Using Capita TI’s marketing translation expertise
Colleague-focused translations for newly acquired companies
Capita TI offers a responsive and adaptable translation service that always takes into account how the translated materials will be used; in this case, to communicate essential information to new Capita employees in an informative and positive way.
Capita plc is constantly expanding, and a key part of achieving smooth acquisitions is communicating with new arrivals to the Capita family in a timely and effective manner. It is down to Capita Group Marketing and HR to fulfil this brief, and as part of this process a number of different channels are used to get the message across. These include video, web portals, presentations, and of course written media.
On average, Capita plc acquires a company on a monthly basis, and at the time of writing has over 70,000 employees spread across 8 countries. This means that the internal Marketing and Communications department is in constant demand.
The challenge
In late 2014 Capita started to look into acquiring avocis, a leading provider of customer contact management services with offices in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. As part of the due diligence process leading up to the acquisition,
As part of the due diligence process leading up to the acquisition, translation was needed for a huge amount of legal and financial materials relating to avocis.
These documents needed to be translated extremely quickly and with little or no prior notice.
Once the acquisition was confirmed, Capita needed to communicate with their new employees in their own language – in this case German and French. This meant translating the entire suite of marketing communications informing new employees about Capita. This package included videos to be subtitled, PowerPoint presentations to be translated and adapted, and brochures to be typeset and printed.
The tone of voice for these translations had to be perfect, considering that this would be the first time the new employees had been introduced to Capita. The material had to be informative and professional, but also human and down-to-earth.
As with any acquisition, this was also a battle against the clock – all the translated materials had to be ready before the final announcement could be made.
How Capita TI helped
From the start of the project, Capita TI recognised that agility was going to be essential for delivering this requirement, with potentially complex material needing to be processed urgently. One of the first steps was to designate a dedicated team of Project Managers (PMs) covering several time-zones, who could be ready to process the files at whatever time of day they came in. These PMs were supported by Capita TI’s Vendor Management department, who sourced a pool of qualified linguists, again across several time-zones.
The linguists were then on stand-by, ready to translate the materials as and when they arrived.
As well as delivering projects, Capita TI’s employees were also constantly available, including during weekend and out-of-hours periods, to resolve any queries and answer questions. These included linguistic issues such as how to get the tone of voice exactly right, and technical questions around formatting and the use of subtitles.
The result
Throughout the translation phase of the project, all the challenging deadlines set by the client were met by Capita TI without exception. As a result, Marketing and HR staff were able to effectively plan communication release schedules, and were able to timetable intermediate stages such as printing, subtitling and the uploading of materials to the employee portal.
The acquisition and communication with avocis’ employees went smoothly from day one, with the translated materials being very well received and clearly understood by the readers.
Capita TI continues to translate any questions from the new employees into English, and to translate weekly updates for all staff.
Excellent results promptly delivered
Capita TI’s robust Service Delivery led to a number of excellent results in terms of turnaround time. A 4000 word file requested at 8pm on a Friday was translated by 11am on Saturday morning, and a number of weekend deliveries allowed Capita HR to meet critical Monday morning deadlines.
What Capita HR said
“Capita TI’s responsiveness and proactivity made them really easy to work with, and their ability to meet our very tight deadlines at a moment’s notice meant we could focus on our core task of communicating with the new employees. We were always very happy with the quality of both their service and their translations.”
Betul Suleyman, Integration Advisor, Capita HR