Lost in Translation Business Project Management Systems

AKA: The Story of Disappearing Socks in Washing Machines

See that strange looking Title? And the even stranger subtitle? Yeah, confuses me too. But this post is not about strange titles. Nor about confusion.

This post is about a proven behaviour, one that we are all aware of: socks disappearing in your evil sock-eating washing machines. 

It's just a fact. Whatever you do, no matter how careful you are, no matter how organized and down to earth you think you are... I bet my hat, that you have unpaired socks in your wardrobe, because for some reason, when you put socks in the washing machines, one of them bastards tend to disappear. 

At first, you were probably skeptical too. There's no way this is happening, right? 

Well, in order to come to the bottom of it, I conducted an experiment... numbered them socks really carefully, knew my stuff, knew what's going on... and after 4 weeks some of my socks were not paired anymore. The thing is, you may have too many socks and not realize this. But it’s a fact. I dare you to try this:

Take just 7 pairs you know, one for each day of the week and try to live with that for 3-4 weeks. Wash as you see fit, use as you see fit. After one month you’re damn sure some of them will disappear. 

It’s like a freaking magic show or something. 

That’s why you have to be very careful with socks. 

But what does all of that got to do with Mini? Well... if you ask me, projects and their tasks are a little like them socks and washing machines. That crap just tends to disappear. You think you have it all figured out, you track your project with your Excel sheets and think you are the Project Manager of the Year. But the truth is, stuff still disappears from you. Goes away. Into oblivion.

And disappearing’ projects are a special kind of annoying crap. First of all, you are in bad light in your customer's eye because they didn’t get what they wanted. Then, you are also screwed, because translators hate you. Or if you are a translator you just hate yourself, which is really really bad if not worse. And definitely bad for your self-esteem. 

Finally, if you are a customer you are pissed off because you ain’t getting your damn project when you damn wanted it for the damn money you sure as damn paid...

Now I’m not saying that any of the agencies big or small is doing that on purpose, but when a project that you did for $400.00 disappears and nobody can find it... you forgot to invoice it, the agency forgets to tell about it... What do you know? I mean, it might not be anybody's fault. It could just be unhappy circumstances. The project is gone. The history of it is gone. The $400.00 is gone too. Well that’s a lot of money out of the window... 

Is light at the end of the Translation Project Management Tunnel?

Looks like there is.

Enter the world of reappearing socks! The magic of un-disappearance. If that is even a word. It probably isn't. Never mind that. But. Seriously. You could have your projects and data and lost money magically appear again.

And it is easier than you'd think

We implemented MiniTPMS (Tha Business Management System for Translation Industry - yes, the tool from this blog if that wasn't quite obvious) and started using it, and it grew, and it grew. And still grows every day. And now have those beautiful Vendor Purchase Orders that you can create from a bunch of vendor jobs... awesome. If you start using it immediately, it is a great tool to track vendor payment and tasks financial statuses. And if you start using it later (as we did, because the future came after we already had a ton of data), it serves like a great audit for your company. 

True freakin' story:

At the time we had cca 1,5 years of data in "Mini" and then the Vendor POs kicked in, so naturally we wanted to connect the dots. We have checked all the vendors invoices against actual tasks, and found out that we still owe some people a little money. 

Sent a notification about it, and a PO with the missing tasks. And guess what? 

Our colleagues were over the Moon. Like, finally a company that cares, doesn’t only think about their own profits, and tells me that I have more money? Foooookin aye man! Wouldn't YOU want to be that company? The cool one? 

And it doesn’t end with the Vendor. You go to the “other side” and check everything that you invoiced to your customer. Guess what. Them disappearing socks are everywhere. 

And some of the customers are so big so busy and so don’t have time for your own shit, that they forget they owe you money because you never invoiced it!

Their fault? Hell no. Your fault, baby. And truth to be told, in the past couple of years I think we lost at least 2-3k due to this kind of neglecting our own numbers... and maybe the same happened to you.

But now that you have the magic technique, the razzmatazz of project coordination, management and tracking.

So you want that kind of thing? Want to be like one of our customer saying:

Then stop living in the past, give us a shout, write an e-mail, click the link, implement this 21st century stuff and get your numbers straight. The customer will respect your punctuality, the vendors will love you because you are taking off a huge load off of their back (trust me, real translators hate invoicing just as much as we “bosses” love it), and you’re gonna live happily ever after with your own nice little instance of Mini. 

THAT is how you don’t lose socks! Ever!

Contact us directly, and let us set you up with your "Memory machine". Click here and find out more.