wherever your business may lead, we speak the language

a synchronised solution continually delivers high quality localised web content for British Airways.

British Airways

As one of the world’s largest and most recognised airlines, British Airways continues to achieve success in a competitive and demanding market. With flights to 550 destinations, carrying over 36 million passengers and 877,000 tonnes of cargo per year, British Airways are heavily reliant on their website to provide the most accurate and up-to-date content to serve their international audiences across 108 countries.

The Challenge
British Airways required a synchronised and real time process allowing for the delivery of localised web content as smoothly as possible. The main challenge was the transfer of files from and to the British Airways Content Management System (CMS) which supports their website.

The Solution
In a successful partnership, thebigword and British Airways assessed the entire process with the goal of making significant efficiency and time savings. During the evaluation, thebigword also established significant cost savings could be made through effective management of British Airways translation memory.  Through the successful implementation of thebigword’s translation, review, publication and reporting technology, ®, British Airways were able to seamlessly integrate with their content management system (CMS).  The result; a streamlined localisation workflow delivering rapid turnaround - from sending content to thebigword to delivering translations back into British Airways CMS.

In Brief:

Featured Solutions

• LanguageDirector®
  • Automated file engineering
  • CMS Integration
  • Review tools
  • Centralised Translation Memory
• Project consultation and management to develop and implement workflow process

Challenges

• Provide cost savings through centralising and effectively managing British Airways’ Translation Memory (TM)
• Review current manual processes and develop automated stages to save time
• Create seamless interaction between British Airways’ Content Management System, and LanguageDirector® and develop a ‘preview’ stage
• To achieve fast turnaround times for web content localisation

Outcomes and Benefits

• Cross-referencing and automatic updates to Translation Memory delivering significant cost savings
  Centralising Translation Memory (TM) through LanguageDirector® has not only delivered great cost savings to British Airways, but has also contributed to the consistency of their messaging to international markets. LanguageDirector® automatically cross- checks the Translation Memory across the translating, reviewing and approval stages within the process. This cross-check looks for previously translated phrases and automatically updates the Translation Memory with new translated phrases, to deliver maximum savings for future projects. This is a vital tool for all multinational companies who need to deliver a high volume of regular daily updates to their international audiences.
• Discovering where automation can achieve greatest time savings
  Analysing workflows and implementing automation across several stages within the localisation process results in significant time savings.  Like most companies, British Airways wanted to ensure their staff were using their time most effectively and resourcefully. To achieve these benefits, British Airways worked with thebigword to identify areas where improvements could be made. The intuitive File Protect functionality within LanguageDirector® was utilised to check the XML (with embedded HTML) files for coding and to protect the content before sending for translation and review.  This resulted in a significant reduction in manual resource time required for checking and rebuilding files. It was these areas that thebigword focussed, to provide a more streamlined process creating automation to quickly and efficiently advance to the next stage in the process without compromising on quality.
• Delivering a CMS integration solution improves productivity and quality
  To effectively manage their brand and messaging, British Airways has developed an efficient in-house Content Management System. It was important for British Airways to continue to use their CMS for consistency across their content and familiarity for staff. thebigword provided a consultancy service to develop an integration solution between LanguageDirector® and their CMS. thebigword and British Airways worked together to determining the project requirements, completing the technical integration in just 20 days. The result provided British Airways with an automated end-to-end process - from initial authoring through to publishing live on the website.  A particularly effective part of this process is the ‘preview’ stage; the LanguageDirector® integration included setting up a method for British Airways’ in-house reviewers to view the localised page in context as it would appear on the website before submitting it to the live website. This solution has proved itself as highly effective, ensuring high quality for both the localised content and accuracy within the layout of pages.
• Developing a streamlined process delivers translated content in 48-hours
  As part of their competitive edge, British Airways refresh their website offers and products regularly . thebigword worked closely with the British Airways team to develop a localisation process that would deliver translated content within 48-hours across nine separate stages, see Fig. 1.  From reviewer amendments to translated content, the LanguageDirector® Review tool, then incorporates into the final content before publishing the files to live. thebigword manages a high volume of content daily within this improved process, and consistently delivers accurate and high quality content, in line with the respected British Airways brand.

Results

• Significant savings made by centralising Translation Memory
• File Protect and automation across localisation workflow saves resource time
• Improvements in brand consistency and quality implementing CMS integration and effective use of Translation Memory
• New process delivers 48-hour turnaround for website content to be translated

About LanguageDirector®

LanguageDirector® is a web-based system that saves you time and cost by managing your language requirements and centralising all of your translation assets and resources. Through integration with your existing systems and use of our automated workflows, it streamlines your localisation process at every stage.

From content authoring through to translation, review, publication and reporting LanguageDirector® gives you full control and visibility of your projects, resources and spend across your organisation.

