Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The magic of AI, when it's applied properly, responsibly, ethically, and with business goals in mind, is, you know, where the humans can add value.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: The following is a conversation with Connie and Makot, chief revenue officer at Accolade. We will discuss the evolution of AI in the language industry and their most recent launch. Leah an AI solution that empowers humans to achieve remarkable work.
Enjoy.
[00:00:32] Speaker C: Let's really get into it. We're talking today about a significant evolution in the conversation at Acolad and the technologies that you're using. Could you tell us a little bit more about how AI is playing a role within the organization and what's Leah sure.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: So I don't think anyone will be surprised at the evolution and disruption that AI has enabled for our industry in the past 24 months. Almost since the onset of chat GPT, there have been multiple applications of AI and evolutions of AI and what it can do. So our journey began with NMT many, many years ago, like most. But the evolution into AI powered workflows, AI powered content generation, AI powered interpreting, all of that has evolved very, very quickly over the past twelve months. So we're embracing AI at every part of our journey. And Leah is not the culmination, but almost the beginning of that next phase of AI empowerment for our own teams, for our customers, and for the industry.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Excellent. What does LEa do right now? You've mentioned, of course, workflows, content generation interpreting. What does it do?
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Yes, so AI and the Lea platform is a platform. It's an entryway into taking all of the various jigsaw pieces that can be AI solutions. Whether it's the evolution of your translation into a modern translation workflow with ape and AQE, whether it's content creation, where you have your product descriptions that may have been created by marketers, by humans, that are now created with AI generation, and then validated and updated and brand checked with humans and AI in the loop. It may be the quality assurance portion where we have AI for regulatory compliance, for the life science space, where we have AI for quality validation, it may be workflow optimization, workflow orchestration. So if you think about a large organization and all of the different content types, they have to be able to orchestrate workflows really simply as opposed to wait for developers or wait for CMS or TMS systems. Our low code, no code workflow orchestration is a part of what our teams can do with Leah. So Leah is the umbrella entry point to empower an organization to adopt and evolve MT AI, content solutions, multimedia solutions interpreting solutions across their organization. So if you're a globalization manager and you go, hmm, I really need to accelerate my AI journey. I need to look at everything from content creation to workflow to QA to translation apeaqe to optimize cost, to ensure that I'm not missing out on the AI empowerment of the traditional solutions I've had. AI is a platform that enables you to have access to all of those evolved AI solutions, and not just the ones today. But we will continue to add more and more to the platform as we progress.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: It completely makes sense. I assume, of course, that evolution will take shape in the next few years before we get there. Of course, as you have been working on this for the past twelve months, you've been introducing a few of these conversations to your existing clients.
What feedback are you getting from them? What are they saying about Dia and what are some of the things that you can tell us about?
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think the big thing that our clients appreciate is the fact that we're guiding them on a journey and not expecting them to go it alone, that we're meeting them where they are and then helping to show them through pilots, through pragmatic projects, what it can and can't do in a transparent way. So, for example, can it save you 80% costs or can it save you 8% costs? It really depends on what your starting point is. So we see a huge amount of claims in the industry. We can save you 25 million, we can save you 65%, we can save you 150%. None of those things are untrue. But the way you approach it is pragmatically meet a customer where they are, with their spend, with their quality, with their touch points, with their number of humans that are touching a process and measure it. So our approach is very transparently meeting them where they are doing pilots to show them what can be the reality before moving them into a business as usual mode so that they can be empowered to go, wow. I can tell a story inside my organization with measurement, with metrics. I can show the power of my TM on top of the power of my NMT, on top of the power of AI assisted ape and AqE. I can tell a story on metrics about how much I've reduced the amount that needs to go to humans. I can play with the level of quality I need depending on the risk of what I'm releasing to market. For example, our life science customers. They want to embrace AI, but they also have risk and compliance to take into account versus consumer companies who go we want to embrace AI, and we might have more leeway in terms of describing an Airbnb, or describing a hotel or describing travel, specific things where your experience isn't impacted in a life or death scenario. So what our clients like is the fact that we guide, we're transparent, we measure, we show, and we're pragmatic about the metrics they need to talk about inside their organization. And then the other thing, and this is a big thing in our industry, our industry is in a disruptive phase. And that disruptive phase, when you think about clients, they're getting pressure from their executives to accelerate AI adoption, to reduce cost. In some cases, companies are getting pressure to remove globalization departments or to reduce them dramatically. In other cases, they're getting pressure to introduce technology because that will solve all of the translation problems. And we know that's not true, that it's a continuum from where you are to the nirvana of absolute optimization. And what clients like about Leah is we build a journey for them that helps them show their executives the power of technology coupled with the power of human to achieve the cost optimization, the quality measures, the risk compliance. And that's not the case if you just plug a technology piece there without the guidance. So I think they appreciate the fact that it isn't one thing, it's a continuum of solutions that helps them across their and with their executives.
