Our client, a Fortune 50 Life Sciences company, distributes medical devices, pharmaceutical and consumer products to more than 100 countries in more than 50 languages. The company has offices dispersed globally, all requiring translations.
The Challenge
Our client was experiencing multiple challenges with its existing, decentralized translation program. Processes were inconsistent throughout the company, ultimately affecting quality and time-to-market.
This decentralized program led to:
- Difficulty managing supplier adherence and performance
- Low quality and inconsistency across languages
- Problems with tracking and controlling translation spend
- Lack of visibility and transparency of the translation process
- Limited portability between language service providers
- Lack of scalability and interoperability of internal tools and technology to support increasing translation needs
The Solution
When the client turned to Acolad Life Sciences, they wished to achieve several main objectives. Among them:
- Create a centralized translation strategy to be implemented company-wide
- Optimize the translation process by removing inefficiencies
- Integrate existing technology with new tools for maximum benefit
- Increase visibility into the company-wide project pipeline
- Create a single source of truth for linguistic assets to be used internally and across the supplier base
The priority was to consolidate the translation supplier base of more than 100 suppliers to a smaller, more easily managed pool.
Acolad Awarded Lead Translation Partner
Following a comprehensive RFP process to select nine official suppliers, Acolad was awarded the role of Lead Supplier. The first priority was to develop a centralized translation program that would be implemented globally, consisting of two main standard operation processes:
- Internal translation management procedures
- Defining how the suppliers' network would collaborate in upcoming projects.
To support the program, as Lead Supplier, Acolad also provides the technology platform to be used by all translation services: both internal users and other approved suppliers. The platform centralizes all the linguistic assets company-wide to optimize collaboration between all internal and external stakeholders:
- Translation memories
- Quotes
- Project management
- Integration with the client's procurement system (SAP Ariba)
Translation Management Portal
The translation management portal offers several key benefits to the client, including:
The Result
Since implementing the portal, translation time has decreased significantly, since divisions across the company can now leverage previously translated content to their own projects. For suppliers, rather than only having access to the translation memories they have created for the client over the years, they now have access to shared translation memories from eight other suppliers, ensuring consistency across all translated content.
By challenging suppliers to competitively bid for projects through a standard quoting template, our client has been able to drive down project costs and turnaround times. Suppliers know they are in a very competitive environment and are challenged to price aggressively and be innovative to deliver projects more quickly.
As projects are completed, new translation memories are uploaded by the suppliers, resulting in an ever-increasing database of translated content to be re-used, which aids in reducing costs.
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