Pay with PayPal in OTM and more!

Version 6.5 of the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from LSP.net will be released by the end of the month with a number of important changes related to invoicing. The least of these is the convenient option to include a PayPal button in the PDF documents generated for invoices, partial invoices and payment requests and delivered by e-mail.

Documents with a PayPal button include a text above the button in the language of the invoice, which explains how payment works using the button. These messages can be customized in each customer communication language.

A PayPal button and explanatory text in a German PDF invoice created with OTM 6.5

When the button is clicked, a PayPal payment page opens in the appropriate language. Customers with a PayPal account can then log in and pay with their PayPal balance, or payment can be made by credit card without the need to register with PayPal.

The PayPal payment page in German for invoice no. SPRPDE1401100198

The payment information includes the OTM invoice or payment request number.

Other features, such as fast payment discounts offered, are also supported and verified with the OTM server. This "one click" jump from the PDF invoice to the payment site is one of the many innovative conveniences which distinguish OTM as a legally and fiscally sound alternative to much of the competition.

Other changes in the new version include improvements in the support for alternative invoicing addresses and, most importantly, inclusion of reverse charge taxation notices for VAT in the EU in the required language, which has become a bit of a nightmare for those who forget to include these notices in billing and are reminded somewhat rudely in a tax audit.

Update on the OTM integration with SDL Trados Studio

Since I learned earlier this year about plans to integrate LSP.net's Online Translation Manager (OTM) - the workflow solution I use for secure data transmission in my projects - and SDL Trados Studio I have kept track of the progress of this effort with some interest and satisfaction. Although it is unlikely to be of immediate benefit to me, an occasional user of SDL Trados desktop applications, I have followed the combinations of business process tools with their translation implementation counterparts for many years, and this seems to be one of the few efforts that really deserves the label "integration". Too often that word is used to describe reading a text file with an analysis of files and applying a scoping grid to ensure that one's profits remain suitably modest or non-existent.

When I contacted OTM's architect this week to get the latest news before heading to Warsaw for the translation management conference, he described the development and testing over the past month and the probable completion of the middleware component next week. By the end of October, the OTM workflow system should have a new range of features to complement the Trados workflows for analyzing and testing the viability of files for translation processes, applying customer-specific weighting tables to matches and more.

The release of the new version of OTM and the SDL Trados integration features is expected in November after testing with a pilot group is completed. Given the good record of LSP.net for releasing stable versions of its software over the past three years, I expect a well-tuned, useful advance of functionality. The integration will be available for testing and use free of charge for some months in its rollout phase to ensure that potential users have every opportunity to master its application to their business processes. Several licensing models are being considered afterward to allow users flexibility.

Contact LSP.net for further details on this product. When the test phase is completed, I hope to interview some of the current group of companies working with this solution and find out the best and the worst of its implementation.

OTM: starting and completing projects from e-mail

There are a number of instructional videos put together by LSP.net which show the broad range of features in the Online Project Manager (OTM). These are great if you want an overview of the environment's many features from the perspectives of a project manager, end client and service provider (such as a translator), but with all the possibilities presented, it's easy to get overwhelmed, and the basic simplicity of a typical project can be overlooked. I made the video tutorial below to show the workflow I usually go through for simple projects.

An e-mail arrives from a customer with an attached file to translate and a request for a delivery date. I produce a quotation, send it, wait for the order (or not if it's already given in the initial e-mail), then translate and deliver the job, invoice it and close the project. When I'm not making a video of the steps, they typically take me less than five minutes, but here you can see it all in "slow motion". More details on this process are found in my other posts on this blog about OTM.



  

This tutorial was recorded with the Google Chrome browser and the Open Source recording tool CamStudio. Try it in full-screen mode using the icon at the lower right of the playing window.

OTM integration for SDL & more ahead

Some months ago, I dropped into the offices at LSP.net for a chat and was surprised by a white board covered with interesting scribbles that hinted at the most fundamental change of design yet for the translation workflow management tool OTM. In the two and a half years I have used the platform, I have seen many positive developments, which have scratched off nearly everything on my initial wish list (with other plans that may take care of the few remaining items of streamlining for freelancers by sometime late this year or early next year), but I really didn't expect to see significant integration with translation environment tools except perhaps a bit of analysis log reading for quotation purposes.

I was wrong. A few days ago, the official announcement of the integration plans for OTM and SDL Trados Studio hit my inbox, and discussions with the system's architect have made it clear that there's more ahead, though schedules are a bit vague at present. It's not clear from the post on the LSP.net blog, but the both the server and desktop (freelance) versions of SDL Trados will be integrated with the new middleware component, though there will be some differences in function.

I'm not a huge Trados fan as much as I respect some of the developments in recent years, but I'm excited by hints that the online workflow tool may make it easier to use SDL Trados to generate project file collections not only for translators using Trados but for those with other tools as well. If this really happens, I think it will be a great boost for interoperability and reduce the perceived "bother" of working with translators who use tools with which the project manager may not be competent.

Another thing that I like about the development plans for CAT integration with OTM is that the middleware component is actually vendor-neutral. This means that it can facilitate integration at the server and desktop level with more than just SDL Trados in the future. Where this may lead is unclear right now, but I think that the changes announced for memoQ version 6 for Microsoft Office file handling in the server API make that an obvious candidate, though the lack of a client API for memoQ still means that there is more potential benefit to Trados users.

Although I'm quite encouraged by this new direction for my workflow tool, I probably won't use these functions myself, mostly because Trados is not my tool of choice for translation, though it is an important part of some of my preparation, data migration and terminology output workflows. OTM has an enormous range of features - it's designed to run a medium-sized or larger translation agency with widespread global interests - and some of the presentations of this enormous range of functions can be quite intimidating. But like other tools I use that have many function - Microsoft Word and memoQ, for instance - I need only a small fraction of those functions for my routine work, and the underlying simplicity of the environment enables me to use the parts I need with great efficiency and security for my clients. And on those rare occasions when I need to work as more than just the Lone Translator, I can draw on whatever I need.

The pace of development for OTM has slowed since I first became involved with it as the issues identified in the pilot phase were solved, often in some surprisingly useful and original ways. But the SaaS solution continues to grow in very practical ways, such as improved security, and its development is still driven by the same basic needs that led to its creation in the first place - the needs of its users to "punch above their weight" profitably in competitive project management.

Notifications in OTM

For more than two years now, I have used the SaaS project management system from LSP.net (the Online Translation Manager or OTM) to handle my project tracking, quotation, delivery, archiving and invoicing workflows. Since early 2010 when the system was first made available to others beyond the group it had served for nearly a decade previously, it has developed rapidly into a unique, full-featured system for translation agency operations. For an individual translator like myself, it is arguably overkill, but its secure delivery features and excellent 24/7 client access to data via private archives as well as the very modest cost and the fact that I have no infrastructure to maintain are the decisive factors for me. I haven't seen anything else I can afford which takes my business as seriously as I do. Or more so, to tell the truth :-) As a matter of full disclosure, I will remind readers of what many already know: I do the English localization for the product, and I have a formal employment relationship with another member of LSP.net's corporate group. But all that is the consequence of liking and using the product and wanting to see it develop further, not the other way around.

