Interview with Stefania De Angelis Williams.

Company provides translation and editing of written documentation specifically relating to IVD and including Patents to IPC classifications C, A61K and A61P, for the chemical, medical and pharmaceutical sectors.

Originally founded by Stefania De Angelis Williams to provide English into Italian translations, Williams Language Solutions is proud to have developed strategic alliances with freelance translators, consultants, editing and design companies in Europe and the US, to provide the clients with high quality translation and editing services in most European languages. Stefania still actively works as an English into Italian translator working directly with many clients and agencies (working effectively as a “freelance translator” in this case), and also coordinates multilingual projects. She is usually the first point of contacts for the clients.

The company is best described as a network of professional translators proactively working to ensure clear and correct transfer of information from one language to another.

The latest ICT solutions are employed to increase performance, speed up work and nurture business contacts. (read more)

XTRF™: How long have you been working in XTRF™?

Stefania De Angelis Williams: We have been working in XTRF™ since September 2009. It was fully implemented in December 2009.

XTRF™: What made you choose the system and are you happy with your decision?

Stefania De Angelis Williams: We were looking for solutions to standardise our procedures in order to increase performance, keep track of our projects, and most importantly, to use as a scaffold for ISO Certification purposes. Since the implementation of the system, we have increased the number of projects, enlarged our clients’ portfolio, standardised our procedures and achieved the ISO 9001:2008 certification. Of course, we are very happy with our decision!

XTRF™: What changes in your business have you experienced after the introduction of XTRF™?

Stefania De Angelis Williams: The introduction of XTRF™ enables us to work faster and better, and most importantly, to know exactly “who is doing what, when, in which project, and why”; although no major changes were introduced in our business procedures, our business has improved in terms of number of projects, quality of management, and consequently, quality of products and service. We are also using XTRF™ as a powerful marketing tool: by analysing the number of projects against the Language Specialities, which have been customised via the System Values, we are able to analyse which sector attracts most customers, and advertise our services consequently. Financially, our turnover has doubled in the last 9 months.

XTRF™: What benefits of the system implementation in terms of company management and control have you noticed?

Stefania De Angelis Williams: In terms of company management, we can speed up administration, and allocation of projects and activities. In terms of quality control, with XTRF™we can always find the “perfect match” between providers, subject and type of projects, which has a noticeable effect on quality control and quality procedures, and it is used as a preventive action against errors.

XTRF™: In the last few weeks you have implemented the ISO certification. How long did it take to prepare the company for certification?

Stefania De Angelis Williams: It took approx. 6 months to be fully prepared to the certification – I am a perfectionist! We wanted to fully understand the potential of the XTRF™ software before the certification visit, and we set up 6 months for this. Thomas and Lukasz at XTRF™ were really helpful, they are always available to answer my questions, they prepared our templates to meet our requirements, and they explained every single part of the software in details.

Although our quality procedures were already in place, we needed a documented management system to present to the Auditors – we saw in the help files of the XTRF™software the perfect “assistant” for this.

XTRF™: Was XTRF™ used in the preparation of necessary documentation for the ISO? In which area?

Stefania De Angelis Williams: XTRF™ help files are actually part of our TQMS (Translation Quality Management System). The documented management system consists primarily of the TQMS and the help files within the XTRF software tool which act as work instructions. The progress of the Product realisation (=the translation) can be followed in the PM dashboard on the XTRF program, which is duly filled by the Project Manager.

XTRF™: Which features of the system turned out to be the most useful? How did the audit go?

Stefania De Angelis Williams: For the purposes of the ISO certification, the Project Menu was certainly the most useful part of the software: following the Project Menu, we were able to show the Auditors how we turn a Quote into a Project, and how its progress is followed on each stage. Also, the System Values were useful to explain how we can allocate the right translator to each Activity, and the Providers menu was used to show how the Human Resource Management is carried out.

The audit was successful, and we have now proudly uploaded our ISO 9001:2008 Certificate on our website www.translate-it.org. The audit was quite simple and straightforward: we sat around a table, with a laptop in the middle logged on to the XTRF™server: each step of the TQMS was checked against the corresponding Menu on the screen, which was explained via the corresponding help file. Luckily, we did not suffer a power cut-off on the day!