Reducing Costs - Saving time

• Efficient reviewing - LanguageDirector® Review
• Integration with CMS / DMS
• Translation Memory
• Workflow Automation
• Integration with eProcurement systems

Improved quality and consistency

• File Protection and Processing
• Multilingual terminology / glossary management

Ease of use

• Files submitted over the web - 24/7
• Multilingual interface across global offices
• Quote notifications prior to work commencement

Total control of your project

• Multiple vendor management
• Flexible reporting and cost visibility
• Track the status of your projects
• Manage internal and external resources
• QA Tool

Security and peace of mind

• High level file encryption
• Complete control over users and permissions
• Files stored securely

Automation and integration delivers intranet content in an impressive 18 hours directly to Marsh employees

Marsh

Featured Solutions

• LanguageDirector®
• CMS Integration
• File Protect
• Centralised Translation Memory Management
• Bespoke Automation Process

As one of the world’s leading insurance brokers and risk advisors, Marsh has clients spread across 100 countries. In order to support their global operations, their 24,000 employees work diligently to identify and develop opportunities in broking and risk management. Marsh recognise that empowering their staff with the latest company news and developments on a daily basis is important to their success and so every member of staff across their 80+ international offices use their intranet ‘Inside Marsh’. When Marsh were looking for a solution to deliver swift localised content for Inside Marsh to their employees, they approached thebigword.

thebigword provided a free consultation and determined that the development of a bespoke automated process would be a key factor for success. Through LanguageDirector®, thebigword recommended Marsh integrate their content management system (CMS), which would save considerable time and assist in streamlining the end-to-end translation process. This CMS integration and bespoke automation process resulted in cost savings in relation to Project Management time and allowed thebigword to deliver localised content back to Marsh in an impressive 18 hours. thebigword also indentified that Marsh would benefit from considerable Translation Memory savings through the high volume of content they were to submit on a daily basis.

Challenges

• To deliver localised content to Marsh’s 24,000 employees in less than 24 hours
• To work with Marsh’s existing content management system, and integrate with LanguageDirector® to save Marsh employees’ time.
• To review the workflow process and identify opportunities to save time through automation
• To develop a central Translation Memory database, that would allow Marsh to make daily cost savings
• To effectively manage sending and receiving complex file types without compromising on quality or turnaround time
• An impressive 18 hour turnaround for translated content directly to ‘Inside Marsh’. Inside Marsh is integral in ensuring that all staff across the globe are up to speed with the latest news and developments, which means content in six languages needs to be available on a daily basis to Marsh’s 24,000 employees. thebigword developed a streamlined process in order to ensure every element in the workflow process is dealt with efficiently and without compromising the strict time frame for delivery. Marsh employees submit files for translation on a daily basis by 2pm UK time and through the workflow process, localised content is translated and returned to Inside Marsh by 8am the following day. As well as speed, thebigword and Marsh were not willing to compromise on quality.  To ensure this a dedicated team of translators were selected to work on Marsh projects, who were handpicked and vetted by thebigword for added peace of mind.
• Successful CMS Integration facilitates the translation of 750 words per day in 5 different languages. Inside Marsh is supported by a CMS, which is used by Marsh’s employees across the globe. It was important for Marsh to continue using their existing CMS, so as not to disrupt Marsh’s existing systems and processes and for thebigword to facilitate a smooth process for integration with LanguageDirector®.  thebigword’s Systems team worked with Marsh to integrate LanguageDirector® to ensure that Marsh staff were able to process their translations simply and efficiently. This CMS Integration streamlines the whole translation process, which meant that Marsh staff did not require any additional training or any significant resource time in order to submit their files to thebigword.
• An end-to-end automated process presents a significant cost saving to Marsh. Due to the short time frame to turn around files, Marsh needed a process that would work quickly and efficiently with no margin for error. thebigword developed a bespoke automated process that requires little involvement from Marsh, the project manager, or the engineering team.  See fig. 1. The automated process works to ensure that once the XML files are submitted for translation they naturally flow through each stage of the process as each step is completed, ensuring there is no time lost in waiting for manual processes to be completed. This process ensures Marsh benefit from significant time and costs savings, due to the reduction in the number of manual steps required.
• File Protect saves time whilst preserving file structure and coding. As speed is of the upmost importance, File Protect assists in managing complex file types. Here the XML files Marsh send from Interwoven via LanguageDirector® to thebigword are protected to ensure that the file coding stays intact throughout the translation process. Once translation is completed the files are unprotected to ensure they fit smoothly into their CMS just before Marsh employees arrive for work. Without File Protect an additional 2 hours would have to be added to the turnaround time for delivery, which would significantly reduce the time in which Marsh would have to create the original content.
• Utilising Translation Memory helps Marsh reduce their costs. With 15,000 words requiring translation on a monthly basis, the volume of translation allows Marsh to ensure they make cost savings through their central Translation Memory held by thebigword. The Translation Memory database is updated daily and ensures Marsh’s translation costs are kept to a minimum, by making savings across previously translated text.

Results

• An impressive 18 hour turnaround of translated content
• Successful CMS integration with LanguageDirector® facilitating translation of 750 words a day in five languages.
• An automated process ensures maximum time efficiencies from one stage to the next
• File Protect saves timein manually processing thousands of files
• Significant savings in Translation Memory