Since Mot.Tiff introduced TVT, the Text Verification Tool from Schlafender Hase, its clients have benefited from higher quality, faster text turnarounds, traceable audit trails and significant time savings in the pharmaceutical and fast moving consumer goods sectors. Read the Mot.Tiff case study below for all the details.
The Challenge at Mot.Tiff – a TVT Case Study
Mot.Tiff Unlimited is a multicultural marketing and communication agency with offices in Paris and Lyon (France), and a Japan office in Tokyo. Its clients come from a wide variety of industries such as pharmaceuticals, tourism and travel, and food and animal nutrition. Among its clients in animal nutrition is a leading global manufacturer of pet foods.
The type of documents requiring translation and proofreading by Mot.TIFF varies considerably. In the pharmaceutical sector this is often packaging artwork that must meet strict regulatory requirements for the approval and marketing of medications in respective countries. In the travel and tourism sector, this encompasses brochures and guides. Translation and proofreading in the pet for food sector is primarily for multilingual product packaging.
Meeting the challenges of the pharmaceutical industry
The pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated, and any mistakes in labelling and packaging can lead to the costly recall of a product, loss of marketing authorization, or even loss of human life. These strict regulatory requirements and the potentially damaging consequences of an error place enormous demands on graphic designers and proofreaders in terms of skills and concentration required in order to achieve perfect results.
Before Mot.TIFF automated proofreading in the pharmaceutical sector, typically the workflow began with a briefing and master text from the client, translation into various target languages, and manual proofreading and verification of text and artwork in an established manual quality control process. Languages for one client in the pharmaceutical sector include Hebrew, Russian and Greek – all of which required checking non-Latin characters. Generally, the proofreading process here involves comparing master files in Word format to artwork in PDF. Although the established process ensured a high level of quality, it was not as efficient as it could be.
Choosing TVT, the Text Verification Tool
Jimmy Rouget is a production manager at Mot.Tiff who is responsible for artwork. He explains that a catalyst for change came when a client in the pharmaceutical sector requested that Mot.Tiff Unlimited also use TVT. The client had been using the automated proofreading solution from Schlafender Hase for some time with great success, making it the logical choice for Mot.Tiff Unlimited. Evaluation and selection was therefore a straight-forward and simple process of testing and subsequent approval within the company. Implementation took place in 2019, with the aim of ensuring that clients were completely satisfied with the quality, accuracy and speed of services provided by Mot.Tiff Unlimited.
The intuitive user interface meant that users at Mot.Tiff Unlimited could quickly familiarize themselves with TVT functionalities, and within a short time of just a few weeks Mot.TIFF was achieving greater first-time accuracy and its aim of increasing the speed and quality of services.
In the pharmaceutical sector, Mot.Tiff was now working together with its client in a digital proofreading workflow that allowed traceability and clear visibility of compliance at each step in generated reports. Jimmy Rouget explains: “We have improved the quality with fewer errors from the outset, with faster proofreading and with the possibility of a full-trail audit report. The content is right first time, and the client is happy with the perfect quality and huge time savings.”
Transferring pharmaceutical sector best practices to animal nutrition
Mot.TIFF was so impressed by the results that it decided to roll out automated proofreading across other sectors, and particularly for its global client in the pet food sector.
Colleagues in the pet food sector had often experienced situations in which documents were being read, returned and re-read many times over. Because packaging for its global client was in up to 35 languages, this proved to be very resource-intensive, both in terms of time required but also because paper versions of documents led to unnecessary waste. Amarine Guesson, a graphic designer at Mot.Tiff Unlimited explains that on one large project in 2018, some 70% of texts required subsequent revision in a manual proofreading process in order to detect errors and make corrections.
A fast and significant return on investment
“Not long after implementation, we had a project similar in scale to the one earlier in which 70% of texts had to be revised. As a result of using TVT, 100% of our texts were returned from the client approved, and today any changes we make are not errors but late changes at the client’s request regarding design, colour or layout.
The amount of time spent on proofreading for the leading pet food manufacturer has been reduced to a fraction of what was required earlier – now as little as one minute per language version of packaging text and artwork. Here, too, significant improvements have been achieved in first-time quality. Amarine Guesson explains: “For example, ingredients are frequently changed. We had one project involving well over 100 text blocks for five products in 34 languages. The higher quality of the end product in faster turnarounds has been an incredibly important result for us and for the customer, and the reports we generate from TVT allow us to keep an audit trail of changes to the end product.”
Conclusion
Following the introduction of TVT in the pharmaceutical industry, Mot.TIFF was able to transfer its best practices successfully from this sector to other sectors in the company’s activities to improve efficiency and accuracy, with significant time savings. It benefited from the experience of employees who were already using TVT, and was able to capitalize on this knowledge to achieve a significant return on investment in the pet food sector as well.
About the Mot.Tiff Unlimited Group
Mot.Tiff is a multicultural communication agency founded in 1998 by Sacha Vichnevsky and in 2017 was transformed into the Mot.Tiff Unlimited group of companies with offices in Paris, Lyon and Tokyo. It specializes in comprehensive linguistic, translation and international communication services – and any services associated with adaptation to different cultural or national markets. The focus of Mot.Tiff is on developing high-end services, both in terms of the quality of product support and customer relations, drawing on the best resources around the world.
About Schlafender Hase
Since Schlafender Hase® introduced TVT®, the Text Verification Tool®, this software has taken the lead in providing intelligent, automated text and graphic proofreading solutions for the most regulated industries. Schlafender Hase’s client list includes the world’s leading pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Schlafender Hase is currently expanding its focus to bring the same time-saving and increased productivity benefits gained by this sector to pre-media and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) clients. Schlafender Hase is proud to be known for product quality, service excellence and customer success. Founded in 2001, the company is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany with a North American division in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Find out more at www.schlafenderhase.com.
