SGS Group

The Company

Founded over 30 years ago, The SGS Group was awarded the contract to run the Irish National Car Test (NCT) Programme in 1999. The SGS Group has similar contracts in 22 countries around Europe.

The Challenge

SGS have developed custom-software that allows the car testers to automatically record and store all data from each tested car. The software allows the testers to produce the final certificate for the motorist, indicating a Pass or Fail.

As part of the plan to roll out their software into 22 countries, SGS needed localized versions of their software for each target market.

The Solution

Cipherion Translations assembled a team of technical localizers in 15 languages, covering the target 22 countries. Initially there was some labour-intensive file handling as the SGS engineering team got used to internationalization and dealing with multi-lingual files. As the scope of the project progressed, so too did the amount and type of files that needed to be translated.

After the first group of 5 languages was delivered, SGS modified their translation process and started to pass their resource files (.resx formatted files) for translation. This significantly reduced the turnaround time between translation start and final build completion.

The Results

• SGS have achieved significant revenue increases as their flagship product is now available in 16 languages.
• A more global approach to product development has been fostered within the organization based on the success of this initial product localization.
• SGS now have the ability to cross-sell other applications based on the success of initial product.

The Feedback

Alison Doyle: European Marketing Manager, SGS:

"We've been delighted with the service and translation quality from Cipherion Translations. They never missed a deadline and we found them extremely flexible and great to work with. Last minute requests were no problem to them. We look forward to working with Cipherion Translations as we continue to roll-out further product lines globally."

The Languages:

• Western European: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch
• Eastern European: Polish, Czech, Hungarian
• Nordic: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish,
• Additional Languages: Turkish, Greek