Having been providing DTP services for over 17 years, InText gained a lot of knowledge in the field. Some lessons were learned the hard way, so we decided to share some knowledge with colleagues.
First of all, let’s talk about software. As a technologically developed company, InText strives to implement the cutting-edge software both for translation and DTP tasks. But most important part of any service is providing what is necessary to your customers. While working with DTP orders, you need to use the exact version of software, which your customer uses. Quite often our customers use the legacy software, which might cause all sorts of issues. So the first advice is two-folded:
Obviously, the DTP providers should have both the necessary software and qualified staff, and this is exactly what we have here at InText.
As with any other professional service, the DTP starts with the customer requirements. InText is used to satisfy the wide range of the customers’ demands, starting from introduction of the reviewer’s changes to the development of the full layout. As the rule, our customers provide instructions on what should be done: additions, deletions, changing of numbers, replacement of fonts, use of special characters, etc. These instructions might be more or less detailed, but quite often our DTP specialists find some inconsistencies in them. For example, the customer may ask to make some changes just in the part of the file, what will invoke inconsistency. In all such cases we always get back to the customer for clarifications and strive to provide the most suitable solution.
We at InText are always ready to walk extra mile in order to provide our customers with excellent DTP works.
It might sound counterintuitive, but not all DTP tasks could be correctly evaluated from the first glance. To prove this idea, let us share one real-life example. The prospective customer sent us the test job. The scope of job was quite big, and InText specialists prepared the standard budget estimate. Based on our experience of working with such files for other customers, we supposed the job would require 7 hours. But at the very beginning it became obvious, that the job will take longer. Supposedly, our customer intentionally introduced to the file many DTP issues: wrong line breaks, untranslated text, non-localized units of measure, etc. Surely, everything was duly corrected, but the job took 10 hours, much more than it had been expected.
All is well that ends well. The customer rewarded our efforts with the score of 93,42% and the long-term contract.
These are simple but basic rules as every detail matters when we are talking about delivering quality services.
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