The project mail system in OTM is excellent in most respects, but limited. As mentioned previously, it uses text only for reasons of data security to prevent the transmission of viruses via graphics of JavaScript in HTML mail. Some potential users have not adopted the solution for this reason, but I usually prefer straight text in my e-mail anyway unless I am doing a quick tutorial with screenshots, so I don't care. And it's nice to know that I can't accidentally infect my clients with an "innocent" e-mail. Another "limitation" of the system is that it is web-based, and for quite some time I was vaguely annoyed at having to log in to the system or refresh the Task Board view to see if new mail had arrived. It is not possible to query the mail system via POP or IMAP configurations.

As is so often the case, when we are annoyed by such shortcomings, the solution is usually there for those of us who will RTFM or simply ask the support personnel. One day when I was chatting with the system architect about new features for translation certificates being added, I mentioned my annoyance, and he kindly reminded me of the mail forwarding setting in the user profiles of the administration module. In just a few minutes, the usability of the system increased drastically for me as every incoming e-mail was forwarded to an account I monitor on my laptop and on my smartphone, so I no longer missed interesting inquiries or urgent requests because I had no time to log in to the web interface.

The relevant portion of the user profile is shown below. The critical setting is marked with a red arrow:

Both project mail that has been sorted using the project number and "orphaned" e-mail (no identifiable number present for assignment) are forwarded to the external e-mail address.

Heads in the Cloud? Or somewhere else?

As noted in my last post, concerns are growing over the trend toward "Cloud-based" translation management solutions and the potential negative impact on interoperability between TEnT systems with the wrong approach. As Jost Zetsche noted, there is a need to push solution providers such as SDL, Kilgray, Atril, Wordfast et alia to develop working, open interfaces so various clients can be used with a given server solution in online projects.

From a somewhat different perspective, Hungarian translator Csaba Bán noted that bits and dribbles of text translated via project management tools in the Cloud, while perhaps offering some efficiencies for an LSP or other company, too often unnecessarily fragment and waste the translator's time for inadequate compensation under most current schemes. I've heard a number of my clients talk about developing web-based "instant interfaces" for quickie translation service, and I know of a number of companies who have had something like this for years, but it all seems a bit like a sleazy back alley encounter on the fringes of a Red Light district with too great a chance of the translator's business suffering ill health from such indulgence. Cloud solutions which do not cleanly integrate with a translator's working environment tools but which require copying and pasting in various fields and windows are simply inefficient (despite some tools offering Clipboard integrations) and not very attractive. And appropriate minimum charges and premiums to offset the disruptions caused by too many dribbles during the day are called for. This requires some thought, and I can't pretend to offer any brilliant solutions to the dilemma, as I think each situation will have to be considered individually until a good set of general principles for best practice emerge. I have one such case I'm puzzling over myself right now: how to charge for "tweet translation" for a long-term client who runs a PR agency. So far I haven't, because the volume has been modest and fits well enough into the ordinary flow of our business discussions, but the case has me thinking.

As readers of this blog probably know, I am also involved in other types of Cloud-based project management for translation. When I began to encounter the first web-based administration interfaces with my agency clientele a decade ago, I hated them. In fact, I have dumped several otherwise rather good clients, some paying rates on par with decent direct clients, because I found their systems too cumbersome and prone to fault. One of the worst was a custom mess from an international LSP whose Swiss branch was a frequent customer; half the time, secure deliveries via their portal were simply impossible and I had to resort to insecure e-mail attachments. (Yes, these can be passworded, but that involves additional trouble.)

Gradually, decent standard solutions emerged. A number of my clients are happy with the German Plunet solution; I favor LSP.net's OTM, not because I localize the English interface but because it's comprehensive, legally secure, provides robust processes and archiving, is software as a service (SaaS) at modest cost, and I don't have to screw around with the infrastructure at my dilapidated country estate with its lousy bandwidth availability; and there are other acceptable alternatives beside the rather nightmarish mess of the Open Source solution I once tortured myself with for several months (Project ]open[ Translation). A good online administrative solution like this has many advantages over desktop or LAN solutions, and I have discussed many of these benefits in previous posts about OTM. Even the best solutions I have seen, however, have one glaring weakness: login management!!!

This is a big problem with many online applications. We all have too many damned passwords to juggle. When suddenly I have another dozen or two dozen logins to translation project administration systems for my agency and big corporate clients, things begin to get dicey if cookies, utilities like KePass or other methods are not applied. Personally, I would like to see options for OpenID and other integrations as one is beginning to see with some of the social media. Despite the hassles sometimes involved here, I think Cloud-based tools of this kind are among the most useful for managing translation-related processes and making them secure. I use my OTM for encrypted deliveries of confidential files and for providing clients with full access to their project backup archives. This is a blessing if I'm off somewhere taking a break and someone desperately needs a copy of a translation I did last year which has gone missing.

Twenty months of OTM

It's been a while since I've written about the translation business workflow solution I use and localize. Its pace of change has slowed in the past half year as the major improvements planned were all implemented, and I'm rather pleased with where it is now. When the pilot program for the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from LSP.net began twenty months ago, the software was very specifically tailored to the workflows and working habits of a small group of companies. While the better parts of this early imprinting and a few interesting quirks remain, the working environment and communication platforms for customers and resources have been made quite adaptable to individual preferences, while still maintaining the provider's strong focus on good commercial practice, legal security of contracts and data privacy.

Problems that I have had after the last round of major upgrades in 2011 (and well before that, really) have largely been when I am so distracted by the pace of my working day that I "save" time by skipping simple administrative procedures that will cost me a few precious minutes. As with nearly any system, this often means more time spent sorting things out later, not a fault of the system, which at least provides me with options for catching up on what I should have done in the first place.

I have had quite a number of problems with my e-mail server in Florida this year. The reasons for the trouble are still not clear. Yet when I have used the secure OTM file areas for customers or the delivery e-mails with secure URLs, everything has worked even when my regular e-mail is hopelessly messed up. I have even found the system with its securely encrypted access for customers and subcontractors to be useful for passing sensitive information to colleagues appointed for review.

Let there be no mistake about it: this is a full-featured workflow tool for running a small to mid-sized agency (or larger operation perhaps). For the low SaaS subscription rates, one cannot expect the CAT and other integration options available in some alternatives, but I need those even less than I need many of OTM's sophisticated agency features.

I'm just a single translator, working alone or with an agency as an administrative backup partner, but with fairly defined, limited workflow needs. Yet I have found that this solution let's me 'punch above my weight' in many situations, especially when I offer a client a simple, safe way to receive or send highly confidential files and can guarantee subcontractors the same on those very rare occasions when I outsource and manage a project.

A number of my partners and colleagues have looked at the solution. Some rather liked it, others found particular "deal breakers", like the lack of support for HTML mail that can carry viruses (the developers are adamant about the security issues on this point). I've also had specific little "nice to haves" in mind that I still have not. But what I do have is an infrastructure that is far more powerful and robust than anything else I could afford and which takes very little of my time while giving a lot of time back. Not bad, really.

Safe deliveries

The process of creative writing has occasionally been compared to that of giving birth, though for most of us writing, the result is less miraculous as a rule. The same is true of translation. Yet an undeniable common element is the importance of a safe delivery, and indeed with some translations, such as urgent medical instructions or nuclear safety training materials, the consequences of a failed delivery have greater potential for harm than childbirth complications. In some cases, even minor delays can have longer term effects on the health of one's business.