[00:08:12] Speaker C: Of course, this is what builds the biggest element of trust, and it's the guidance. I, of course, assume that there is a huge balance element that you need to put in here in terms of how much technology is put in place, how much human are involved. Could you tell us a little bit about the acolyte approach to balancing humans and technology and the conversation you're having internally about the human involvement in Ecuador?
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah, humans are key. And to be a linguistic strategist, a linguistic specialist is the most specialist thing our industry has ever had. That was in the age of Mt. That continues in the age of AI. It continues in domain expertise, in content. The magic of AI, when it's applied properly, responsibly, ethically, and with business goals in mind, is, you know, where the humans can add value, where the humans can mitigate risk. So for us, we have 200 plus linguists in house. So it's not just outsourced services. So we have a lot of language strategists and specialists. We have domain expertise, we have quality assurance specialists. We have specialists in given areas across different domains, like legal or finance or life science. So what we look at with humans, they're becoming prompt engineers as well. They're becoming domain experts in a deeper level to make AI work more effectively. But there's still a quality validation and assurance. They're still fit for purpose. Marketing is a great example. We have brand champions. So while you may have adopted how you create your marketing content, how it converts is still the goal. The measure and how it converts needs to balance where you put brand champions, where you put tone and humanity into those creative campaigns. So we firmly believe in the value of linguists.
But the interesting magic is there can be some projects within an account where we have reduced the need for humans in the loop to maybe 10%, in some cases to maybe 4% where they may have been involved 60 or 80% before. That's a massive human saving and a massive cost saving. However, there's other projects where the inverse is true, where you have linguists doing something different. It's the creative branding, it's the campaign design where AI can create it, but they have to envisage it, imagine it, validate it, measure the conversion. So what we do with our clients is optimize their cost, optimize the use of AI for their business purpose, but understand their business purpose and how we can give them back the results that make them look like superstars.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: And thank you for that, because it's critical in the conversation we're having, especially with companies that are looking to integrate AI. And there is the fear that the linguists are going to disappear, that the translators are going to disappear. I think it's just an evolution of the conversation. I do have a question regarding the demand for language services. Have you seen a change in the demand for language services? Perhaps new language services being demanded that were not demanded before and the ones that were demanded before, how have they changed given these new solutions that you're providing?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: 100%, we've seen a change. So we've seen a spike in the demand for MTE acceleration. In general, we've seen a spike in requests for AI powered solutions in multimedia and interpreting. We've seen a drop in demand for traditional translation services, and we envisage that drop will continue. Now, just to be clear, we're not seeing a drop in volume. The volume of content needed is huge and continues to grow.
But how much you can do with these new AI solutions has helped to optimize budgets, has helped to optimize sheer approaches to volume. So while the volumes continue to grow, the cost at which somebody needs to manage their budget has become greater. So we might see a lesser demand in terms of spend which is super because we're enabling cost optimization for our clients.
But that means that, as an organization, lsps face challenges to ensure that they're growing from a revenue, from a, an EBITDA perspective, to make sure theyre building healthy organizations to serve the needs of the clients. So what weve seen is we have a 25% goal as part of our strategic plan, that 25% of our services are from non traditional translation services. They can be from data services, they can be from interpreting, they can be from multimedia, they can be for consultative AI services and technology services. So the shift we're seeing is help us build programs in a consultative manner. In some cases, do BPO, business process outsourcing and people outsourcing, because we, on the client side, have pressure to reduce the number of full time employees. But we still have a need for globalization expertise. In other cases, it help us train our data, help us clean our data, and TM cleanup, AI powered tm cleanup and terminology, all of the peripheral services that make the output of AI solutions better. We see that demand grow and continue to grow.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: You mentioned that budget optimization then becomes an element of the conversation. Demand is evolving.
Do you see a shift in differentiation in terms of the quality expectations? Meaning, okay, now we have a budget that before was used for translation. Now your human in the loop has been reduced from 60% to 4%. Can we take that budget to increase the quality expectations we have? Is that a conversation that's happening?
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Absolutely. And again, it depends on the risk element. So I think with AI and with the stage we're at as an industry with AI, application to content, quality is a huge thing. There isn't 100% trust in AIH output from a quality perspective. So what you're saving in translation, what you're saving in traditional approaches, there's still a huge saving, even if you invest a percentage of that in human parity, quality evaluation, what's coming out of AI? The quality score for AI says 94%. What does the human say? Is it the same? Is it different regulatory compliance? AI has helped me map all of my content to these regulatory guidelines, and it's amazing.
