The biggest challenge that we face is the commoditization of the translation industry and the attendant trend toward centralized procurement through global contracts. If this trend continues, we will no longer be able to compete based on better quality, faster turnaround and superior customer service because we won’t be allowed to play the game in the first place. This has led us to completely rethink our business strategy in order to leverage our strengths and reposition our company as a solutions, rather than a commodity services, provider. In making this change, we have multiple resources to work with:
- A substantial, loyal, customer base
- A solutions oriented sales organization
- An innovative corporate culture
- New customer access through multiple minority and diversity classifications
- Project management capabilities that can be readily adapted to new services
- Global presence through a network of 2500 linguists who, in addition to being skilled translators, have expertise in specific subject matter and are steeped in the local culture
- A vendor management capability that enables us to recruit individuals with specific knowledge or skills anywhere in the world
- Our pioneering work in applying Cultural Intelligence (CQ as opposed to IQ) to multicultural multilingual communications – this high end capability provides translations that also adapt words, images, colors, and even the subject matter so that the end product connects with its intended audience. For example, the color yellow is associated with death in Mexican culture and would be adapted to a color that has positive associations as part of cultural adaptation for a Mexican audience Based on these resources, our new strategy is to:
- Narrow our focus to the health care, advertising and global training verticals where “delivering the message” is crucial – and the cost of miscommunication is more measurable. This has been in place for the last twelve months with over major 25 new accounts in the target verticals
- Becoming experts in the key globalization issues that companies in these verticals face – so that we are able to interact with our clients as problem solvers – not “just translators”. This strategy is working and has contributed significantly to our new account success.
- Rebranding the company based on our cultural strengths – including changing our name to CQ fluency. The marketing activities for this have been in progress for seven months with a launch scheduled for this July
- Utilizing partnerships to broaden our product offerings in the global training area so that we will ultimately be able to offer turnkey solutions that include both content development and translation. Global training is similar to the auto industry where adapting cars built for one market to meet the needs of another has been replaced with worldwide platforms that can be easily adjusted to meet a wide range of local requirements – it is more efficient to build worldwide training program platforms that can be easily adapted for local cultures as well.