A typical translation assignment for a typical translator typically does not contain life-critical instructions on follow-up medication and treatment or a plan for preventing a meltdown, but it usually is important to the translation buyer and it is often important that the work be received according to some sort of agreed schedule. It should be self-evident that some reliable system of tracking these delivery schedules is useful to reduce the chances of forgotten deadlines; this system should reflect the realities of one's working life and environment. For some, sticky yellow notes on the edge of a monitor work fine. A few others still use paper notebook schedulers, and increasing numbers of professionals rely on software tools such as the Outlook Calendar, AIT's Translation Office 3000, Plunet or the Online Translation Manager (OTM) to keep an overview of their job schedule.

Once a job is completed, however, there remains the challenge of getting it to the customer. At this stage a number of things can go wrong.

First of all, e-mail is by no means fail-safe. Just because a message was transferred to the Sent folder of your e-mail client does not mean that it made it to the client's Inbox. The messaging connection from your computer to mine is not direct, and along the way many things can go wrong with host servers, spam filter algorithms, virus or DoS attacks that shut down the relay stations temporarily and more. Lately I have even seen headers from one message grafted onto the bodies of others so that a mailed inquiry with confidential documents from one agency appeared with the name an e-mail address of a competing agency. Thank God I noticed that one before responding. By now most of us have probably seen e-mail messages that arrive hours after they are sent. Or days. Or months sometimes. Or never. I have mail accounts on four or five servers, and I have experienced intermittent problems with every one of these over the years. No e-mail system is foolproof when it comes to delivery on time all the time.

What can be done? In urgent cases when I think of it, I make a personal call to the client to ensure that the mail has been received, though often the person I want to reach is out of the office, in a meeting or using the office's sanitary facilities, so the important question of the delivery's arrival remains frustratingly unanswered. I'm not fond of this approach for other reasons as well. While I do enjoy talking with my clients, often one or both of us don't really have the time for the contact, and when I call ten times in a row and all is well each time I begin to feel a bit like Chicken Little and stop at some point. Then the next delivery e-mail doesn't make it. And of course I find this out when I'm far away from my office up to my knees in mud with a rifle in my hands looking for boars or trying to keep the dog under control. Not the best time to take a panicked client call.

My personal solution for this recurring problem was to adopt a bit of agency infrastructure for my freelance business and use translation business portal accounts from LSP.net, a platform for which I also now do the English localization. I've written about this online translation management system on my blog rather often, and I find that the 30 euros a month or so the company asks for a project manager account is cheap insurance among other things. The delivery e-mails from that system so far appear to be more reliable than with my various other hosting providers (Hosting Matters in Florida, ProZ in God-knows-where and some German company), but being somewhat paranoid I do not rely on this. Like many translation business portals, the SaaS solution OTM allows me to create free login access for my customers where they can check on their own to see if a delivery is ready, then download it without my intervention. This has proved useful a number of times in the past year when clients did not receive the files and called me as I was racing down the Autobahn at 160+ kph. With just a short reminder to log into their secure private area they got what they needed in just a few minutes.

Security is another important difference with portal solutions of this kind. OTM and others offer encrypted HTTPS access, far better than the common frightening practice of attaching confidential client files to insecure e-mail. Some of my clients are well aware of the problems inherent in ordinary e-mail attachment of unencrypted files and have in the past demanded various encryption schemes, some public key variations of which have caused havoc with my Windows operating system to everyone's confusion and consternation. Another occasional client has a system of passwords for zip files that I often find confusing when I am in a hurry, and when I substitute the wrong special character as a separator for the password elements the poor fellow tears his hair out trying to crack the file. A secure connection to an encrypted online portal solves this problem. It also provides a more convenient way to transfer large files, far less confusing that dealing with FTP servers, each of which has its own unique operating quirks. Clients can also upload large jobs to such a portal, avoiding the problems sometimes associated with large e-mail attachments.

Given the many vulnerabilities of an online business, it makes good sense to take the extra step in technology and use a secure online platform for business communication and data exchange. There are a number of solutions available, and the implementation expenses and effort fall in a range where any viable business can find a cost-effective option.

No time for customers!

Translation: "I have no time for occasional customers who require a translation in two days but need thirty days to pay."

When I read that little shocker in the twitstream of a colleague I respect a lot, I figured he was having a bad day as I often do, and then I chuckled to myself that Italian translators would surely like to trade places with him given their net-never world. It's a pretty fair bet that if a customer (agency or direct) in the "DACH" countries (the German speaking ones, where translation pays well enough that you can usually afford a roof over your head) takes more than the 30 days' standard from EU guidelines to pay, that company has major cash flow problems and should be handled with care (low credit lines or cash in advance), or they are simply shady. Or disorganized.

But 30 days? C'mon! In a B2B world, which is the one freelance translators mostly live in, some agreed time on that order of magnitude is usual practice. It is important to remember that private persons (B2C) should indeed usually be cash in advance or on delivery, and some project management systems such as OTM actually let you set default terms according to the type of business and your likelihood of carving out a pound of flesh with lawyers if the company turns out to be a deadbeat (i.e. "risk management").

In a well-run freelance business with prompt invoicing, cash flow should be relatively smooth on average, and there are well-known strategies for dealing with the potential "bumps in the road" from big projects (advances, milestone payments, just saying "no", etc.). And there are other options.

Recently, I went through a period where my cash flow was hit with a bucket of ice water from a combination of vehicle and moving expenses as well as a deliberate slowdown in billable projects to give me time to adjust to changes in my personal life and relationship status. With the additional recent addition to overhead of a kid starting university studies, it was clear that some action was called for. So I raised prices in a number of significant cases and introduced modest net 10 day payment discounts, which most clients were pleased to take advantage of. Problem solved quite nicely with very little effort on my part. My project management environment in OTM also enables me to do these little incentives as one-offs or a default for certain customers. This is a common practice in business, where prompt payment discounts typically run between 2% and 5%.  I noticed a 10% discount being offered in a spam mass application that one of my agency friends forwarded to me tonight. Don't go there. An excessive early payment discount is stupid, as it only makes you look unprofessional and desperate. Stick to the usual percentages that a healthy business would offer.

There are probably other good strategies to encourage payment in less than 30 days, and if you've got one, please share. I have another informal policy that I implement quietly as a reward, though I can't say if the clients affected are even aware of it. I have a few clients who for years have made it a practice of paying invoices so quickly that I almost don't have time to lick the stamp to send them before the money is in my account. For some reason they often get priority in scheduling, and it's hard not to do the occasional spontaneous favor for someone who has you covered this way.

But do I blow off a customer who wants to pay me in 29 or 30 days or think ill of them? Certainly not. I screen the people and projects I work with carefully, and even the occasional customers who make timely payment after a month are part of a circle I appreciate deeply.

Why I moved on from a great tool like Translation Office 3000

I have to smile when I hear colleagues, even some who run agencies, tell me about how they run their entire business with Excel spreadsheets. Or how they had the perfect custom solution whipped together by a genius Access programmer. I used to do that shit. As part of my plan to give up medical device consulting, sell my farm and move to the urban horror of NRW, Germany I did a stint learning to develop database-backed web applications using Active Server Pages, Cold Fusion and other tools popular at the time. I was pretty good at it and used to annoy the Hell out of the developers at a transitional employer by scripting working solutions in hours that they had told management and customers would take many man-months of effort. Never believe what developers tell you; I don't think they are liars, they just don't have a clue, and I don't think all the recent fads of "lean" and "agile" development and whatnot have changed that much. There are organizations with plausible roadmaps that underpromise and over-deliver (Kilgray and LSP.net come to mind), but your average software cowboys, however skilled, aren't real strong in the project management and planning department. Thus these custom solutions are nearly all unsustainable or far too expensive in the long run.