But can I trust it? Let's add some human in the loop, quality assurance. So we 100% see a spike in the need for increased quality programs, quality trends, quality checks, to validate how trustworthy, how solid, how stable AI is. And we see that from two perspectives. We see clients come to us to be the quality arm to check other people's AI output, and we see them come to us to ask us to build a program with our own AI and our own quality assurance independently. So we see both. And that demand, I think, will continue to grow. I just came back from the Taos conference in Albuquerque. They celebrated their 20th year anniversary. So congrats to Yap and the team. And I remember in the early days, cause I'm not old, I remember when they had this lights out vision for automated content in any language. That just wasn't possible 20 years ago. And it evolved over the last two decades where now it's actually insight. So while it's not lights out, it's quality assured AI enablement.
[00:16:29] Speaker C: And of course, quality assure AI enablement. It's a conversation. LSP's are thinking about it, tech based companies are thinking about it. Companies outside of the industry are now looking into it as well. How is Leah different from other AI solutions and other solutions that you also have at Acolyte, how are they different?
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yes. So one of the things we see in the industry, and it's interesting, we stood on stage with OrWs, with Lionbridge, with, we localize, with others at Taos, and we were talking about our respective approaches to AI enablement. And there's a lot in common across the platforms in terms of ape, aqe, quality assurance, optimization. But one of the things that Aqualad believes in and that Leo was designed for wasn't just translation. That's one part of it. It was the end to end content journey. No matter what language, no matter how you create the content, no matter how you release the content. How does AI across that creation, translation optimization and release work? So it goes beyond translation, which many others don't. So yes, it includes ape and aqe, and quality assurance. Yes, it includes workflow, orchestration, but it also focuses at the start of the journey in terms of content creation itself, for marketing campaigns, for product information, for multimedia, for voice. We also have platforms for interpreting, and they're AI powered as part of this umbrella. So it goes beyond the traditional translation only optimization and goes end to end content, voice as or interpreting, written, all of the things that an organization can have in terms of content types. And that's our vision. Our vision is any content, any language simpler, any content, any language cost optimized, but hitting the results you need for the purpose that was intended for that content. So beyond translation, I guess, is how we differentiate.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: Thank you for that, because that's a really good direction for us to go into, which is the vision. And of course, you mentioned the Leah is the beginning of a strategy, the beginning of a conversation, the beginning of course, of a long term bet for athlete and for your team. What does the future look like? What are your expectations?
[00:18:56] Speaker A: I think one of the easiest things to overlook in a disruptive phase of an industry is that the basics still need to be covered. The basics of understanding the business goals of a company, understanding the pain points and understanding will content hit the business goals for international expansion for our customers?
AI isnt the silver bullet for everything, but AI empowered, guided solutions help companies achieve those goals, whether its cost, time, quality. So for us, the vision is. And when you think about Leah, its not just a nod because Leah was l'intelligence artificial, a nod to our french roots, but it's also a female connotation. And when we thought about what does Leah look like? What does Leah feel like? What do we want Leah to help our clients achieve? What do we want Leah to help us achieve? We thought about the overwhelming challenge that some organizations have. Think about a tier two client who may not have a huge globalization department, but needs to accelerate AI adoption. Wouldn't it be amazing for them to have a guide who analyzes their content? Who helps determine which content that should be AI assisted first? Who helps show the measurements of what can be done in that magic triangle of time, cost, quality? And wouldn't it be great to empower those customers with a platform that they can show measured, real results to their organization to go look what we're doing in AI acceleration. Look what we're doing in reduction of human touchpoint. Look what we're doing to increase human in the loop where it adds value. Look what we're doing to drop our cost by 1020, 30, 60, 80% in some cases. So that vision is to continue to add services and solutions that were traditional, that become AI powered. Interpreting is a great example where now there's a huge amount in AI that makes that interpreting solution simpler, faster, cheaper and more available. Where you're not necessarily depending on humans the whole time and it's not suitable for every use case. But I listened to a wonderful keynote by a lady from Microsoft recently, and she said one thing that I almost jumped. Hallelujah. AI impact is based on AI use case. What are you trying to achieve? And as we build each of the new solutions inside Leah, it becomes a bigger, stronger, better platform. And with that, the use cases are proven with measurable results. So our vision is to continue to add to it for everything the content journey needs, for everything our customers need.
[00:21:55] Speaker C: Piece by piece, piece by speech, slowly. I'm curious. And it might be, it might not be the right question for this stage of the conversation. But are there any places in your services where artificial intelligence is not making sense right now?
