Small Agency vs. Large Agency: who are your confidential files safer with?

People ask us sometimes what the difference is between a smaller translation agency that is privately owned like ours, and a largetranslation company with 1000’s of translators all over the world and offices everywhere.

There are so many differences that it would take a lot of space and time to share them all, but below are the ones we believe to be the most important:

1.       Personal touch: the big guys have automated all their transactions via cloud based platforms. It’s hard to find a real person when you need one. They are sometimes too big and too busy to care for each individual client. Agreed, the whole world is moving in this direction and part of our new launch does include more cloud based project management. But you will always be able to reach one of us with just one quick email. Promise.

2.       Security: did you know that even if a company says they have an ISO27001/2 certification it doesn’t mean that your confidential files will be completely protected? Because they are too big to handle each project individually, they have to rely on their online project management tool to find translators to cover projects, and the only way to do this is by “broadcasting” their client’s projects online to ALL the translators in their database, sometimes to over 100 translators all over the world, and waiting to see who sees the message first, downloads the file to his/her laptop or PC, and is willing to do the project at the low rate they have set for the job. Yes, crazy right?

That’s what we think too. Instead, we personally select the team and only after the team has agreed to take the project do we share the files with them, and only via a secure online platform. Don’t worry, we also take security very seriously and have received a SOC2 security certification PLUS we just passed Walmart’s “Vendor Assessment” Security Audit, so we have been approved by the largest company in the world (by revenue) to work on confidential files.

In today’s environment where even the largest, and riches companies in the world get hacked, we recommend that you know exactly who is opening your confidential files.

3.   Flexibility and Savings: a small agency can be flexible on pricing since you are working directly with the owner or someone close to him or her. Your PM can make decisions about not charging for a “rush” charge or project management fees, or even reduce the rate a little if they can. A small agency can also move faster when you need it. If you need a project today, they are more likely to get it to you quickly since you don’t have to go through so many hoops to get the project started.