You often hear people talking about the “80-20 Rule”. First known as the Pareto Principle, it’s more than 100 years old, and despite its age, there is evidence nearly every day that the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, was spot on. It’s been proven time and time again that in sales, for example, 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your sales. And, in the garden, 20% of the peapods contain 80% of the peas.

That 80-20 rule extends to many other things too — including how products are used. Many of the appliances in our houses, for example, have functionalities that rarely are used and many users aren’t even aware they are there. I have a dishwasher loaded with buttons for different washing and drying results — gentle wash, upper tray only, pots and pans, crystal — but I rarely use anything other than quick wash - the third button from the left.

A month or so back, I was talking to one of our client’s marketing managers at a translation conference. I know this particular client very well; the company he works for has been using our products for over five years. In fact, discovering some of their content pain points was one of the reasons why we created Wordbee Beebox in the first place.

But he wasn’t having a content issue, needing to import different content types from a variety of sources. This time his needs were pure business: he wanted to be able to create performance reports on the translation work that was being done and wasn’t sure where to start.

I told him that the Business Analytics and Financial Reporting tools within Wordbee Translator would help him meet those goals — and he looked at me with a confused look on his face. I took him aside, opened my laptop and took him on a tour of the different reports and business analytics that Wordbee Translator can deliver. Ten minutes later, he was excited, and relieved with what he had seen and told me that I was a life saver.

“I never knew I could do that,” he said.

I thought about it on my trip home and decided that even long-term clients can fall victim to the 80-20 rule: my client’s marketing manager was using just 20 per cent of Wordbee Translator’s functionality.

First Things First

To be able to get to the reports you need, you will need to make sure that the information is in place that can be used to generate reports - and the devil truly is in the details. That includes the cost information, so if work is being outsourced, the price lists of those third-parties need to be put in the system, with the currencies and discounts that apply to each one.

Multiple price lists can be associated with each actor involved in each project and used depending on what needs to be done - translating, editing, proofreading, or different costs for different content types, like marketing, or technical.

The cost data is needed as a starting point to some great insights you’ll be able to glean into the business side of translating content (or having your content translated). You’ll be able to see the efficiencies (or inefficiencies) in the work that was needed to be done — which can let you take action, like changing your assumptions as to your team’s daily word count capabilities, or influence your team’s performance on business-critical markers, like deadlines.

We know that business performance is critical to many of the constituents in our different target audiences — LSPs, enterprises, NGOs and freelance translators. That’s why we’ve built business management tools into Wordbee Translator — to answer those fiscally crucial questions. and let you make better decisions regarding the translations process, how it’s being done, and by whom.