UEFA goes best practice

An integral business analysis as the first step

Language Box advised the language service of the Union of European Football Associations and created a comprehensive integral business analysis. This did not only include the examination of the current organizational structure and the development of industry-specific solutions as a preparation for the future. It also uncovered hidden potential and costs as well as unnecessary double efforts, in favor of efficiency and profitability. Thanks to the integral business analysis the as-is state of things at that point could be demonstrated – and possible measures for the improvement of structures, principles and processes could be suggested.

One language service – many challenges

The UEFA language service is made up of approximately ten professional and experienced translators who are organized in language groups. The main services are the translation and proofreading in English, German and French. Other services include the organization of interpreting assignments as well as maintenance of the UEFA terminology database.

A large language service like at UEFA can pose some challenges. The constantly growing word volume needs to be managed as well as an increasing number of administrative tasks. Additionally, redundancies across departments are growing – and need to be decreased.

New technologies pose another challenge, such as the demand for more automation and, linked to this, the use of machine translation. This poses questions related to the where, how and how much: Where does automation make sense? How much technology is really needed? And how can it be best implemented?

The procedure

In order to find answers to the above questions, discover shortcomings and gaps as well as create optimization measures, the first step was to collect and view all relevant documents as well as analyze the processes within the organization. In a second step, Language Box conducted oral interviews with the responsible people across the departments. After this, the data from both written surveys with the internal clients and the employees of the UEFA language service were evaluated. The surveys were made up of around 110 questions and 130 participants. Both surveys covered all of the organizational, subject-specific and (language) technology-related aspects.

The insights: flexible into the future

The results of the surveys were included by Language Box into the developed optimization measures and presented at the organizational level as well as at the team level. They gave insights into what the biggest strengths are and where positive organizational changes are possible – but also where limitations and need for action were existing. According to Florian Simmen, Head of Language Services, the results were highly satisfactory:

“Our collaboration with Language Box was extremely enriching. Thanks to the business analysis we now have a detailed assessment of where we stand. We know exactly where we can apply leverage in future and where changes towards leanness for the benefit of efficiency make sense.”

Thanks to the results of the business analysis, the UEFA language service now has a customized working tool in order to reach the overriding objective: lean and efficient language processes that enable the team and the stakeholders to react in a flexible way towards the coming developments and changes – and face the future effectively.