Offshored, outsourced localization blues
I don't quite need to eat crow over this, but let's put spin on it and say that I'm happy to be proved wrong.
Three months ago a new client insisted on pushing a Korean project to a one-stop-shopping Chinese offshore development house that does everything from running datacenters to debugging your Javascript. "We need to explore new partners," they told me. "Besides, they can do the work for much less money."
I raised the usual gamut of concerns, from the vendor's lack of linguistic credentials to the project manager's English skills, but I knew my client had already made up his mind, and just wanted me to nod and make it work. And, as I blogged a few weeks ago, I have no doubt that the offshore houses in China, India and elsewhere in the e-developing world will figure out how to make this model work after initial glitches. After all, we here in the West did.
Just to spice things up, my client leaned on the Chinese vendor to deliver about two weeks sooner than I thought prudent. I don't know why he insisted on this; there was no promise-date to our Korean customer, and I thought it was a recipe for slapdash QA and diminished translation quality. Nevertheless, the vendor agreed, and began logging weekend hours to meet the deadline.
The upshot of the project is that the vendor handed off final deliverables about 3 days ahead of the already ridiculous deadline. I am impressed, the client is pleased, the vendor's project manager is still recuperating, and everyone seems to have gotten what s/he wanted. The vendor was very responsive throughout the project, knowing full well that this was a litmus test for bigger projects to come. Our in-country reviewer claims that the translation is on par with previous Korean translation (read: We're not crazy about it, but we'll put up with it), which is an important criterion.
This vendor is part of a very large Chinese company, and that probably helped. They could marshal resources and expertise from elsewhere in the firm to meet the demands of this project. A smaller vendor might not have had that advantage, so this strikes me as an important point in evaluating an offshore vendor.
The experience reinforces my First Law of Project Management:
Three months ago a new client insisted on pushing a Korean project to a one-stop-shopping Chinese offshore development house that does everything from running datacenters to debugging your Javascript. "We need to explore new partners," they told me. "Besides, they can do the work for much less money."
I raised the usual gamut of concerns, from the vendor's lack of linguistic credentials to the project manager's English skills, but I knew my client had already made up his mind, and just wanted me to nod and make it work. And, as I blogged a few weeks ago, I have no doubt that the offshore houses in China, India and elsewhere in the e-developing world will figure out how to make this model work after initial glitches. After all, we here in the West did.
Just to spice things up, my client leaned on the Chinese vendor to deliver about two weeks sooner than I thought prudent. I don't know why he insisted on this; there was no promise-date to our Korean customer, and I thought it was a recipe for slapdash QA and diminished translation quality. Nevertheless, the vendor agreed, and began logging weekend hours to meet the deadline.
The upshot of the project is that the vendor handed off final deliverables about 3 days ahead of the already ridiculous deadline. I am impressed, the client is pleased, the vendor's project manager is still recuperating, and everyone seems to have gotten what s/he wanted. The vendor was very responsive throughout the project, knowing full well that this was a litmus test for bigger projects to come. Our in-country reviewer claims that the translation is on par with previous Korean translation (read: We're not crazy about it, but we'll put up with it), which is an important criterion.
This vendor is part of a very large Chinese company, and that probably helped. They could marshal resources and expertise from elsewhere in the firm to meet the demands of this project. A smaller vendor might not have had that advantage, so this strikes me as an important point in evaluating an offshore vendor.
The experience reinforces my First Law of Project Management:
"Only those who demand the absurd can accomplish the impossible."
Labels: localization vendor, offshoring localization, outsourcing localization
posted by John White, Localization Guy at
08:01
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