The Law of the Jungle: How one small translation agency tackles government contracts

Juan knew he had a problem: As the CEO of a small translation agency, he was constantly looking for new resources to meet the needs of his clients. He had a roster of linguists that he trusted and worked with regularly, but there were times when they could not provide enough translators on short notice.

For his clients, who are mostly government agencies, the unpredictable nature of the projects meant that Juan could not always determine which resources would be available to him when he needed them, which made it difficult for him to plan ahead. At times like these, he needed linguists with specific subject matter expertise on very short notice.

“When it comes to public communications,” he explains, “the English language is always the priority. The other languages are almost always an afterthought, albeit a mandatory one.”

When it comes to public communications, English is always the priority. The other languages are almost always an afterthought, albeit a mandatory one.”

When Juan first learned about Smartcat, he was a bit hesitant. He was skeptical that any software could truly help facilitate his business with the level of automation that it promised. Despite his reservations, Juan decided to give Smartcat a try, and he was immediately impressed. He appreciated the ability to control every aspect of his business, including data input, report generation, quote calculation, invoicing payments and even project management.

“With Smartcat we automated our previously manual systems and processes, gained service agility, competitiveness, and quality,” he says. “We’re not spending long hours searching, finding, vetting, contracting, and deploying resources. Now that tedious process has become quick and effortless — which has positively impacted our bottom line.”

Gone are the long hours spent searching, finding, vetting, contracting, and deploying resources.”

Before opting for Smartcat, Juan considered several other solutions to improve the company’s business processes, primarily those other small companies were using.

“I tried a couple of tools,” says Juan, ”but quickly concluded that they either did not fit my business model, required more effort, or simply did not produce the results I needed. When I tested Smartcat and saw its ease of use and all the features it offered, I decided this was the perfect solution.”

The effect of implementing Smartcat has been nothing short of transformative for Jungle Communications.

In Juan’s words: “If you imagine:

• Having a separate process to coordinate negotiation and quotes to clients,

• Multiple manual file exchanges between the various parties at client and internal staff

• Administrative and invoice coordination

• Q.A. and client service,

• Coordination with multiple linguists across multiple projects, and

• Information sharing among the production team, linguists, and various parties at client's end,

then you can imagine that automating all of these functions into one single person using a single platform makes a world of difference.”

As a result, the company now has more time to focus on other projects, has better business control, provides better client service, and as a result enjoys an increased ROI.

“My experience with Smartcat is that it has been so timely and efficient," says Juan, “that it allowed me to cut my pricing by 50% in order to compete in notoriously low-price-criteria California state agencies, win some contracts, and still make a profit.”

Smartcat allowed me to cut my pricing by 50% and still make a profit.”

“My only regret,” he adds, ”is the technology is so efficient that we have developed a dependence on it. Nevertheless, I feel Smartcat is a well founded company, with a much needed solution offer, and we will support it for the foreseeable future.”

If you feel like you too could use some help navigating through the industry jungle, check out Smartcat.