Manufacturing and technology company cut localization costs by 30 percent

Case Study 09 | Manufacturing Localization

Introduction

Discover how an automated content workflow not only reduced spending, but upped productivity and decreased time to market.

A leading, Fortune 500 manufacturing and technology company was looking to globalize its product offering and provide its staff with a platform to manage its large volume of translation requirements. Integration between its Content Management System (CMS) with a Translation Management System (TMS) for decreased hardware, software and human resources costs was necessary.

The blue-chip corporation focuses primarily on hardware manufacturing and engineering, operating across 255 locations with a workforce of more than 140,000 employees worldwide. This widespread reach resulted in 260 separate websites across the company that needed to be consolidated to a single site with up-to-date product and service information. This would require the translation and localization of 3,000 web pages within a six-week project timeframe. The new site needed to be accessible in 49 languages and controlled by a CMS built on MOSS (Microsoft Office® Sharepoint® System).

Sections

Chapter 1

THE CHALLENGE

The company required a seamless integration from authoring to its CMS to a TMS and user interface that required only one login. A one-stop-shop solution was required for new and updated web content to and from the CMS.

The challenge for their selected localization service provider was to offer a tool set and translation solution that would integrate into the company’s internal processes, providing a streamlined, controlled and automated solution for their translation needs.

Another key challenge was that the company required a TMS that would allow it the option of using either its own language vendors or those of the localization service provider on a project-by-project basis.

 

Chapter 2

THE SOLUTION

In response to these challenges, the ULG team developed a stable, secure solution that provided significant economies of scale.

ULG’s proprietary translation management solution, Octave, proved key to the successful software integration with the company’s CMS. By using Octave, the company’s CMS was able to integrate with ULG’s Microsoft BizTalk® server to provide the scale and robustness required.

This allowed the company to easily submit files for quoting and quickly receive the quotation. The quote could then be adjusted and reviewed online as required. As a result, only one purchase order had to be produced for each multilingual project. This consolidated billing resulted in extra efficiency for the company.

Once a purchase order was produced for each translation job, the company’s own language vendors and ULG’s language vendors could log in to work on the translation, editing and proofing stages of the web content workflow. On completion of this stage, the translated content was made available online to the company’s own in-country reviewers, via the Octave review portal. Once approved by the company’s in-country reviewer, the final translated content was automatically sent to the company.

In summary, the ULG solution included:

  • Complete integration with MOSS system.
  • Robust online project management.
  • Online real-time job status information available via Octave.
  • Online client review carried out by the company’s own in-country reviewers via Octave.
  • Online client approval of translation enabled via Octave TMS.

Translation, editing and proofing stages of workflow were carried out by either ULG or the client’s own vendors, as preferred.

Chapter 3

PROVEN RESULTS

By seamlessly incorporating ULG’s workflow system with the client’s existing CMS, the following benefits resulted:

Faster time to market: The company was able to produce localized versions of their content online within hours of the English content being created by taking advantage of the ULG system.

Cost-effective: The ULG solutions provided the company with a way to manage a large multilingual project without manually handling files.

Robust workflow solution: ULG was able to help the company capture huge economies of scale for vast volumes of files – 3,000 web pages were translated within six weeks.

Increased employee productivity: The Octave built-in automation, online approval and online client review of translated content increased the efficiency and productivity of the company’s internal translation teams.

Managed review cycle: Octave automated the acceptance, leveraging, statusing and translation of files and also allowed the client review cycle to be managed either by ULG’s dedicated client project manager or by the company itself.

Improved client ROI: By using the integrated Octave translation management system, the company reduced overall localization costs by 30 percent.

Consolidated billing: This resulted in extra efficiency for the company as only one purchase order was required per multilingual project.

Created single point solution: The company was able to use ULG’s scale and breadth of resources.

Summary: 
  • 3,000 webpages requiring translation
  • 30% costs saved by using Octave TMS
  • 6 weeks for complete project turnaround
  • 24/7 availability of ULG team throughout project
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