A direct client of mine in the nutrition industry is a case in point. They have their labels, product literature, contracts, etc. translated into at least 20 languages. All this is done with Excel spreadsheets (where they keep trying to shove more text into the cells than certain versions can hold, so content is forever being truncated and lost). Projects used to be managed by the company's purchasing agent in his copious free time. I'm sure he used to be a PM at a major translation agency, but maybe not. Anyway, he's no dummy: he talked his bosses into hiring someone to coordinate those projects full time. And a full time job it is when you do everything with scratch pads and Excel sheets. After I spent several years advising them on the benefits of TM technology, they considered Déjà Vu and other solutions, but finally opted to have the head of their IT department write their own solution. Last time I asked (a year ago) the costs were in excess of 30,000 euros and all the system could do was import and export Excel spreadsheets. Conversion of the data to various layout formats still proceeds by copy and paste. They want and need the control offered by off-the-shelf solutions like Ontram, the memoQ Server, SDL Teamworks, OTM from LSP.net, etc. but somehow they are convinced that they save money and gain control by growing, rolling and smoking their own.

They're smoking something, alright. Take it from an IT fool with his foot in that swamp for nearly 40 years now: if you are doing more than minor custom integrations of off-the-shelf, well-supported solutions, you are probably driving blindfolded down a dead-end alley. Early in my career I saw Avery waste a fortune developing its own LIMS to handle data from the corporate analytical laboratory, only to dump it for a standard commercial tool that offered standard data migration options. The wealth of old data was probably never rescued - last I heard the custom database format could not be cracked. Things have gotten better since the 1980s, but not as much as some believe.

Which brings me to AIT's Translation Office 3000 and its proprietary database. At least the developers created some reasonable data export options; it's hard to imagine any viable application without that today. TO3000 is a popular solution for individual translators who do not outsource. I like it, and I used it for three years after my original tool (the agency version of LTC Organiser) was discontinued, and the disturbing lack of internal coordination at LTC in 2006/2007 caused me to pull back from adopting their new Worx solution. Customer support from the AIT team in the Ukraine is also prompt and cheerful, if not always informed on matters like local legal requirements for invoices. If you are a freelancer who never outsources or run a language services office that does everything in-house, TO3000 is a viable, affordable solution that is easy to learn and implement. I like the company and think they do great budget products for translators. That's why I have links to AIT on my blog, to help colleagues find respectable solutions for managing language service projects. Their support is also very good; I recently needed help to load my old database on a new system to handle a legal matter, and the AIT told me exactly what I needed to know and provided me with all the resources to accomplish it. I give them top marks.

Translation Office 3000 is a single-user desktop system. It includes a customer database, project quotation, scheduling and invoicing, some e-mail features and other basics needed to keep track of your business. The RTF templates are easy to customize to meet your personal or local statutory requirements. There is no database for suppliers (subcontractors), which is why I don't recommend it as a solution if you outsource. That requires a second tool, and the more places related data must be maintained, the more effort you have to maintain it and the greater the likelihood of some sort of organizational meltdown eventually.

It's a great system, but... I have learned, sometimes the hard way, that a healthy business really requires more to avoid wasting time and possibly losing clients and projects.

I'm a lone freelancer. I hardly ever outsource. Once in a while I'll work in a team on something, well, maybe rather often if you count those who edit my work, which you really should. Right there the issues with TO3000 begin.

But as I've mentioned elsewhere, there were certain specific issues that led me to look further:

• I needed a second person to access the records to enter customer and project data and issue invoices
• I needed to avoid the time and expense to maintain a local server, and I needed regular backups that could not be forgotten
• I needed to check the status of projects and correspondence while traveling 
• I needed to reduce the number of programs I juggled to manage my business
• Most of all, I needed reliable deliveries to my customers. With secure encryption. Deliveries kept getting swallowed in e-mail systems, and delivering huge projects was a major nuisance. If my partner at the time needed to make a big delivery, I had to do it, because she had no idea how to upload to the FTP or web server. All this was a huge drag on my time and created uncertainty. And clients were not happy to learn that the delivery had occurred hours or days before but never arrived.
• I needed to handle transactions in a legally compliant manner that meets international auditing standards. This includes a requirement for time-saving templates that are correct and do not require legal research on my part.

Although TO3000 is a great program backed by a great team, it fails on every one of these points. Its real advantage is price: for under 200 euros you can get a license and get started. But you're on your own for security, backups, legal compliance, etc.

So even for a "little" freelancer, a more comprehensive solution makes sense. And there are plenty of these. The Translation Office Manager (TOM) is one solution that I've looked at repeatedly as it has improved over the years, and one agency I work with in Düsseldorf has apparently made it the backbone of business there. AIT offers Projetex for agencies, though I never managed to get the database scripts to work, and feedback I've heard from others using it is not good. AFAIK both of these require local server maintenance: once again security, backups, legal compliance, etc. at your own risk.

The current Worx, Plunet and others provide a more professional approach with options closer to my needs and some that I would hope to see eventually in the solution I do use. However, the costs for these are hardly transparent upon casual inquiry, and they are inevitably higher than the system I adopted. I've done way too much IT support over the years; I am good at it, but I hate it. So I wanted a hosted solution that requires a minimal time investment on my part. And I need absolute reliability for my deliveries, easy, accurate record keeping and full legal compliance for an international business. (I may be small-time, but I have clients scattered around the world.) Most of the time TO3000 largely covers my project organization needs, but more and more I find myself in team situations for larger projects that require agency organization functions. And I am on a strict budget: paying full college support costs for a kid isn't cheap even in a country without tuition charges.

The Online Translation Manager from LSP.net offers me all the flexibility, scalability and access I need for a monthly cost that is half my rate for a single hour of work. I adopted this solution 14 months ago, and I have used it in 5 different configurations for various businesses and test systems. After half a year I began to support its localization, because I believe in the value of what the system offers and I see rapid progress in its development for the diverse needs of an international market. Right now I'm working on dialogs and instructions for the version 4.1 release scheduled for next Monday, a minor one, but one which contains more real improvements than I experienced with my other business management solutions in several years. This is not a perfect system. No system is, because requirements of users vary widely. But it is the best general system I have seen so far, and is likely the one with the most potential as evidenced by its support policies and development roadmap. Time and again I see parallels with Kilgray, a company with a product (memoQ) not ready for prime time when I first saw it a few years ago, now beating the pants off the industry "leader" SDL for functionality, user-friendliness, support and cost and charging ahead with useful new innovation at a rate that shows no signs of slowing. Which horse will you bet on? The charging thoroughbred leaving its competitors in a cloud of dust and gravel? Or the lame mare who plods along remembering former victories and daydreaming about a quiet pasture? (I have a nice one here at Vehlefanz Manor where she can retire.) I'll bet my small stack of cash on LSP.net, because OTM keeps me winning, gives me security and leaves me time for life.

