We are everything that they are not
Written by ForeignExchange Translations on Wednesday, October 27, 2010
István Lengyel of Kilgray is in town for the ATA conference and to assist in our roll out of memoQ Server. He spent a day in our Louisville office, and I had a chance to catch up with him.
I was surprised to learn that Kilgray has only been in business for five years. Their products have gained so much traction in the marketplace, that I had assumed that their beginnings traced back further.
In chatting with István about Kilgray's success, he attributed it to several technology aspects but one business factor stood out: "We are everything that SDL is not."
He went on to explain how Kilgray doesn't look to beat SDL at their game - they have too much scale, the advantage of a decade-long lead in the industry, and are well entrenched in many sectors. Instead, István described how Kilgray finds opportunities in segments that are under-served by SDL and exploits them by offering better technology, better service, and better value.
This really resonated because that's exactly ForeignExchange's strategy against the 800-pound gorillas in our "room". In fact, rather than be afraid of their sheer size, the differences between us work to our advantages.
Let me illustrate this with a comparison between ForeignExchange and Lionbridge, our favorite competitor:
| Lionbridge... | ForeignExchange... |
| "is the leading provider of language, development and testing services that enable clients to create, release, manage and maintain their technology applications and Web content globally" - huh? | "saves lives" - got it! |
| is a "jack of all trades" | provides specialized language services to medical device and pharmaceutical companies |
| is a "translation factory" churning work through its "machinery" | deploys our customized Multilingual Compliance Process on all assignments |
| is scaling back its support for medical clients by closing its Colorado site | is expanding, growing and hiring staff |
| forces clients into their view of how technology should be used | customizes technology to fit the business need of each client |
| does not have a quality methodology to measure translation output | possesses, in METRiQ, the industry's only way to measure translation quality |
| writes about recipes and cooking | shares information on topics that matter to drug and device professionals - clinical research, regulatory affairs, and risk management |
The list of differences goes on but the message stays the same - pure size doesn't matter in the medical translation space. What's important is that medical translation suppliers have the team, expertise, and service offering to assist clients consistently and predictably. And on those counts, ForeignExchange is everything that our competition is not.
ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized medical translation services for regulatory, marketing, and clinical groups at pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Contact us to find out more.
I think Lionbridge might be out of the picture.
What about comparing TransPerfect Translations and ForeignExchange? :)
@Damian: Not necessary... Plenty of others have already voiced their opinions.