Ask Carmen! - About Vendor Management

Are you a Vendor Manager looking for tips to improve your processes and ways to interact with your linguists? Or are you a translator looking for advice on how to make sure their are always on top of Vendor Managers' lists?

W. L. UK's very own vendor management specialist, Carmen Cisneros' answers to often asked VM questions might be useful for both of you!

If you have any questions you'd like to ask from Carmen, don't wait any longer - just send our team an email at [email protected], she'll be happy to answer!

Do you have any tips on what to do if linguists are interested to join our company as freelancers but refuse to share a copy of their CV?

Part of our job as vendor managers is to “sell” the company to potential vendors. Make sure you and the company can be found online, there are good reviews and recommendations, etc. Show potential vendors your human side.

Should you test potential suppliers (i.e. send translation tests) before adding them to your database?

Adding a new vendor to the database without previous testing means taking a very big risk on quality. An unsuitable translation may go directly to the client which is probably the worst nightmare for any company.

What is the best way for Vendor Managers to support their freelancers' wellbeing?

We can build human relationships where there is openness and transparency to help the collaboration run smoothly.

How do you deal with translators who don't accept 100% matches from the translation memory?

Negotiation would be the best way to solve the issue. As vendor managers, we need to be aware that there might be some vendors we are not able to collaborate with because of incompatible ways of working.

What specific signs would you look out for to decide if a CV might be fake?

Typos everywhere, bad grammar, odd formatting, strange language combinations (usually both ways), email addresses with many numbers on them, very low rates.

Would you send the same satisfaction survey to translators and interpreters?

Depends on what you would like to measure. The surveys we usually run are related to the perception of the vendors towards the company regardless of the service they provide to the company. However, if you would like feedback on the company’s processes, the best idea would be to do one survey per service.