Fengshui is the
ancient Chinese custom of the placement and arrangement of space to achieve
harmony with the environment. The literal translation is “wind and water. “
For a place to have good Fengshui
is to be in harmony with nature and bad Fengshui is to be
incongruous. The Welocalize
expansion into China
through our merger with Transco was driven by similar principles.
The goal of our merger was to
stay in-step with our clients' expanding needs for a Hybrid Delivery
ModelSM
of onshore service attention and offshore fulfillment. Our integration goal has been to achieve
a superior level of harmony and teamwork amongst our seven offices,
partners and clients worldwide.
Through the delicate balance of our clients' needs, our business
needs and our staff’s needs, we achieve solid success through smart
growth.
This is an ongoing process, and
we are passionate about continuing to improve and grow. We feel excitement and a growing energy
level about our company, our industry and what our clients are trying to
achieve.
China is a great
source of excitement and energy for the whole world right now. There are a lot of ways to measure China’s energy: by the trade surplus, which
has reached $133.6 billion so far this year, by increased foreign
investment in China,
about $40 billion so far this year, or by the simple act of meeting the
people and getting inspired by the excitement and energy they exude. In any case, China is the place to be!
Hybrid Vigor
Not only did we acquire a
Chinese company, Transco, but we tapped a new source of energy for the
company as a whole. Business dealings with the Chinese are no longer
shrouded in mystery. What is unique is the transformation China
brings in your own company’s prospects and outlook. We not only added an
efficient company with 150 expert staff to carry out work, but also infused
the combined company with “hybrid vigor.” Hybrid vigor was identified in
the cross breeding of plants where two good species are combined to come
up with something even better. Welocalize and Transco were good “hybrid”
candidates to begin with, and we are now realizing the benefits of hybrid
vigor as “the tendency of hybrids to grow faster, get larger, bear more
flowers and fruit, or be more adaptable than that of their parents.”
Scientists call it heterosis.
I’ll stay with “hybrid vigor.”
I don’t think that Harvard Business School
has a course dealing with the “heterosic theory
of management,” but in growing our company, as we have steadily done in the
past several years, this principle has always been on our minds. It
continues in the acquisition of Transco, and it will be expressed through
future acquisitions as well.
We also sense it going on all
across China.
The accelerated, almost feverish, pace one feels in Beijing is exaggerated by the
preparations for the 2008 Olympics. It is hard to count all the
construction cranes reaching for the sky that one can see from a hotel room
window. Yet all this construction usually involves some aspect of Fengshui.
Managing by the Numbers
Our company has always stressed
“management by the numbers” in order to succeed and grow. For centuries numbers have almost been a
second language in China.
The unluckiest number is considered to be four (it’s 13 for Americans) or si, which can also
mean death in Chinese. It is so dreaded that some buildings have no fourth
floor. On the other hand the number eight is considered the luckiest, or ba, which
rhymes with fa, the Chinese character for wealth.
It is no coincidence that the Summer Olympics in Beijing will open on 8/8/08 at 8 PM. A
regional Chinese airline reportedly paid USD $300,000 to be assigned
8888-8888 as a telephone number. By the way, the number for Transco in China is
8610 6581 9699.
Given this fascination with
numbers, licensing bureaus throughout China have been auctioning off
license numbers with some numbers going for upwards of USD $35,000. Whether
or not you really can achieve success with a lucky license plate, the
belief in some numbers being better than others remains, and our goal is to
produce both better numbers for the company and our clients.
Be the Best
“Be the best” is what the sign
reads in the former Transco, now Welocalize China offices. It’s fun to
visit our staff in China.
The “hybrid vigor” which they exude is contagious. And even though we had
translated and localized in Chinese before, the people in our western
offices naturally felt somewhat removed from the world’s fastest-growing
market. Now, all of our offices can feel the excitement and sense the
amazing potential of the combined companies and offices worldwide. Even our COO, Chris Grebisz, has gone out
and enrolled in a course to learn Chinese!
One day you will have to meet
Yolanda, our General Manager in China, and sense her enthusiasm.
The language in our Chinese office is English, and it will be easy for you
to communicate with her and the rest of the staff.
Our staff in our two China
offices is approximately 60 linguists, 15 desktop publishers and 40
engineers. Having applied ISO 9000 standards since 1998, the team has
earned kudos for its work. They have also been a pioneer in China in
applying the CMMI model in software localization, engineering and testing
services and achieved CMMI Level 3 in 2005.
Hybrid Cars and the Welocalize
Hybrid Delivery ModelSM
What do hybrid cars have to do
with China? China has the fastest-growing
car market in the world right now, and the increased demand for fossil
fuels, and subsequent decreasing supply, is driving innovation in the
hybrid market. The same macro trend
is being felt in the Globalization Services industry. The volume of content needing to be
translated is growing exponentially, but the budgets to pay for this
translation are tightening.
As a result, Welocalize is
introducing something new, and we call it the Hybrid Delivery
ModelSM. The benefits we expect the model
to produce for our clients with this strategic need include faster time to
market and lower costs, ultimately enabling them to translate more content.
E. Smith Yewell
CEO
Smith.yewell@welocalize.com
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