systems, CRMs or web analytics.
Without this integration, localization data often remains siloed, making it difficult to connect the business impact of localization with broader business outcomes. With the Data Bridge, analysts can merge company-specific metrics with localization insights, creating a holistic view of organizational performance. Discover more about Data Bridge here.
Standard Reporting: Quick access to predefined dashboards
While custom reporting provides the ultimate flexibility, not every organization needs this level of functionality. Trados also includes standard reports out of the box, covering translation quality, costs, AI usage, and turnaround times. These predefined dashboards are designed to give teams immediate visibility into key performance indicators, helping them establish a common baseline for decision-making.
Without this capability, teams often struggle to access even the most basic metrics, slowing down their ability to identify risks or opportunities. With standard reports available from day one, decision-makers can keep projects on track and ensure everyone is working from the same reliable data.
Smart Insights: Instant answers, powered by AI
Alongside reports and dashboards, Trados provides Smart Insights, an AI-powered capability that delivers instant answers in plain language. It is a faster, smarter way to access the data you need. Instead of searching through spreadsheets or waiting on an analyst, project managers can simply ask a question like “Show me the projects due to be delivered in the next 5 days for customer [NAME]”. Within seconds, Smart Insights provides a clear, visual response with contextual explanations.
Without this kind of AI support, teams often lose time digging through data and trying to find the right metrics. Smart Insights removes that friction, surfacing the most important information instantly. The result: faster decision-making, greater agility, and smoother project delivery. Discover more about Smart Insights here.
Why analytics in Trados matters
Analytics in Trados ensures you always have the data you need. Every role in localization is empowered to make smarter, faster, and more informed decisions. With powerful custom reporting, supported by standard reports, a Data Bridge, and real-time Smart Insights, you can fully align your localization strategy with broader business goals. All your localization data, all in one place, always at your fingertips.
Ready to make the most of your localization data?