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| MultiLingual March 2013 [email protected]
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Control
Lets be honest, good freelancers work a lot nasty peoplesay that
poor freelancers work even more because they arepopular among LSPs
due to the low cost. They work a lot morethan eight hours a day and
produce much more than thestandard turnaround of 2,500 words a day.
Its like a merry-go-round: once youre on, you cant hop off or else
you loseyour clients. The word counts and deadlines piling up each
dayare not the best environment for proper quality procedures.In
most cases, and it is also true for the most experienced andvalued
linguists, a freelancer finishes a project, delivers it andthen
starts another project. The project manager is lucky if
thetranslator did an automated spell check. Xbench or QA
Dis-tiller? Well, sometimes, when they have less work. How aboutat
least reading their own work in the target language beforedelivery?
Forget it!
Thats where control comes in. Someone has to control theprocess
that freelancers follow and the output they deliver.This is very
hard to achieve at multilanguage vendor compa-nies. There are
examples of top freelancers who were absoluteleaders in their
languages when they worked for local transla-tion companies where
the quality of their work was controlled,where they received scores
and regular feedback. Once theystarted working for LSPs outside
their countries, their qual-ity slowly deteriorated since they
received no feedback. Why?
Because there was no control over their performance. Its
pos-sible, too, that there was no process at all.Most companies
work with the same pool of freelanc-
ers, thats the truth about the language industry. Apart
fromproper sourcing (that usually means that one to five
translatorsout of 100 qualify for collaboration; lets be honest,
anythingdifferent than that sooner or later leads to disaster) the
key iscontrol and a well-defined process of checking the
translatorswork, assigning scores and, if need be, applying
penalties forpoor quality. Even if they wanted to, freelancers
cannot checktheir own work objectively. Having a good SLV on your
sidemeans not only access to carefully chosen linguistic
resources
WWe prefer to work with freelancers is what
vendor managers, procurement managers, projectmanagers or
production managers usually answerto single language vendor (SLV)
representativesoffering them language services. But is it a
goodapproach?
The pros and cons of working with freelancers are wellknown to
language service provider (LSP) executives andemployees. SLVs are
often perceived as a type of freelancer,
just bigger and more costly, with no additional value. Is this
acorrect view of SLVs? Using freelancers for projects has becomea
habit in the localization industry and is a true driving
forcebehind this business. 500,000 translators in 6,000
languageswork hard each day in order to bridge the gap
betweenmanufacturers and their clients globally with the help of
LSPcompanies that secure the peace of mind of executives inglobal
markets. But is it really an efficient approach? Are therisks
behind sourcing and managing multiple freelancers duringcomplex
projects really worth it? Can you afford to ignore thebenefits of
collaboration with an SLV?
You may say: I dont know any of those benefits, unless
youconsider the higher price a benefit. But in fact, the benefits
ofworking with an SLV are the same that you offer to your own
clients. They are the reasons your clients dont go to
freelancersdirectly with their tasks, but go to you instead. This
is the sameadded value that you offer your customers when closing a
deal:greater control over the process and quality, as well as
supplierconsolidation that results in cost savings.
Marek Makosiej is managing director with CONTRAD,a single
language vendor for Polish. For 15 years he hasheld various
functions in the language industry,from freelancer through project
and vendor manager.
Perspectives Marek Makosiej
Three reasons
to consider an SLV
mailto:[email protected]
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in numbers that guarantee the propercompletion of even the
largest or themost complex projects, but also fullcontrol over the
output. Just like yourmultilanguage vendor company.
Consolidation and costConsolidation and cost go very closely
together. You may say: I have alreadyconsolidated the team by
removing theweak links with time. This gave me theopportunity to
offer greater volumesto a smaller number of linguists andreceive
discounts from them in return.Right you are. Thats how it works.
Butunfortunately, it seems to be the endof possible cost savings.
Lets thinkwhether you could save more. Of course.Thats how
consolidation works.
First of all, by hiring an SLV, youinstantly consolidate
resources. You
work with one point of responsibility(usually a dedicated
project manager onthe SLV side) and have access to dozensor even
hundreds of carefully selectedand controlled language
profession-als. A freelancer delivers a project thathas not been
checked properly to theSLV that works for you? Its not yourproblem.
This issue will be discoveredand eradicated before you receive
deliv-ery. If you worked with the freelancerdirectly, you would
have a real prob-lem freelancers usually dont haveany backup plans
in case of fai lure andaccidents happen and you would losea lot of
time. Time is another factorthat is closely connected with
con-solidation. After all, time is money. Butmore on that
later.
Lets get back to consolidation andhow it can affect your cost.
Theres nodoubt that consolidation saves money.With several
conditions, though. First ofall, you need to reduce the
headcount.
Your freelancers are supported by anarmy of people on your side:
vendormanagers, project managers, accountspayable and other staff.
When youreduce the number of suppliers, yourheadcount falls, too.
Lower headcountmeans lower employee cost. Simple.
Second of all, you need to leveragethe consolidated spend, which
meansyou have to negotiate lower prices.Thats where we can talk
about theperceived and real cost of hiring an SLVversus hiring a
freelancer. Of course,SLVs apply margins and of course,
free-lancers do not. But the truth is that in
the reality described at the beginning ofthis article, the SLVs
margin is probablythe lowest possible cost you can pay foryour
client being happy and not losingthem due to the poor performance
of afreelancer. The risk in hiring a freelanceris much bigger than
the SLVs margin
value. But going back to leveraging thespend, whats the whole
buzz aboutconsolidation? Its easy: you will receivelower prices
from one supplier thatreceives higher volumes the samevolume that
would otherwise be sent tomany providers turns into higher
volumefor that one provider.
Third, you need to reduce the numberof tasks, and this is
connected to reduc-ing headcount. More suppliers meanmore tasks
either carried out by youremployees or outsourced. For
instance,splitting a project into many parts for
many freelancers means many tasks,and this needs a lot of time.
You caneasily cut this cost by sending a projectto an SLV. The
rates they offer usuallyhave project management fees included;hence
you move a big part of this costto the SLV supplier. An example
oflowering the external cost is pending USlegislation that would
require businessesto file a 1099 form for every providerwith whom
they spend $600 or moreper year. Most businesses will outsourcethis
task and it would be completed
for each supplier, using one SLV resultsin a potential
outsourcing cost that ismultiple times lower than in the case
ofmultiple providers.
ImplicationsPeople are accustomed to their pro-
fessional habits and we dont want tochange something that works,
theres nodoubt about it. The question is whethertheres anything
that works better. In anever-changing world, we are challengedto
seek new and more efficient solu-tions each day to meet our
objectives.Its better to foresee the upcoming needfor a change and
act proactively ratherthan react to new circumstances. Usu-ally, it
is too late then. It is particularlytrue with the language industry
whereLSPs need to be very responsive to thequickly changing reality
of their clients
on the one hand, while on the otherhand, the belief that
time-proven pro-cedures and solutions will work foreverprevents
localization service suppliersfrom taking new, better
approaches.With the current business environ-ment and global
economic climate, itseems reasonable to change the storyfrom We
prefer to work with freelanc-ers to We welcome SLVs, especiallywith
the machine translation boom andenormous volumes to be processed
justaround the corner. M
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