Smartphone interfaces for the Online Translation Manager

In recent years it seems that quite a few of my colleagues and customers have made smartphones part of their business. I'm not part of that crowd; years of being an early adapter of PDA technology (Palm devices, Sharp Wizards and a host of other long-forgotten gadgets) and other computer-related junk has made me a bit allergic to the technology, and the trauma of short-circuiting a 500 euro mobile phone by dropping it in a toilet and having another phone of the same class fall from my pocket as I ran to catch a train has made me a stubborn minimalist when it comes to phones and other electronics. Add to that the fact that I've found myself up to my hips in swamp water a few times in recent years while hunting boars, I tell myself that the last thing I need is an iPhone in my back pocket (where I once sat on and broke two Sharp Wizards).

And yet... after a friend recently showed me how to go offline with my phone the other day so I could avoid interrupted naps and sleeptalking with puzzled clients and friends, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, there could be a place in my routine for a little more gadgetry if indeed I can switch it off at those times when the 24/7 world does not interest me. Over the past year I have come to rely on the security and efficiency of the Online Translation Manager from LSP.net, which offers greater scope and scalability than any other business management tool for translation that I have seen and can fit in my budget and temperament. Now my #2 business tool (after my main squeeze, memoQ) has a rather functional interface for smartphones, and I'm very, very tempted. What the heck: I need a new digital camera, and my iPod died a horrible death a few years ago as I was backing up my translation archives onto it (how would you like to choke on a folder full of German patents?), so maybe I need to make a quick trip to the UK and get an unlocked iPhone. AFAIK the German market is still rather monopolistic. (Update: Perhaps that's not the case after all. FONIC sells the iPhone 3GS 8 MB without a contract for just under €500, which usually means it's not SIM- or net-locked. Combined with Skype for iPhone, the iPhone's WLAN capabilities and my Skype flatrates, this is starting to look very good. I've also been reminded that Apple's exclusive contract with a certain mobile service provider in Germany has expired, so the German Apple Stores sells devices with no lock. Nonetheless, I'll find an excuse to visit the UK. It's been too long.)

The iPhone screen shot here was made while the developers were showing me the new interface last week. It tells me as a project manager that there is a new quotation request (don't let the date fool you - this is on a test system where the wildest things happen), unread incoming on another project, and unread incoming e-mail and a delivery from a subcontractor on another. I can now assign tasks, respond to the mails and carry out other necessary project management activities. If this interface had been available in recent months (and I had a device to use it), a number of urgent requests from cherished clients during the busy holiday season wouldn't have gone to the dogs. (Other dogs, not mine.) For reasons I have not yet fathomed, a number of clients who used to pick up the phone to communicate an urgent request now assume that I'll be sitting in front of my screen to respond ASAP. Come to think of it, most of these send me e-mail where the footer indicates that the message was sent from a CrackBerry. OK, OK - I surrender.

Seriously, though: this is an extremely useful feature that I hope to see expanded soon to include the customer and supplier ("resource") interfaces. It makes a good business management environment even more useful and relevant.

Release update (compatibility): This feature was developed with and tested on Apple iPhones for the most part. A Blackberry interface was developed as well using a simulator from RIM, due to the wide variety of devices and the unavailability of many for testing. It seems that the display does in fact function differently between different models, so the optimized smartphone interface may not be ready for many Blackberry models; these will have to rely on browser access that is unoptimized. Other smartphones may be able to use this feature by changing the value of the user agent (in Firefox there is a plug-in for this), which usually involves some seriously nerdy settings tweaks in the browser. In summary: iPhone? Not a problem. Anything else? Maybe, but expect to work at it. I'm betting that there will eventually be a generic small device interface parallel to an optimized one for popular devices such as the iPhone. It would make sense. Even with one, however, I'll eventually join The Cult again and visit the Apple Store.

Price and project templates!

One of the things I look forward to the most in the version 4.0 release of the Online Translation Manager from LSP.net is a new feature for price and project templates. It has been discussed for quite a while, and the lack of a price list feature up to now has put off some of those who tested this project management environment, but in the end the implementation is better than I had hoped for. I saw a live demo of the feature for the first time last Tuesday while I was visiting the company's offices to discuss localization and training issues.

It has been possible to keep price information for customers in OTM in the past, though not quite in the way to which one is accustomed to seeing in similar software solutions. Notes features in the customer master data as well as the ability to store documents and contracts for particular customers does provide a useful way of keeping track of rate agreements and terms. But what has been "missing" up to now is the ability to plug in volume information for a service and have quotation amounts calculated automatically. Such features are probably found in most language service project management software, from TO3000 and TOM to Worx, Plunet, Project ]open[ translation et alia.

There are, however, some problems with data maintenance in the other applications that I have used. I have worked most extensively with LTC Organiser (the predecessor to Worx) and AIT's Translation Office 3000 and used them to run my business since 2003. (Before that I used Excel templates. Yuck. Don't ask and I promise not to tell.) In both environments I maintained customer-specific price lists, reflecting individual terms, subject areas, rush job policies and more. After a while I found that the data were not very easy to keep current (my TO3000 master price list was rarely useful for anything, as it was always hopelessly outdated or irrelevant to the individual terms), and so many types of projects required special quoting that the price lists were often useless anyway. When my partner tried to use the software for quotation, she could rarely remember the various surcharge policies negotiated with customers, which occasionally led to confusion. I think that is pretty typical of current solutions. You have to work hard to stay on top of things, and that's not always easy when things are hopping or your day is filled with interruptions.

The OTM 4.0 solution I saw appears to solve that problem nicely from several directions. There are no price lists as one usually sees them, no Excel-like grid of rates and services to be maintained. There is something which I believe is much better: general templates for project structures including prices as well as the ability to use any project from the customer's history as a template for a new project. In fact, several templates can be applied to a new project if it uses the combination of services from those individual templates or past projects. A simple interface for sorting project histories also makes it easy to find the right similar project to use as a template.

All this saves a lot of time and is closer to the reality of our workflows! And if I increase rates, then I can simply use the date-sorted project history to choose "templates" reflecting the new rates. Any completed project can also be used as a template. Template access can also be governed by rights in the system, so project managers at an LSP can have their own personal templates and choose to share these or not.

There are some rather interesting discussions about building on this feature for CAT analysis integration, but in its first released form I think this is a powerful, unique tool that will save me a lot of time personally. I appreciate the fact that the system architects didn't just pull a "me too" and implement pricing tools the same way most others do it; they were aware of the problems of data maintenance and had left the feature out for that reason. Only after careful consideration of possible solutions and testing was a decision made to introduce something that is more powerful and sustainable than anything I had available before. Thumbs up!

Changes ahead for the OTM trial period

It's been a year now since the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from LSP.net was opened up for pilot testing by companies beyond the original international group of companies for which it was developed a number of years before. The year has seen enormous development progress, as greater flexibility has been added to accommodate other business models while at the same time maintaining the unique rigor of the software's commercial and legal features. Upon the recommendation of financial translation specialist Ralf Lemster I was part of the original pilot test and adopted the system for my former translation partnership before becoming more deeply involved in the software's English localization and educational efforts as well as working closely with one of the companies in the original group of users. In late spring the pilot testing was complete, and after some significant updates, the environment was made generally available via the software as a service (SaaS) model. As far as I have been able to determine in my testing and research in the area of project management tools for a translation business, there is no other system available which is truly comparable when one considers the range of features, the legal security, data protection and very low costs (starting at € 29 per login ID per month).

Since last May it has been possible to test OTM for one month free of charge with an unlimited number of login IDs per account and an unlimited number of projects. Next week that will change.

