Globalize your On Demand Business

Localization Vendor Name:

Address:

Telephone:

Contact person:

Reviewer:

Date:

Location:

Localization Vendor Assessment Questions:

General/Organizational:

• What do you consider to be your core strengths or competencies?

• Explain how your company is organized--staff, vendors, freelancers, partners, etc.

• What are the key benefits of your organizational structure?

• What do you do to ensure confidentiality and security of information?

• What is the most common reason you have lost bids or quotes?

• What are the main duties of the project manager in your company?

• What are the most important skills a project manager should have?

• How do you allocate work to your project managers?

• How do you leverage projects? (e.g., the same product across new/existing languages, or an update to an existing product)

• Explain how you track and manage changes to work in progress? (re quality, cost)

• What would be your approach to supporting our requirements (locally, overseas, etc.)?

Localization

• Describe a successful project. Why was it successful?

• Describe an unsuccessful project. Why was it unsuccessful?

• What is the scope of a typical project (components, project management time per, complexity, etc.)?

• Describe a typical project flow

• What forms of communication do you use with your client?

• Explain your customer review and approval cycle as it applies to promotional literature (product packaging, collateral, etc.).

• How do you measure or assess customer satisfaction?

• How do you evaluate the internal effectiveness of your processes?

• How do you qualify your vendors, freelancers, partners, etc.?

• What kind of training do you provide your staff? freelancers?

• What commitment do you have to training over the long term?

• What is your process/metrics for ensuring quality translation from your translators?

• What process improvements have you made in project management recently?

DTP

• What applications/software/platforms do you use?

• Is there one that you prefer (ease of use, whatever)?

• What are your deliverables: Linotronic (paper, film)? Digital files? Etc.

• Explain your experience with printing (product documentation, collateral, etc.).

Software Testing

• What are the main duties of the localization engineer?

• What are the most important skills a localization engineer should have? What skills do the test engineers have?

• Describe your testing process for a localized product.

• Explain your experience testing third-party applications (server and network environments, Internet applications, stand-alone apps in foreign languages).

Tools

• Explain how you use tools in the translation process?

• Is there one that you prefer (ease of use, whatever)?

Continue to Conclusion