Last week I had a conversation with Dennis Refsgaard, Creative Designer at BOGBALLE A/S on how they produce printed material for almost 100 different countries.
BOGBALLE A/S is one of the world's leading manufacturers of fertilizer spreaders. They sell products all over the world, and Dennis has to make sure that all the documents are translated and ready on time.
Building an in-house creative department
Dennis starts by telling me how the company transitioned from completely outsourcing the creation of their printed material to building a small in-house creative department.
I have been working 20 years for BOGBALLE on November the 1st of this year.
When I started we relied on an external advertising agency that took care of all our printed materials, advertisements etc.
After some years, we/I changed it and I started creating all our printed materials, advertisements etc.
I must say that Dennis has a story for always choosing the right tools (Pun intended).
Fortunately, I chose to work with InDesign, although Quark was at that time a very big competitor—I've never regretted that!
At BOGBALLE, if we feel we can do things better, then we do it ourselves and are not afraid to invest in the equipment that is required.
Therefore, we started creating all our leaflets, manuals, etc. A few years later, we started up with product photos and videos—since 2012 we have even had an in-house printing shop where all leaflets, manuals, etc., are printed—the same applies to large format as well as stickers.
And yes, the above is also part of my tasks.
Dealing with documents for almost 100 different markets
Anybody that has found her/himself producing documents for a high variety of products—like often happens in medium-size organizations—understands very well how hard it is to keep tabs on everything.
Making sure that all the documents are ready, that they are produced in all the languages, and that there are no issues is almost impossible.
We are a relatively small organization, which means we all have many different tasks.
Overall, we all work as a team, but in my small department, I am more or less alone. Selling to approximately 95 different markets, requires a variety of materials in many languages, so it can be a challenge to keep track of everything.
The biggest challenge
We create many different materials such as leaflets, presentations, and more challenging manuals.
The manuals are clearly the biggest challenge for us, being complex and translated into many languages.
A note for those using Word
"In the old days," all our manuals were made in Word, which made it very difficult when updated with new text or graphics—we had to adjust 20 different Word documents per manual (10 different manuals) when there were changes.
If a single paragraph had been changed, we would send that text to our importers for translation.
If there were many changes we had to send the entire Word document with marked changes—it was an enormous job!
Dennis migrated every document to InDesign in order to improve efficiency.
Sending files to translation
As many distributed teams often do, Dennis' team relied on Word documents that were sent around the world.
Prior to Redokun, the translations were done by copying the English text from InDesign to Word, and then sending the Word document for translation around the world.
When the translation came back, I had to copy from Word and back to InDesign—and then send a PDF for proofreading.
This way of dealing with translations is very time-consuming. And one of the biggest issues is keeping tabs on the project is almost impossible.
It was also a big problem that I did not know if they had started translating or happily forgotten my request.
It is definitely an advantage that I can follow the process through Redokun.
Improving the workflow using a software
Dennis gained information on several solutions before deciding to go with Redokun.
That is correct. I did try out some other systems, which were also doing the job quite well, and I am sure that I could have had great success if I was the only user of the systems. However, of course, I’m not and it’s very important that the persons who are translating for us find the system user-friendly and have a good experience.
And then he decided to use Redokun because it is so user-friendly and the user experience was so much better.
It was very easy to start using the system.
I remember that I had some questions at the beginning, but as always you replied very fast when I wrote you. It didn’t take me very long to understand Redokun and the same with my colleagues who also tried out the system.
Some of our importers also tested the software and found it easy to use. Almost exactly 1 year ago we invited all our importers for an introduction to our new products—during the presentation they were also introduced to Redokun—that helped them understand the benefits of the system and “brought them onboard.”
Would Dennis suggest to using Redokun?
At the end of our conversation, I asked Dennis how likely he was to suggest Redokun to another company (1 to 10, where 10 is the maximum)?
It is very likely that I would suggest Redokun to another company—that must be a 10.
Although there are some features I would like to improve or add, I cannot recommend a better solution than Redokun.
Why Bogballe chose Redokun
My final question was to list the major advantages that he thinks Redokun has. Here is the list Dennis gave me:
- Redokun has a much more user-friendly frontend than other systems I have come across
- Some of our texts can be very technical, so it is very important for the translator to see where in the document the different elements belong and to compare the text with graphics to obtain a meaningful translation
- It is easier to achieve uniformity in the texts, with suggestions from previously translated texts
- The ability to upload a new version is essential
- The ability to track translation status
- The ability to export XLIFF files, have them translated and then import them again
- Very quick support
Simplify the way you produce your multilingual projects. Try Redokun for free for 14 days.
