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Ask people working in the localization industry if the move to working from home affected them, and many will tell you that they were already “remote” – set up to work from home, due to the nature of their jobs. Language service provider have no physical products to ship, no warehouses to store goods, and no fleets of trucks or ships to coordinate for deliveries. Coordinating language services in this day and age is essentially an ebusiness. On the surface, the switch to working from home appears simple. But for some, the move was much more than simply closing the office doors for a few weeks: It entailed new investments in hardware and networking, an accelerated move to the cloud, or a combination of both. We recently surveyed LSPs to find out exactly what changes the COVID-19 pandemic forced within their IT environments. Those that were not already set up for remote work reported that they had to enhance their IT and security environments – and that the pandemic precipitated rapid evolution in not only where people work, but the technology and processes they use.
Language service providers, together with their counterparts in enterprises, government, and other organizations, had to make significant modifications to ensure they could still carry out every aspect of their business while complying with travel and social distancing restrictions and protecting the health of their workers. For those not already enabled for all staff to telecommute, this effort forced rapid changes in their technical infrastructure:
The pandemic created a surge to cloud-based services for many organizations, not only LSPs. We have even heard from government organizations that – pre-COVID – had repeatedly rejected remote work as an option but found that, within days of restrictions, the impossible was possible. They rushed to implement cloud-based systems or granted VPN access. Language service providers were not alone in this speedy transition. Other changes to business practices became established during the pandemic which may become a legacy of 2020:
In addition to enabling work to continue for these language service providers during the pandemic, we are certain that these changes have put them on solid footing for recovery as the world comes out of lockdown and economies rebound. The heavy investment in technology upgrades was a needed boost for some providers to continue their evolution. It solidified LSPs’ infrastructure, enabled the delivery of new services, and is offering new work setup possibilities for previously office-based staff. LSPs’ minimum technology stack will never be quite the same as before the pandemic – and that is a good thing for their business, their clients, and their staff.
Senior Analyst
Focuses on translation management systems, plus helping CSA Research’s clients gain insights into the technologies, pricing, and business processes key to executive buy-in
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