A summary of common translation challenges and solutions
Sep 24, 2015
This article summarizes trends and practices FARECHION has observed in the course of our translation work with life science companies. Our clients often face unique challenges and constraints. Therefore, a client’s objectives for particular practices and business strategy typically require custom solutions along with some form of adaptation to ensure the desired outcome and fit within the specific organizational context.
Examples of common trends include:
· Centralization of Translation Procurement
· Consolidation of Supplier Base
· Greater Need for Information
· Greater Need for Transparency
· Greater Deployment of Technologies
· Greater Demand for Translation Services
· Greater Demand for Service Flexibility
Centralization of Translation Procurement
The global demand for translation services continues to increase as a result of greater globalization activities and the natural geographic dispersion of business entities as well as affiliates.
Furthermore, the ongoing evolution of regulatory requirements in emerging markets has further increased demand for regional content to satisfy both regulatory requirements and information needs for end users.
The increasing demand impacts a company’s ability to effectively manage the procurement and monitoring of translation services across suppliers and business entities at the corporate and regional level.
Consequently, many companies are proactively addressing this challenge by employing dedicated commodity managers and establishing centralized procurement environments for translation services. This practice provides the foundation for economies of scale and better process control.
Consolidation of Supplier Base
Another trend that has been emerging in recent years is the consolidation of a company’s translation supplier base. This is especially true for large companies that spend several million dollars on translations.
Based on our experience, it is not unusual for such clients to reduce from up to 50 suppliers down to 2–5 preferred suppliers. Depending on a company’s needs for translation services, these 2–5 suppliers can include suppliers with similar capabilities and a complete solution offering or a mix of specialty suppliers (e.g., legal/patent translations) and complete service suppliers.
In most cases, the objective is to simplify the procurement process, reduce overhead and maintenance cost, increase purchasing power, and more effectively manage investment risk.
Greater Information Needs
A by-product of increased globalization activities and the dedicated management of translation services is the need for information to support the procurement process and strategic decision making.
The specific need for information can vary from company to company. However, there is a common trend to collect and use relevant information as part of the standard service consumption.
Furthermore, many clients expect their translation suppliers to predict and forecast demand using business intelligence and historic information to accommodate volume fluctuations and seasonal peaks.
Therefore, translation suppliers such as FARECHION have made information management an integral component of their service delivery to accommodate unique needs for information and client-specific metrics, including their tracking and reporting.
Greater Need for Transparency
Both greater information access and centralization provide opportunities for improving a company’s transparency of the procurement environment and business activities. This improvement is typically felt at the corporate and regional levels, which establishes insights that companies never had before. For example, centralized procurement and cross-functional teams allow ongoing and better collaboration to develop best practices.
Likewise, clients are increasingly working in conjunction with suppliers such as FARECHION to align their processes to account for localization best practices. As clients better understand localization best practices and challenges, they are also better equipped to support their company’s translation requirements while making informed decisions on internal process improvements and refinements to the integration of suppliers into a company’s procurement environment.
Greater Deployment of Technologies
Technology deployment is becoming more critical than ever for many companies because it contributes to greater process automation and the ability to manage more work with fewer resources while minimizing process variance.
The specific technologies and their use in regard to translation services can differ. For instance, medical device companies show a clear trend for deploying content management technologies because it greatly affects their content creation and reuse. In contrast, pharmaceutical companies are more closely focused on their ability to manage documents and information related to their clinical research as well as marketing activities.
In addition to the technologies used to manage content, documents, and information, clients are paying greater attention to the technologies utilized by their suppliers to reduce cost and increase quality. This typically involves translation memory management and sharing to increase leveraging and consistency across a client’s supplier base.
Moreover, there is a growing trend to integrate different technologies to connect different work environments and establish a seamless exchange of content and information between clients and suppliers. Some clients prefer developing custom solutions while other clients utilize off-the-shelf solutions that they configure and integrate with existing or supplier-provided solutions.
Greater Demand for Translation Services
As clients consolidate their supplier base and centralize their procurement environments, their requirements and expectations for translation suppliers are growing. These refined requirements and expectations are often reflected in more diverse and complete solutions delivered by fewer translation suppliers. Whereas past business practices accommodated many suppliers with unique specialties and limited capabilities, there is a trend towards complete solution providers with a scalable service delivery that can support geographically dispersed business entities with varying demand and requirements.
Greater Demand for Service Flexibility
The need to support more diverse and regional business entities also imposes more complex client environments on suppliers. For example, companies with enterprise-level translation needs expect greater service flexibility to accommodate regional translation users that have unique needs or differ significantly in their maturity for procuring translation services. As a result, suppliers such as FARECHION provide custom and regional solutions while enabling a centralized procurement model.
Home/ About /Services/Industries/Technology/Contact Us/Careers/
Copyright 2015 FARECHION, Inc. All Rights Reserved.