The importance of project management for translation agencies

by Kirill Fedotov

Project management is the whole range of activities to efficiently achieve a set of goals which includes: calendar and project planning; communication with clients; coordination of team members' work; cost control; monitoring progress of a project; paperwork and accounting; day-to-day status updates of project progress; problem recognition and elimination.

Translation project management includes various linguistic and technical stages such as:

conversion of source files/documents/materials, coordination of processes in translation, independent editing, DTP and final proof-reading.

Technological scheme for performance of a translation job usually consists of the following stages:

• Project preparation, including detailed calculation of project costs and profits for an agency.
• Scheduling of the activities that comprise the project, including delivery schedule for the whole translation job as well as the deadlines for its stages.
• Coordination of translation process and editing.
• Quality assurance: testing and checkout.
• Communication with clients, project closure, accounting of income and costs of the project.

Very often a rational project management is a key to success on the market for a translation agency. The efficient project management allows achieving high quality and timely delivery of current projects.

For any project manager ineffective management of the flow of orders may give rise to constant stress during his working day, which will affect not only his health, but also the result of work of the whole translation agency.

Such a situation, given a limited capacity of human memory, requires the help of computer technologies. Therefore the automation of order processing in a translation agency should be based on clear and understandable computer model. The software Trans-Project Office may serve as an example of such computer model which will make your translation project management easy and practical!

With such software you no longer need to keep a lot of paper records with entries containing numbers and dates of invoices/due dates for payment and purchase orders. You don't waste time looking for a necessary file or e-mail address of your client's contact person. With this software all information flows are combined, thus enabling you to respond timely to any changes in your business environment, as well as to be consistent in all your actions.

Trans-Project Office was developed taking into account the experience of small and large-size translation agencies. This software product will considerably facilitate the work of translation services community (project managers, sales managers, accountants, directors of translation agencies), reduce the costs of planning, scheduling, control, analysis and management of business processes inside agencies saving a lot of time for every party concerned.

Thus, Trans-Project Office transforms the complex and many-sided business environment of translation services into a world with easy-to-grasp, simple and clear concept of management incorporated into one software product!

*Trans-Project Company specializes in software development for translation agencies (http://www.trans-project.com)