STAR was founded in 1984 in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland. It was a period when the Swiss were renown for their chocolates, cartels and paying the highest salaries in the world. Local businesses faced the challenge of providing unique value to the client, particularly in the services industry. From the very beginning, STAR worked hard at differentiating ourselves from the various technical writing, translating and software integrating companies that were active then. Our idea was to offer full services: providing technical writing, translating and publishing within a process that took responsibility for delivering a total solution.

Back then the personal computer was only beginning to take hold. Very few businesses understood the value of personal computers, especially in the translation and documentation market. We saw the PC as a means of ensuring productivity gains, one that gave us a comfortable margin while being able to pass significant savings to our customers – most of whom were working with traditional, and rather outdated, multiple language production models.

Our first big break came from BMW. They gave us a chance at testing our workflow production methods. Their support boosted our confidence enough to penetrate further into this market. By the late eighties, when software localization started to show promise, STAR, as a full service vendor, emphasized desk-top-publishing (DTP) and concentrated on developing our in-house software integration skills, mostly in the database, terminology management and translation tools areas. We found a valuable niche by integrating our language technology solutions as a part of full services delivery. This core set of skills combined with a reliable reputation giving way to repeat business and customer recommendations enabled us to grow our company in a conservative and profitable manner.

It's worth mentioning that STAR remains privately held. There is no venture capital behind us, and we are proud being the only independent Multiple Language Vendor [MLV] of German-speaking origin.

How big is STAR? What are your main market sectors?

With approximately $45 million in revenues (2002) The STAR Group has 34 subsidiaries and over 700 employees worldwide. To this we add almost 2000 part-time freelancers who specialize in translation, software localization and product testing. Today, approximately 95% of STAR's revenue comes from the automotive, electronics, telecoms, machinery business sectors and from software localization. The remaining 5% comprise the healthcare, finance and government sectors.

Is STAR a profitable company? How is profitability measured?

Profitability has always been our key objective, not the turnover. Our strategy has been to strengthen niche market expertise: we have purchased a company in Sweden, one in the Middle East, and another in Ireland. Profitability is measured by EBITDA standards (consolidated into STAR AG in Switzerland) and each of our subsidiary managing directors are owners of the company with a vested interest in running a profitable organization.

How is the STAR Group managed?

STAR's decentralized structure offers the advantages of both MLV and SLV organizations. Subsidiaries operate similarly to SLVs. Manager's set their own business priorities, market focus and customer service policies. Yet, due to the STAR Groups's technical competency and homogeneous processes, we offer the client the operational benefits that most larger MLVs provide.

Why did you decide to invest in developing an automated workflow system?

Since 1998 STAR has been integrating language technology solutions into the customer's production process. We never imposed our production model on the client. We offered them a choice based on their requirements and STAR's broad-based language technology solutions. We took special care not to over-commit to the customer, and I am confident in saying that we never promised something and then not delivered. We learned a great deal from this experience.

In order to be more responsive to the market's growth, in June 2002 we created the STAR Technology & Solutions division. The mission of the new division is to provide personalized customer service to individual clients and to the STAR group subsidiaries. It is responsible for the development and support of all STAR technology solutions and is the driving force behind Proactive (see the article on LISA's independent review of Proactive). In a sense, STAR is a pioneer in the field of GMS because we are delivering what others can only describe on whiteboards. Plus, our technology is in use for more than 3 years. Our installations include Fortune 500 companies and translation service companies. With the Proactive GMS product, STAR has extended its market share and we see ourselves moving more and more into the enterprise market.

Is STAR moving away from developing desktop tools and reducing its translator market support?

Absolutely not. The translator market is very important to us and our broad-based product offering help translators perform their various jobs. This is especially true for freelance translators. Our service groups keep us well informed of market requirements. I believe that we are meeting the needs of today's translators. Of course there is always something missing in products like these, but STAR's provision of open standards support, file formats and API facilities make it easy for users to meet their customer's needs. Translation Memory and standards like TMX and TBX factor heavily here.

But let's face it, outside of Unicode and XML-based standards, there are no real standards in this industry. XLIFF holds the promise that at some point in time users will be able to exchange projects across multiple platforms. Web services is also a promise of things to come. However, I do not believe that translation memory systems ALONE are crucial to the industry's success.

Has STAR's business focus changed over the past years?

Our business focus and core competency have not changed. STAR will continue to provide quality translation services and networked language technology solutions through our own group, and remain flexible enough to meet the customer's needs. I see greater value in developing long-term relationships with clients rather than focusing on quarterly sales targets. We have learned that it is important to anticipate changes in the market place in order to meet the customer's demands.

Our experience at using our own tools to solve translation and localization problems required us to become very innovative and to adapt according to the client's requirements. Proactive is the natural evolution of our core competency which is automating the translation production process.

Why is there is a major evolution taking place in TM tools and Global Content Management Systems? What is STAR's role in this?

It's not an evolution. In my opinion, it is the challenge of reducing the customer's costs. First of all, when compared to the entire localization process the total cost savings achieved by many long-term users of TM products is coming to an end. The enterprise customer is no longer investing in tool upgrades with little ROI, or designing in-house tools or macros around standard applications. Customers want a larger ROI.

Traditionally the focus on cost reduction was concentrated on reducing translation costs. The downward price pressure was directed at the translation vendors and translators. However this is only a small part of the localization supply chain. In fact translation accounts for less than 28% of what the customer spends. The real cost savings come from reducing the transaction costs which reside in the Customer => Vendor => Translator production (CVT) model.

For a clearer picture consider how often files are manually handled and exchanged within an organization, and by its services partner. This results in a very expensive transaction process. Every time a file is touched, everyone is paying. By automating these tasks you reduce the transaction costs throughout the entire localization process. From a technology standpoint TM tools decrease translation costs, but automated workflow systems reduce the transaction costs. If the transactions are automated, not unlike any manufacturing process, then everyone gains from the economy of scale.

Where do you see the industry heading?

Today there are many potential buyers that understand the value of saving transaction costs. As I said, these customers must have a high ROI in order to invest in software. In 2003 and 2004 our industry will focus on supply chain management systems. You can call them Globalization Management Systems, or Multilingual Content Management Systems using proven translation workstation applications as linguistic engines. This trend will become more visible due to the lower prices that customers are paying. Their choice will either be to channel translation jobs into countries where the personnel costs are low, or to implement automated workflow systems. But in the end you need qualified human translators doing the actual job. And this is what STAR can offer and will be offering.