As one portal provider in the industry observed, the major barrier faced in any system migration is the length of time needed to fully evaluate a new system. In fact, the one month trial period often proved too short for busy LSPs testing alongside the challenging routine of daily operations. Although one can get fully up and running with OTM in a day, for some who have yet to draft terms and conditions and consider other basic issues of business, the setup phase can last longer. Often features such as iFrame integration of quotation request forms in existing web sites require coordination efforts that may run into difficulties with a 30-day time limit.

Thus as of next week with the release of the new version 4.0 of OTM, the trial period will be extended to three months with a maximum of five projects. Persons evaluating the tool can still set up any number of login IDs for project managers, administrators and bookkeepers during the test period, and all the setup features can be tested throughout the period. But no more than five complete projects can be carried out during the trial. This is, in my experience, quite adequate to get a good sense of how typical projects would work with the system, and learning will also be facilitated by new "live" tutorial projects (available on request) to familiarize project managers with the basic processes of quotation, project acceptance, job assignment, delivery and invoicing.

Those who wish to test OTM intensively with a large number of projects in a month should request a free trial this week. Otherwise, look forward to a less hurried option next week, which will give you a better opportunity to understand the strengths and other aspects of the system before making a choice for your business.

Life in the slow lane

There's an arrogance that some develop when spoiled too long by state-of-the-art communications infrastructure. I see this sometimes in discussions with web designers or software developers who refuse to consider the situation of those with little or no access to broadband. I remember as a young man being able to read faster than the 300 to 1200 baud text scrolling down down my CRT, and I was never a speed reader. Download graphics? Sure, if you've got a free afternoon. Movies? In your dreams. Well, dreams do come true, though often they have a darker side. I'm sure that many of my translating colleagues have received some short job to translate with enormous uncompressed graphics that destabilize the file structure and give translation tools fits. The sort of crap that makes many of us spend more energy as technotweakers than as translators. All this is facilitated by widespread firehouse bandwidth, which also raises customer expectations for a rapid return. Please remember, people, that rapids are often full of sharp rocks and other risky elements, and though you may come out fast, you may come out in more pieces than you went in.

So when I moved to the Schloss a few weeks ago and faced a few tricky decisions on how to configure my new infrastructure for communications, I decided to "go slow" for a few weeks and see what life is like. There's no DSL offered here, so blowing off Deutsche Telekom for good, a dream I have had for a decade, has finally been possible. I spent a week on Vodafone's UMTS and found it good for all my data and voice communication needs, then I applied the brakes and used my FONIC stick, which in this area only gives me EDGE service, which is like GPRS. (FONIC is an O2 subsidiary - I'm told they advertise widely and humorously on TV, but since I haven't looked at a working television since my last visit to the US four years ago I wouldn't know). EDGE really sucks in some cases. I remember trying for nearly two hours last July to send a small file (2 MB or so), before giving up in frustration and going up into the third story of the inn, where a weak UMTS signal was available and the file could be transmitted in less than a minute.

But perhaps I'm stricken with a bit of nostalgia for my old farm in Oregon now that I've finally made it back to more livable, rural settings. The bandwidth in county lands outside Scio was very bad for a long time, which was very good for web page design for medical company clients whose physician customers often had 2400 baud modems with which to crawl the World Wide Web. "Optimization" was a very relevant concept with regard to communications. Another reason for the present experiment is that I have encountered difficulties too often with mobile communications while traveling, and I wanted to explore the possible scope of these and prepare solutions before they are needed. The low bandwidth also gave me an opportunity to test my online project management and communications environment, which was never consciously optimized for such situations, but which seems to work well nonetheless. Given that an iPhone and iPad interface is soon to be available (or perhaps already is - I don't use that stuff, so it's only of peripheral interest) I suppose I should not be surprised. Working a lot with a remote memoQ Server under these circumstances is not something I would recommend unless you remember to create an offline version of the databases for synchronization. I did that on my old laptop, but not on the new one, so I was stuck. Fortunately, the job I had to do was only a short page, so I could live with the delays to confirm segments.

Even at 96% signal strength, EDGE is utterly inadequate for viewing video clips of more than a few seconds length. Thus I missed out on Jon Stewart's successful satirical advocacy that brought needed relief to 9/11 responders and various links that friends wanted to share. Professionally, this had little meaning, though I was bummed out that I couldn't listen to the music videos linked on patenttranslator's blog while reading his posts.

Should the need arise, I can activate and use my Vodafone stick in minutes and get high quality UMTS. I discovered recently that there are now solutions available with UMTS and mobile SIM cards, which offer WLAN access and VoIP telephony, much like the little portable WLAN routers that various colleagues have purchased and rave about. So when this old tortoise is ready to stop crawling down the road, he can climb into an affordable hotrod and tear up the asphalt.



The image of the tortoise on the road from Arria Belli is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. That's not really French Guinea, it's a road in Zehdenick in Brandenburg, Germany on Christmas Eve. Thus the promise of blooming landscapes made by Helmut Kohl has been kept thanks to Global Warming.

Cover your assets!

The last two days have demonstrated the importance of disaster recovery planning once again. The fun started when I was rousted early after working until about 4 am and greeted with the news that someone's computer "wouldn't boot". This same computer had experienced various "issues" for nearly a year, giving more than fair warning of its impending catastrophic failure. The trouble had started about the same time as the same person had lost about 6 months worth of invoicing information on a hard drive that was not backed up. Live and learn. Really?

This time there was a bit of a silver lining. Most of the critical business data - project archives and billing - was online with LSP.net's Online Translation Manager. But that didn't offer much comfort in dealing with a current urgent project for which no reliable equipment was available. Upgrading and reconfiguring other equipment for emergency use has taken up most of the last two days. I had other plans, but I was volunteered for the job. Oh well.

In the course of messing with mail configurations in Outlook (to get the other person up and working on one of my old computers) I managed to wipe out all records of the last two week's mail. This was a bit of a surprise, but apparently this was possible, because my new Outlook 2010 configuration had left the mail on the server and the old equipment (with other settings) deleted it. I was a little annoyed at losing a few good e-mail jokes, but everything relevant to ongoing projects for clients is archived in OTM. So my bases were mostly covered. Then I thought to contact my hosting provider and learned that nearly all the data could be restored from a backup (good to know!). So in the end little harm was done by the mail misadventure.

The clearest lesson here for me is that it really is time to return to my old "paranoid" practice of having as much redundancy in equipment and software as I can afford. The five or six working computers I used to maintain may be more than is called for, but at least one backup machine with all my critical applications configured is clearly mandatory. I was actually almost there with my netbook, but I hadn't bothered to install my second MS Office license on it, so the I/O functions of memoQ and other important tools were limited. I'll be fixing that tonight.

How many of you can keep working smoothly if your main workstation suddenly experiences smoking death? (I had this once - my Macintosh 512K caught fire while I was down the hall chatting with my secretary. We smelled burning plastic....) Are all your important tools configured exactly as you need them on a backup computer? Backing up your data is not enough! The processes are just as important.

It's easy to come up with other priorities, especially easy if you have the misfortune to work subprime translation markets and money is therefore tight. But disaster planning and preparation for your business is not an option. It's a necessity.

