Client: companies or individuals who order translation service
Vendor: freelancers including freelance translators or DTP specialists
From the point of view of a project manager in a language service provider, efficient communication with client and vendor would bring mutual trust among them and lay the ground for future cooperation.
Below is a chart showing the major events happening between PM and clients and vendors respectively.
So what role does XTRF play in their communication process? And does it contribute to effective information exchange at each stage?
To define effective communication, we are looking for in-time and accurate delivery of messages that bring satisfying result for both parties involved. So let’s look at XTRF from this lens and see how it works in each relationship.
Communication with client using XTRF
- stage: quote
A great feature of XTRF is that a lot of things are automated, which without doubt speeds everything up. For example, a quote is authomatically generated when the client opens a project in the client portal. After receiving the quote, the project manager can add rates to the services required by the client and wait for approval. When the project manager add the trados report, XTRF automatically calculates the total cost and generates the quote. The process of making the deal with the client is greatly shortened.
- stage: project start & delivery
After the project begins, the project manager can choose whether to let the client view the tasks or just provide an overview of the progress as the picture above shows. From the client’s portal, the client can easily view the project progress and whether the deliverables are ready. Finally, invoice can be sent by one click, and there is cusomized choices for payment deadlines.
Communication with vendor using XTRF
In XTRF, you can build a vendor database, with very detailed information of vendors, including their rates, availability, status, language combinations etc.
- stage: select team
What I like about the display of information of vendors is the vailability (as shown below). When you put your cursor at the green dots, there will be a message telling you whether the vendor is available for a certain project.
From the vendor’s perspective, it is very convenient to update his/her availability at the vendor portal. This integrated portals saves the time for sending emails and also helps avoid some potential mistakes by synchronizing information.
And for messaging between project manager and a vendor, the project manager can create templates for emailing (as shown below). The project manager can also customize a template for different occasions, which saves time from typing in traditional ways of communication.
- stage: project start & invoice
After the PM upload the source file to XTRF, the vendor can get notification of it, then start working on it and upload target file from vendor portal (shown as below). What’s good about XTRF is that it integrates file sharing system. Thus the PM and vendors don’t have to manage multiple platforms. When the project is finished, invoice will be sent out though one click.
Conclusion
Through built-in templates and shared portals, XTRF greatly reduces confusions in specifying the details of tasks and payables. It also alleviates efforts in the communication process by automating quotes and templating emails and invoices etc. In addition, once a client or vendor register accounts in XTRF, it would be easier for them to cooperate with the same LSP again, because all information of previous projects can be easily archived for future reference.
However, although XTRF may fasten the whole process seamlessly through templating the services and how everything functions, the system allows less flexibility of customized communication, because some clients may requires quotes and invoices with different design and formats.
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