By Heena Jhingan
Those who thought what’s in a name would say “a lot”—in case it was misspelt on their birthday cake. The Mumbai unit of Monginis, a chain of bakery and pastry products, would often get complaints from disgruntled customers who either had their names spelt incorrectly or in a wrong order altogether. Being a large chain with presence in 12 cities in India and two in Egypt, Monginis could not have risked overlooking such errors. For them, it could be grave and lead to loss of current or potential customers. The bakery chain, therefore, decided to solve the issue once and for all.
The cause of these errors at the Andheri unit in Mumbai wasn’t any major technical glitch; instead, it was a basic problem of the floor staff at the production unit not being conversant in English—the language in which franchisee shops placed customer orders. This resulted in miscommunication, which in turn affected delivery efficiency and schedule.
The challenge ahead of Monginis was to get rid of these errors using a cost-effective solution. Training the workforce was one option, but that would require investing in both time and money on each of the staff members at the production floor.
As a makeshift solution to avoid misinterpretation of ingredients used to produce the final product, a production head would often translate the PO, but soon they observed it was not a foolproof solution. Therefore, they decided to look at technology solutions that would help them interpret the messages or instructions for the production staff in the local language most frequently used (Hindi for Monginis).
Vaidya says initially they experimented with the Google Translator, but it did not solve their purpose. They needed a more accurate system. They evaluated different language localization offerings available in the market and found that LinguaNext’s Linguify.Reports—which supports generation of purchase orders, letters, payslips, statements, regulatory reports, etc. in any language—would be the best buy for them to translate the PO in Hindi.
The benefit of using Linguify.Reports was that the output reports could be bilingual (English and another language that the user selects) or single-language translations. Reports can be printed in a number of formats, such as single language, alternating paragraphs bilingual, two columns bilingual, among others.
‘Linguifying’ the orders
Monginis’ Andheri unit has been using the solution for over six months now. The factory has about 200-300 employees of which 20%-30% work on the production floor. They chose the reports to be translated from English to Devanagari (the script used for several Indian languages, including Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit).
Linguify.Reports installs on desktops or plugs into browsers and does not affect users who only require English. No changes are needed to be made to the underlying application software and virtually any software application can be language-enabled with this solution. Vaidya explains that they easily integrated it with their product order system and linked the solution with the internal LAN system so that it could be used across the unit.
“Linguify.Reports proved to be an efficient language localization solution due to its robust and easy-to-use key features, coupled with its ease of implementation. It took us only a week to deploy and train the staff to use the solution,” he says. “The best part is the fact that the LinguaNext solution is more than just a customized English-local language dictionary. It also has a phonetic transliteration of proper noun data to ensure greater accuracy.”
“Using the solution, we can print or generate translated reports directly from our existing applications, or can convert PDF files as required, leveraging previously created templates based on existing reports,” he elaborates.
Though deployment of the solution was not a tough task, it was not a cake walk either. It did not demand rigorous training for the staff to use the solution, but the unit did need to make minor changes in their order form.
They had opted for a bilingual format for printing the order reports, so they had to redo their order form in order to accommodate the order summary in both the languages.
Vaidya believes that due to the uncomplicated structure of Linguify.Reports, the solution was implemented in just one week and was accepted by the staff at an equally fast pace. There was hardly any scope of error as the system was seamlessly integrated with the product order system, so all the information would reach it directly for translation.
“As a result, the production and delivery efficiency increased by nearly 25%, and the company realized savings in terms of time and money. To top it up, the business was able to achieve greater customer satisfaction and bolster sales,” he says.
Asked if they plan to use the solution at other units, Vaidya says the solution has proved effective for their unit and he would recommend it for other production units as well.