Resending mail from Outlook 2010 vs. 2003

In a previous post, I described how to forward e-mail in a different way, using the "resend" function in Microsoft Outlook. The main point of doing this was that the e-mail arrives at the account to which it is forwarded with the original sender in the corresponding field (as opposed to the account which forwarded the message). This is important to me, because the Online Translation Manager that I use for administering my translation workflows and billing has a number of useful sorting and assignment functions that use e-mail addresses in that field. The function is found in the menus for the actual mail message (not the general MS Outlook menus). In MS Outlook 2003, it is at the bottom of the Action menu:

 

Since upgrading to a new system at the end of last week, I have been discovering that many familiar functions in MS Office applications are no longer so easy to find (or when found, their details often work quite differently). Outlook's menus in the 2010 version are utterly different. Here's a screenshot to show where to find the resend function in the menus of a message in MS Outlook 2010:

 

Not only do I use this function when working with OTM, I have also begun to use it to forward inquiries that I don't have time to handle to a few colleagues. This may also be a useful function for cases where lines get crossed between personal and business e-mail accounts and you want to move a message from one to the other without losing track of where it came from in the first place.

Poll: Barriers to Cooperation

Recently in the sidebar of this blog, the following question was asked:

What are the significant barriers for you in collaborative projects with colleagues?


The responses were distributed as follows:

12%    None. I do it all the time without trouble
25%    Organization: coordinating & scheduling tasks
29%    Technology: suitable means and methods of resource sharing
45%    Networking: I don't always know suitable people to work with
31%    Trust: I'm afraid of having clients stolen or being held responsible for the failures of others
6%    Other reasons

It's interesting that the most frequent response indicated a lack of suitable partners for cooperation. Whether this is a perception issue or a real matter of getting out and getting to know qualified peers is probably very much an individual issue. In my case I simply don't know a lot of linguistically qualified German to English translators with a significant knowledge of chemistry and related sciences and a healthy dose of legal competence. When I see otherwise very good translators going at such texts armed with a dictionary and boundless confidence, I can't help but cringe, especially if I'm involved in the review somehow. I have bad flashbacks to the day that a superb legal translator took on an IT text on entity/relationship modeling and asked me if some key term had the same meaning as it does in contracts. Not even close.

Trust was another major issue. This was not unexpected given the paranoia I observe at times in various fora. I don't worry much about client "theft" and often freely pass on contact data for qualified colleagues, with the understanding that the parties involves in any transaction bear all the responsibility for the results. Concerns about responsibility for bad quality from others is understandable, but here proper project management - enough time allowed for review and rescue and a sufficiently high margin to allow for any contingencies - can offset a lot of potential trouble. This is an important organizational issue that many freelancers are neither prepared to qualified to handle, so caution in this regard is probably praiseworthy.

Technology as a barrier is more a matter of knowledge than the actual technology available. Not everyone has the resources or inclination to maintain a translation server with SDL solutions, memoQ, Déja Vu or other options, but new entries to the market like Wordfast Anywhere (a free collaboration tool with privacy features) could be game-changing here, and little birds tell me that SaaS solutions may soon be available at affordable cost for small freelance teams. About a year ago I had the pleasure of being involved in a nice project where a memoQ server license was leased for a month; the only down side to that was the hardware problems the project coordinator had figuring out the IP addresses with his router. Technical options for collaboration outside of agency structures are increasing, and it is worth investigating developments in this area. In one case we brought a collaborative project to an agency that had the necessary infrastructure (a memoQ server), and the results were quite satisfactory, so this is one option that may be worth exploring with small, flexible LSP partners.

The challenges of coordinating and scheduling can be considerable. Many freelancers lack experience as project managers and may not have had occasion to develop the necessary interpersonal skills and "toughness" to deal with difficulties that may arise. The *technical* aspects of assigning, scheduling, coordinating and delivering jobs can be handled adequately with affordable software solutions. The best option I currently know for this is the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from LSP.net, which for a basic monthly fee of 29 euros per month gives anyone full access to all the IT infrastructure needed to run an agency of any size. It's "software as a service" with automated backups and top-notch security; the cheapest option for setting up my own server and other software adds up to several years of OTM fees at the very least. OTM also gives me completely secure file transfer for clients and cooperation partners. This is important for paranoid patent lawyers and others. I've been looking for and testing solutions in this area for seven years now, and although there is still significant optimization needed by the provider for the average freelancer or small team, OTM is the best option for small teams looking to grow on a budget or medium-sized LSPs who need competence, security and cost control. The provider currently offers free trials to interested parties.

Of course, collaboration isn't for everyone. I'm often of two - or even three - minds on the subject. But for those who are interested in working together with others as a way to grow their business, there are many options and many exciting developments ahead.

Why online translation business management?

This coming October it will be my pleasure to make a very short joint presentation with another colleague at the ProZ conference in Prague. The subject will be online translation management and a brief review of key features and issues to consider. The outline for the talk is somewhat challenging to develop, as the allocated time is thirty minutes, and this is a subject that could be discussed for hours without exhausting it, particularly if one begins to compare all the myriad online and offline options with each other.

For the sake of “full disclosure”, I'll remind the reader that I do now have a formal business association with a company providing such solutions: LSP.net. I'm technically on the payroll of an affiliated company, which simplifies my life by handling my backoffice functions and remembering to pay my health insurance, and as part of the arrangement I handle updates and many improvements to the English interfaces of the Online Translation Manager (OTM) as well as write occasional tips on how to use the system. I support that solution because I believe that this type of service is of great potential value to many of those with whom I have professional contact in the language industry. Here I mean online solutions of one sort or another, not necessarily the particular one I support because it fits my needs.

What led me personally to move from “offline” solutions – some of them very, very good – to online management tools for my translation business? Many people with businesses more complex than mine get by somehow with souped-up Excel spreadsheets or an Access database on steroids and a LAN. Tools like the Translation Office Manager (TOM) are network-enabled and do a great job even for agencies that have outgrown the kitchen table.

I had a very specific set of circumstances and experiences, which I think are not all too uncommon, even if their degree may be greater or less than my experience and they may occur in other situational clusters:

1. a large number of projects for a team of two which required better coordination of schedules;
2. responsibilities for portions of shared projects needed better definition (after a few incidents of accidental overlap in rushed projects with many files);
3. access to the project management and invoicing functions by multiple persons was needed so that everything wasn't bottlenecked by my busy schedule;
4. better data backup was needed after a hard drive with far more than a month's worth of unbilled work died unexpectedly and proved unrecoverable (very, very expensive);
5. more secure data transmission (for receiving and delivering project files) was required after various half-baked encryption schemes several clients wanted proved unreliable;
6. more reliable delivery of translations had long been required – several incidents each year occur where e-mail is delayed for hours, days, even weeks;
7. access to project information was often required when we were out of the office, traveling, etc.;
8. a better “filing solution” was needed for compliance with the legal requirements for retaining project-relevant documents such as e-mail, NDAs, master agreements, etc.

Points 5 through 7 really only can be dealt with via an online solution of some kind. Whether that solution is a VPN, SaaS or something else is secondary. The third point also required an online solution particularly when the parties involved are often not at the same location or hiring a remote assistant is considered.

There were other criteria to consider, such as workflow design and customizability where I was willing to consider some compromises, at least temporarily, but those eight points were my personal list of features that must be available to me in order to achieve the desired changes in my business. Much of the list had long since been satisfied by my desktop solutions from LTC and AIT, but the real stumbling block time and again came down to online multi-user access, data security and, in the end, cost and infrastructure issues as well.

