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Are you an expert project manager or interpreting scheduler? We need to talk! Project management – the shepherding of work from request to delivery, ensuring all the correct criteria are met, and in a timely manner – is not specific to the localization industry. In every area of work, from construction to international shipping, a project manager (PM) plays a leading role in satisfying customers, whether in daily personal contact or acting behind the scenes. These individuals – and the project management activity – are the glue that holds the process and people together within a workflow. In the localization industry, PMs make sure LSPs deliver language services on time and on budget, and the function entails a sizeable portion of costs, usually charged to the client as a percentage of overall fees.

It’s also an area where (many, but by no means all) LSPs and buyers alike strive to standardize and automate, with the aim of efficiency, error reduction, and speed to market. But we still observe gaps and disconnects between the multiple systems and processes involved in language services – sometimes huge! Why can this be so in 2023? Localization project management automation has been possible for some tasks and in some form or another since at least the late 1990’s.

Our interactions with people in all areas of localization supply chain show that regardless of whether machine translation or AI-powered transcription or text-to-speech is in use for language transformation, the degree of automation within other parts of language services operations varies considerably from buyer to buyer, content type to content type, LSP to LSP, service line to service line, and process to process. Daily administrative tasks – such as creating invoices, routing work to the next person in the process, or assigning the best linguist to the job – all essential to correct delivery or an interpreted or translated project – range from fully automated “lights-out” to very basic, repetitive, and boring copy-and-paste from one system to another.

CSA Research is currently investigating automation in project management. We are examining not only how generative AI (GenAI) might play a role, but also what small AI, rule-based systems, scripts, and other techniques bring to the PM role. We often talk with project managers fed-up with copying and pasting data from one system to another, with buyers annoyed that their LSP has once-again invoiced against an incorrect purchase order (PO) number, and with language services providers seeking operational efficiencies. This research aims to identify root causes and to recommend actions to take. PMs need solid automation to fulfill their ultimate role in customer relationships, because that makes a huge difference to successful projects, and those that flounder.

Do you consider you have automated everything necessary within your interpreting and/or translation project management processes, freeing up your expert PMs or schedulers to be truly managers of the projects or jobs – outstanding workers in exception handling – or are you beginning your endeavors to identify where to start with automation? Have you achieved lights-out project management for some or all of your work? Do you have advice for anyone considering an overhaul of PM processes? Or do you just want to rant about what people could do differently, but can’t seem to change (either on the buy side, or at an LSP)? We’d love to hear from you. and we’ll give you a new report, “Automation at LSPs (2023)” in return for your time.

Contact Alison Toon to set up a time for a chat.