When DeepL met Inetum

Inetum—a global IT consultancy and provider of end-to-end digital services—first turned to DeepL to streamline knowledge sharing across its international teams. As the company expanded into more regions, it became clear that language wasn’t just a communication barrier but a blocker to scale and collaboration, especially in a professional services context.

Two years later, DeepL is now embedded in Inetum’s daily operations. What began as a simple integration into Confluence, has evolved into a multilingual enablement strategy supporting 350+ employees across functions. Most recently, the team adopted DeepL Voice to overcome spoken-language barriers and enable faster, more flexible consultant deployment across borders.

Inetum: powering 28,000 people across 19 countries

Headquartered in France and active in over 19 countries and counting, Inetum works alongside clients in telecom, government, energy, and beyond to drive digital transformation with impact. With nearly 28,000 local employees, the company offers end-to-end support—from modernization to innovation—tailored to the specific needs of each sector. They are also a strategic Microsoft partner and member of the Responsible AI Innovation Center (RAIIC).

Internally, Sébastien Dumon’s team helps bring Inetum’s purpose to life by delivering scalable, secure technologies that empower global operations, from observability platforms to collaboration tools. Language tools, such as DeepL, are a vital part of that stack.

A time-consuming process and mixed quality

Before DeepL, translation workflows were fragmented and inconsistent. Cross-border communication was essential, but multilingual content was often handled on an ad hoc basis. Employees relied on whatever was available: bilingual teammates, free online tools, or quick fixes. The result? Mixed translation accuracy, inefficiencies, and a lack of consistency. Something Inetum couldn’t rely on.

Quality was definitely a pain point. “The other translation services available via this plugin were not good enough in terms of translation quality”, Sébastien explains.

To address this, the team integrated the DeepL API into Confluence, starting with the software teams’ documentation. This project built a consistent, scalable foundation for internal content localization.

Unlocking spoken fluency with DeepL Voice

But written knowledge was just the beginning. Spoken collaboration posed another challenge, particularly in meetings with consultants and clients based across different countries. Language requirements were unintentionally limiting Inetum’s ability to access top talent.

“The main need was to open our talent recruitment to a wider range of profiles, with no requirement to be bilingual.”, Sébastien explains.

For example, highly skilled developers in Portugal had to be overlooked during hiring, simply because they didn’t speak French; even though they had the right technical expertise. With DeepL Voice, Inetum removed that barrier. Cross-border collaboration is now seamless and hiring focuses on skills, not on language.

Why DeepL?

“When evaluating solutions, we need to consider ethical AI principles such as transparency, reliability, safety and privacy.”, Sébastien says, referencing their participation in the Microsoft RAIIC program.

DeepL’s encryption, GDPR compliance, and enterprise-grade infrastructure were critical in the decision to expand usage across the company. But so was the translation quality.

The DeepL difference

Usage tracking plays a key role in how Inetum measures ROI. For their use of DeepL Voice, the impact is reflected in the rise of multilingual collaboration across teams: more expertise being leveraged on more projects for better client outcomes.

On the API side, ROI is based on the volume of translated documents from the knowledge centre—hundreds per year, each ranging from 16,000 to over 85,000 characters—which helps quantify both scale and efficiency across the organization.

More languages, more flexibility

By enabling their employees and customers to have meetings in their native languages, Inetum can now distribute internal support teams more efficiently across regions without communication being limited. This means technical specialists can be assigned to the right projects based on skills – not fluency –unlocking both cost-effectiveness and deeper expertise while delivering the best possible results for customers. Roles that were previously difficult to staff due to language constraints are now filled by the best people for the job, regardless of location.

Written communication, streamlined

Through DeepL API, translated documentation and internal processes are made instantly available in employees' native languages. This not only improves onboarding, but also ensures operational consistency for global teams.

Costs down, efficiency up

Hiring bilingual talent or relying on human translation used to add both cost and complexity—especially in regions where certain language skills were rare or came at a premium. It also meant longer hiring cycles, slowing down crucial project delivery. With all documentation available, and anyone able to jump on a call, language is no longer a bottleneck. By reducing the need for bilingual-only roles, Inetum has improved staffing efficiency and created more flexibility across teams.

What’s next?

Looking ahead, Inetum plans to expand DeepL Voice into other departments like sales, safety and quality. “DeepL Voice is likely to be deployed in all sectors.”, Sébastien notes. “Sales, safety and quality teams, for example, are now working on numerous projects in different countries.”

And while DeepL already meets most of their needs, Sébastien’s team is exploring automation of display configuration file translations: a potential new use case for their clients’ apps. Asked what he personally values most, Sébastien says: “What’s most interesting about this solution is that everyone can configure their own spoken language and choice of subtitle, unlike other solutions that impose a single spoken language (or change it when another speaker takes over).”

For Inetum, AI isn’t just a technology trend; it’s a tool to empower people and drive progress. With DeepL, thatvision is no longer aspirational. It’s operational.