In the next few months I will take on a new Project Manager to help take Applingua up a notch. In preparation, I’ve begun making a presentation about how things work at Applingua and the processes involved, which I can then use during initial training. Writing down a set process is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. Only yesterday I realised it was something I should have done long ago.

Writing down what you do forces you to think hard about your work and, more importantly, why you do it. As I drew out the 11 steps in Keynote I realised certain things can be re-jiggled or merged to save time later down the line. Going deeper into each process item, I realised that there are certain variables which can’t be taught and require months of experience to understand them. That shouldn’t be the case.

The challenge was on: make each process more efficient; create tools that let anyone, even someone off the street (with a little guidance), do the work I do. Two hours later, I had already shaved 2 hours off my work week per week…

1. Added country + EU tax number fields to online form

Every time a potential client emails me I have to look them up to find out where their company is based. Applingua quotes in Euros, Dollars and Pounds so it’s important to know. Looking up a company online can take anywhere up to 10 minutes (especially if they are at pains not to make their address public).

Knowing a company has an EU tax number from the start means we don’t have to have that awkward “why are you charging me VAT” conversation later down the line.

2. Created a .strings file word count tool

App strings are stored in UTF-8/16 and can sometimes be a bit confusing. Previously, when a new project came in, I would pipe the strings through my much larger localization project tool to get a word count. It took quite some time to create an entire new project just to get a word count for potentially a project that might never happen.

I fired up Automator and made a small application. You drag any number of .string files to the action and you get a dialog box telling you the total word count. Great for quotes and saving a lot of time each week.

3. Made a price list in FreeAgent

Every time I make a quote I have to manually write out quote items and make sure I’ve got the right currency. I made a price list so now all a project manager has to do is select from a list and add the only variables: language and the word count. Easy.

The best bit? All this is just to make just the quote phase (step 1) more efficient. There’s another 7 process steps to go… bring it on!