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Oh, I'm sure there are many, many areas where it's not making sense right now. I don't believe that AI solves every problem, but I do believe that AI empowerment optimizes things. So when I think about the content lifecycle, content creation, absolutely it impacts modern translation to ape aqe, it absolutely impacts. Humans in the loop are still very heavily involved in quality validation.
So that's not AI specific. They're absolutely checking. Does this make sense? Does it resonate? Does it make me feel emotional? If it's a marketing campaign, do I love it? Or does it sound like AI generated content? Is it on brand? Is it on target? So humans are absolutely a key part of brand championing marketing campaigns.
They're absolutely a key part of life science and reducing risk and ensuring compliance. They're absolutely a huge part in production, in the project managers who guide processes, in the, the engagement of our account managers and consultative sellers with our clients to build strategy that's not replaced by AI, but the tasks within some of those processes are made easier or faster with AI. So humans are absolutely the strategists, the architects, the visionaries, the communicators. AI just happens to be a powerful tool that we're getting better and better at applying to give better business results.
[00:23:49] Speaker C: Thank you for that. That's going to be really helpful for our students, for sure. I want to ask you and pick your brain on, and we're wrapping up here, but I want to pick your brain on the overall landscape in the industry. Just today we heard a pro Opo has acquired Ulg. We see acquisitions around the industry. In some cases we've seen consolidation, in some other places, we've seen more fragmentation.
What do you see the future looking like for lsps, and how do you think things are going to shape up in the upcoming years?
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Well, firstly, I'd like to congratulate ULG and proprio. I think it's a great move. So congratulations. I know that they've worked hard to build, to build solid business cases for that. So it's always nice to see the end result in a successful acquisition of companies who've been growing for a while in our space. So huge congrats to them. I do see consolidation continue. I see the interpreting market, for example, be ripe for consolidation. Interpreting is growing in double digits as part of the content lifecycle. It's one of the areas that you asked earlier about modern translation and traditional translation is a declining what do we see? Interpreting is the opposite. It's growing double digit year on year for the last number of years, especially in healthcare, in government, in public. So I do see more of a play for consolidation in that space in the years ahead.
I see a lot of it's great to be a super agency, it's great to have the power behind us to build technically and linguistically. There are smaller companies who with any disruption can struggle the resources to build or buy technology that they might need and some of those will go into a fragmented space, into M and A activities. Look at mergers, look at acquisitions, look at exits. Thats pretty normal for most industries when there is disruption, some new players will enter, some existing players will exit, some will merge to make a bigger play for consolidation. I actually think its really good to see change like that in the industry for a period of time. M and A in our space slowed down in part due to inflation and due to access to lending due to the disruption in private equity firms. Taking a step back and thinking. So it's really great and I think it's a healthy sign for our industry that we start to see M and A and consolidation start again and accelerate again. I do see it continue. I could imagine mid tier companies selling, exiting, being acquired. I can imagine technology companies entering the space and some of those being acquired. Connectivity is a huge thing in our industry and connectivity companies. There are a handful of startups and scale ups in the space. I'm sure they'll do interesting things. There's a huge debate on whether the TMS is dead. Yes, no, maybe, maybe in the future. There are large TMS players that I'm sure there will be shifts in the industry in the months and years ahead. When you think about the landscape and the management changes and all of the things you look at in a space, but I think all of that is positive and healthy.
[00:27:10] Speaker C: Excellent. Thank you so much.
Before we go, I want to ask you if there's anything about Leah or acled with me to ask you that you'd like to mention today.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: I think the biggest thing is Aqualad has been around. We celebrate our 30 year anniversary next year. So that's a pretty big milestone. However, I think our brand, because we rebranded less than five years ago, our brand story, who we are, clients getting to know, wow. If I were to select a partner who could help me accelerate my AI journey, what does Aqualad have that would make them the right choice for me? And I think as well as 30 years experience as well as 20 plus offices in each geography. We have the passion to want our customers to succeed. When we partner with them, we take it seriously. So applying Leah, whether they want to do a pilot and we encourage them to contact us or whether they want to jump on a platform with some, with a subscription service, we're open to either, but we're open to proving things transparently for them. So if they're confused and would like somebody to guide them along the way, that's definitely something that Aqualad believes strongly in. Partnership for client success. Great.
[00:28:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Thank you. It was an absolute pleasure. Enjoy the beautiful surroundings that you're in. Hopefully you'll get to take some fun vacation, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
[00:28:49] Speaker C: We will talk for sure again soon. And this was our conversation with Renia Maikott, chief revenue officer at Acco. My name is Edi Arrieta, CEO at multilingual magazine. Thank you for this.