Three times in the last five years I have had cost estimates put together for an in-house server for our two-person office. Each time, however, I put off the decision to buy. In one case I simply didn't have the cash for the whole complex system that was proposed, and later when prices fell dramatically I was simply irritated by a line item of 150 euros per workstation to “connect” to the server (i.e. plug in a simple cable to the RJ-45 sockets built into the walls of the office for a network years ago). Really, though, the biggest issue for me was the lousy feeling in my gut at the thought of having to maintain yet another piece of hardware (and all the associated software) in the office. I've been fiddling with IT hardware and software for too many years now and I'm simply sick of it. I want to do things I really enjoy now like translate interesting texts or work with my dogs.

So for me, the software as a service (SaaS) model is attractive for translation business management as well as for other applications I use like translation environments. If Kilgray were to offer an attractive SaaS package for using the memoQ Server (so I wouldn't have to mess with the supporting hardware), I would probably jump on it. As I did with the Online Translation Manager from LSP.net.

To some extent my chosen solution is like hunting rabbits with a cannon loaded with grapeshot, but I prefer to have more features than I need and have the option of growing without changing systems than to meet a very limited set of requirements well and have no further possibilities in the chosen framework. That was why, years ago, I chose the agency version of LTC desktop software, and the few times I needed to outsource to the few people I trusted not to screw up I was glad of the additional flexibility with provider records and price lists.

I really haven't seen a lot of good, secure, affordable options for SaaS to meet freelancers' needs. There are a few options for agencies, not all of them as transparent as OTM, but aside from a Swedish solution I stumbled across and didn't evaluate and the free but limited options at ProZ which I don't trust given the site's history of security breaches and questionable politics, I can't come up with any others that I would consider a viable option at this time. (If anyone has information to the contrary, please share it!)

Nonetheless I think this will be an area to watch in our profession; the potential value to many of us is high, and the existing solutions for software as a service will develop further as others come online. That will be good for all of us I think.  

New rates from LSP.net offer lower outsourcing management costs

The public beta of the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from LSP.net began in January of this year. The system had been in active use by a small network of agencies for about six years, but the transition from this group with its very specific working preferences and needs to a wider group of language service providers resulted in a number of fundamental improvements and added flexibility, particularly with regard to data input methods and customizing, a process which is ongoing, with major steps taken in this week's upgrade and another planned in about three to four weeks.

At a basic rate of 29 euros per month per PM or administrator login for access to all features of the online system, OTM is a bargain in my opinion. I do find some parts of it a bit cumbersome, and as a single translator or member of a small team, I have a somewhat different view of optimal workflow in some cases than the agencies who have used it for a long time to manage complex, multi-lingual projects, but the better I get to know the system through my cooperation with that network of companies and my workflow documentation efforts for LSP.net, the more I understand the sense and utility of some features which first seemed irrelevant or obtrusive to me, and the clearer the benefits for small offices or even busy Einzelkämpfer become. My backoffice partner is part of the original network using OTM, so I have now adopted the system to manage all my project work, and I have no regrets. Alternatives would generally cost me more and/or offer me less of what I need and want.

One variable cost which was a concern to small, active agencies working on a tight budget was the fee of 2 euros for each job which was assigned to someone other than the project manager. If the PM assigns a lot of small jobs, this was felt by some to be an excessive burden on margins despite the monthly cap of 300 euros for total costs. (That would be 135 jobs assigned - if 271 euros additional cost is too burdensome with a job volume like that, something is wrong. On the other hand, if these jobs consist of three sentence texts and I'm too timid to impose reasonable minimum charges, I suppose it could be a problem.) I followed those discussions for months with little interest, because I almost never outsource, so my total costs in a given month would never have passed 33 euros in any month since 2000. However, the company takes the concerns of its customers and other interested parties seriously, and this week unveiled a new price schedule offering a "business" package with a cost cap of 49 euros per login per month for an unlimited number of assigned jobs. Details can be read here. (Access to the system is free of charge for customers to submit quote requests or download jobs, invoice copies, etc. or for service providers to whom work is assigned.)

For a complete management system for translation workflows, internal and external service providers, files, financial records, etc. with secure uploads and deliveries and access anywhere via the Internet, 29 or 49 euros per month isn't bad at all. The costs and services provided are laid out quite transparently and are easy to understand and plan for.

I appreciate this transparency, because I have experienced quite the opposite with some well-known alternatives for SaaS or intranet solutions, including the Open Source software Project ]open[ Translation, which is "free" but basically impossible to get configured completely without hiring the consultants who created it. The Project ]open[ Translation documentation sucks, and the database and web programming seem particularly vulnerable to unintentional monkeywrenching. On the site for another well-known solution, if one follows the "How to Buy" link there isn't the least bit of price information that I can find. If I were to pursue that by contacting the company, dealing with the sales dance and so forth, I will have wasted enough time to pay a year's fees or more for OTM. So for now, I think I'll stick to a simple, honest system that works, lets me check my project status and inquiries from anywhere, and if I ever go completely nuts and start subcontracting like crazy (ain't gonna happen, so hold those unsolicited applications, please), my costs won't break 50 euros per month. I can buy that.


Related posts:

A customer's view of OTM

Re-sending e-mail to OTM

Receiving an e-mail inquiry in OTM from an listed customer

Receiving an order in OTM after a quotation

Delivering a job (performed by the PM) in OTM

Generating an invoice and concluding the project in OTM

Generating the invoice and concluding the project in OTM

After delivering a project in OTM, it's simple to generate and send the invoice. Click on "Invoice" in the progress bar under the project summary near the top of the display to get started.

Tab for generating an invoice

Note that there are various options available for the billing address. The terms can also be altered here. If there have been changes to the rates or line items, go first to the Edit line items tab and make the necessary modifications. Otherwise, click the Generate Invoice button to create the invoice. The PDF invoice can be sent directly by marking the checkbox above the button to generate the invoice. If you intend to print and send a copy of the invoice using the postal service, it is not necessary to mark the checkbox.

The invoice

Here's a copy of the invoice that was created and sent to the customer.

Generate invoice tab after the invoice has been created

If you look at the Generate invoice tab again after the invoice has been created, you'll notice a new button to mark the invoice as paid. When the payment has been received, click the button. Clicking the Mark as Paid button will display a confirmation, then re-direct to the project switchboard.

Project switchboard view after the invoice has been paid

Notice that after the invoice was marked as paid the line under Invoice changed from yellow to green. The next step is to wrap up the project and close the order. To do this, click "Conclude project" i the progress bar (it's underlined in red)

"Conclude project" tab

When you conclude a project you can also send a request to the customer for feedback. This is a good way to build your testimonials.

Customer's project history

After the project has been concluded, it will disappear from the order list. To view the project details once again (or to make changes, re-open the project, etc.), click the H icon under the company name or contact name in the project summary near the top of the screen. The project history for this customer is show above. Clicking the project number (blue text at the left) will open up the project switchboard view for the order.

Project switchboard view for a closed order (finished project)

Notice that the entire progress bar is green, indicating that all steps have been completed successfully. If it is necessary to make changes, you can re-activate the order by clicking the corresponding button.

Related posts:

A customer's view of the Online Translation Manager (OTM) from lsp.net

Re-sending e-mail to OTM

Receiving an e-mail inquiry in OTM from an listed customer

Receiving an order in OTM after a quotation

Delivering a job (performed by the PM) in OTM