ENLASO's enterprise solutions enable Pelco to better control the costs, consistency of translations, and schedules of their localization initiatives

by Liesl Leary, Sr. Localization Strategist, ENLASO Corporation

ABOUT PELCO

Respected as a major product innovator, Pelco is a privately held video security systems manufacturer. With a prestigious history of offering high-quality products, innovative technologies and guaranteed 100% customer satisfaction, Pelco has become the most sought-after supplier in the video security industry.

CHALLENGES

For many companies, the hidden costs of localization often go undetected for years and cost companies hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the lack of process management. Although companies strive to create systems to manage the fine details of enterprise resource planning (ERP), little attention is spent on accounting for hours spent on vendor selection processes (which sometimes occur in multiple departments simultaneously), reviewing samples, filling out paperwork for PO’s and new vendors, clarifying terminology, failing to re-use previously translated materials appropriately, and a myriad of other tasks that a process with multiple resources, schedules, and components engenders.

Despite exponential growth and success, Pelco was no exception.

Faced with an exploding global customer base that occurred as a result of the events of September 11th, Pelco needed to control costs, increase consistency and improve the quality of their translations. As is the case with many companies, Pelco was challenged simply by managing the multiple translators, publishing teams, developers, marketing managers, and in-country sales staff that were all involved in a typical localization project. In the final analysis, the administrative overhead costs increased localization spending.

THE ENLASO SOLUTION

ENLASO collaborated with Pelco and established not only preferential volume pricing that reduced costs, but also combined translation memories of all materials so that more words could be re-used.

ENLASO also sought to reduce the turnaround time of the in-country review and reduce the amount of subjective edits. Too long of a review cycle meant that Pelco often missed critical deadlines. Often an overlooked aspect of the localization process, ENLASO worked with Pelco’s reviewers to establish a database-driven master glossary of highly technical terms and branded phrases and their approved translations. In addition, ENLASO assigned a dedicated team of translators, project managers, and publishers who bore the advantages of institutionalized core business intelligence of the Pelco product line. By building the foundations of a long-term partnership, ENLASO was able to reduce reviewer-time in the schedule by 50% and with an increase in reviewer satisfaction.

BENEFITS Translators and reviewers, who doubled as sales staff, were able to focus on increasing sales of their products. Managers were no longer spending hours reviewing cost proposals and researching new vendors . Learning curve for highly specialized terminology was eliminated. Preferential pricing established for all Pelco business units.

Pelco’s other challenge was to standardize a 500 page catalog that was compiled over a period of 15 years. The catalog had originally been created in PageMaker and lacked consistent styles due to the number of individuals who had contributed to the book over the years. What resulted was a daunting collection of product sheets, with no clear method to implement global changes.

ENLASO designed a migration plan to transition the entire catalog from PageMaker to FrameMaker. In conjunction with the project, ENLASO custom designed training to enable the current Pelco publishing team to take advantage of the benefits FrameMaker had to offer. Ultimately, moving to FrameMaker will allow Pelco to take greater advantage of translation memory savings and manage their localization process more efficiently.

ENLASO's Documentation Localization Solutions
For more information on how ENLASO can assist you with your multilingual documentation localization requirements, please contact Chris Raulf at: 303-516-0857 x103 or by email at craulf@translate.com