project/ open technology adoption and competitive advantage in the translation industry
TRANSCRIPT
Project/Open
Technology Adoption and Competitive Advantage in
the Translation Industry
Project/Open
Contents
What is Project/Open?– Project-ERP– What is Open-Source?
Competition in the Translation Industry– Sources– Arenas
Technology Adoption– Example: Translation Memories
New Technologies Project/Open Modules
Project/Open
What is Project/Open?
Project/Open What is Project/Open?
“Project-ERP” Integration Solution for
Translation Agencies 100% pure Internet
It’s mostly free software!
We earn our money with additional modules, installation and support
Projects
UsersClients
Costs
FileStorage
Work-flow
Sales
TradosIntegra-
tion
ProjectForum
FreelanceDatabase
Invoicing
PurchaseOrders
Project/Open
What is Open-Source?
Everybody can use and copy open-source programs
“Science model”: Everybodycontributes and shares
Mouth-to-mouth marketing
Development costs are much lower Sales costs are much lower Revenues from installation & support are
sufficient
Project/Open
Competition in the Translation Industry
Project/Open Translation Value Chain
MLV
Clients PM EditingSales Staffing QC Trans.QualityMan.
The “classical” MLV (Multi Language Vendor) uses a lot of freelancer (“Editing” and “Trans.”) to provide the service for his customers.
Only a few language resources (“QC”) are working in-house as staff.
The “Classical” MLV Model
Project/Open
MLV
SLV
MLV
Translation Value Chain
Clients PM EditingSales Staffing QC Trans.QualityMan.
Larger or more sophisticated (localization) projects require specialized resources, so the MLV needs to subcontract to specialized SLVs
However, these SLVs are not allowed to communicate with the client directly, resulting in a huge overhead.
The “valued” contributed by MLV is limited to sales, QC and PM
Subcontracting to SLVs
Project/Open
SLV
MLV
SLV
MLV
Translation Value Chain
Clients PM EditingSales Staffing QC Trans.QualityMan.
As a result, MLVs get frequently bypassed or “disintermediated”
Customers start to work with sophisticated SLVs directly and save up to 40%
Bypassing the MLV
Project/Open
SLV
MLV
SLV
MLV
Translation Value Chain
Clients PM EditingSales Staffing QC Trans.QualityMan.
MLV Defensive strategies
MLVs try to defend by “integrating upwards” towards the customer to create lock-in and by beefing up their sales force
Lionbridge’s losses have reduced since 2002…
Project/Open
This feels like the Californiagold rush. Just make sure to sell tools and denims…
We are selling Translation Workflow… :-)
SLV
MLV
SLV
MLV
Translation Value Chain
Clients PM EditingSales Staffing QC Trans.QualityMan.
Arenas
Fighting Arenas
Project/Open
Arenas and Strategies
CustomerIntegration
- Learn
- Improve - LearnSales
Staffing
ProjectManagement
- Learn
QualityManagement
“Production”Organization
- Improve
- Specializeon the language
- Improve
- Improve
- Learn
- Learn
- Improve
SmallMLV SLV Freel.
LargeMLV
Service- Learn
- Extend/ Defend
- Defend
- Defend
- Defend
- Improve/ Defend
- Defend
- Improve/ Defend
Arena
Project/Open
How to fight?
Best management practices in each area/department
IT tools
Competitive „Weapons“
StrategicOperationalEfficiency
Specialization Languages subject area industry sector, . . .
Size . . .
Project/Open
Example: TM-Adoption
Project/Open TM-Adoption
Benefit Very useful (saves 20%-
50% of the work)
Driving Force Intense Competition,
particularly after the advent of the Internet
Why did adoption take so long?
Translators are normally not very tech-savvy.
TMs became easy to use only with the appearance of Windows/ Mac OS
Figures from LISA 2002 TM Survey
Interpolations
20050%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1990 1995 2000
Competitive Advantage
for Early Majority
Companies that replied to the LISA 2002 TM Survey
Project/Open Types of Adopters
Source: Everett Rogers, “Diffusion of Innovations”, 19620%
20%
40%
60%
80%
1990 1995 2000 2005
100%
LateMajority
Laggards
EarlyMajority
EarlyAdopters
1990 1995 2000 2005
Innovators (“Techies”)– Appreciate technology for its
own sake Early Adopters („Visionaries“)
– Will accept an 80% solution Early Majority („Pragmatists“)
– Want a complete solution– Want to see it working
Late Majority (“Conservatives”)
– Focus on who else is doing it– Emphasize maturity of the
technology Laggards (“Skeptics”)
Innovators
Project/Open
Technology Portfolio
1995 2000 2005 20100%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1980 1990
Translation
Memories
1985
Email inTranslationCompanies
Fax in TranslationCompanies
Qualitative curves for Fax and Email adoption
Project/Open
New Technologies
Project/Open Translation IT Trends
Problem Clumsy handling of files
Communication in large project teams
Hassle to manage TMs What is quality??? Price pressure, complex
freelance market
Long PM telephone calls with freelancers
Solution Extranets for file download/
upload (FTP-Servers, Web-Access, …)
Project Collaboration
Distributed TM Quality Management/ Database Integrated Freelance/ Provider
Databases (across offices, integrated with Quality DB)
Freelance Self Service
Project/Open
Technology Portfolio
1995 2000 2005 20100%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1980 1990
Translation
Memories
1985
Email inTranslationCompanies
Fax in TranslationCompanies
Qualitative curves for Fax and Email
Project-ERP
DistributedTM?
Project/Open Jochen Hummel (Trados)
„For the next wave of innovation, however, the key ingredient is what we at TRADOS are calling “collaborative workflow.”By combining technology support for localization project managers with a platform that provides task and process automation along the entire supply chain, collaboration between corporations, language service providers, and translators will reach a degree of transparency and efficiency that was heretofore impossible."
"But here’s the key: it is only by making improvements along the entire supply chain that the industry can be transformed and enjoy the benefits of its next wave of growth.”
Jochen Hummel, CTO Trados
Source: Client Side News 08.03
Project/Open
MLV
SLV
MLV
SLV
Translation Value Chain
Clients PM EditingSales Staffing QC Trans.QualityMan.
Project/Open Optimization Potential
The analysis of the optimization potential has lead us to the modules of Project/Open
The introduction of IT-tools is frequently meant to improve best-practices as well.
Projects
UsersClients
Costs
FileStorage
Work-flow
Sales
TradosIntegra-
tion
ProjectForum
FreelanceDatabase
Invoicing
FL-PurchaseOrders
1
2
3
4
56
7
8
9
10
CustomerIntegration
Sales
Staffing
ProjectManagement
QualityManagement
“Production”Organization
Service
- Integrated Workflows- Multilingual CMS- Custom Apps.
- Sales force automation- CRM- Data Warehouse
- Integrated freelance databases
- Quality database, integrated with freelance database
- Translation Workflow- Semiautomatic PM- Balanced Scorecard
- Internet Project Collaboration
- Intranets/ Extranets
- Service Mgmt.- CRM- Scorecards
Project/Open
Conclusion
Know in what arenas you are playing Focus on a single area at a time Choose your weapons Don’t chose the wrong ones!
Frank [email protected]
Project/Open