| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Do you like working with companies that have a dedicated Vendor Manager? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Koume
Local time: 05:41
English to Japanese
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It is always good to have a specialist who is very considerate and knows what he/she is doing. I work with several agencies and to be honest there are not many. However a few of them I know are great and working process is always smooth.
P.S. I also doesn't like to be called vendor either just like other translators who commented.
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 21:41
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Diego_CW wrote:
"Do you like working with companies that have a dedicated Vendor Manager?"
Sometimes it is nice that there is one person or one department that one can copy for all administrative related information, and know that the answers they give are most probably correct and true. Project managers sometimes have their own ideas about how to answer your questions about things that deal with how the agency is run.
A vendor manager should, however, not be involved in the running of an individual project. That is what the project manager is for. And yes, some agencies have replaced all project managers with a smaller number of "vendor managers" in the expectation that most projects are semi-automated anyway, but that is incorrect thinking. The vendor manager should not be involved in the projects.
And if there is a vendor manager, but you write to the project manager instead, the project manager should simply reply with "let me ask the vendor manager" and CC the vendor manager on that mail.
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Samuel Murray wrote:
And if there is a vendor manager, but you write to the project manager instead, the project manager should simply reply with "let me ask the vendor manager" and CC the vendor manager on that mail.
But what is the vendor manager for? When would you need to contact one?
I don’t work much for agencies any more, mainly because I miss the old days where one person handled everything, both projects and vendorness-type things, and was also a translator. It was simpler, quicker, more personal and more rewarding, and the end-product was better.
Old fart that I am.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 21:41
French to English
Chris S wrote: Samuel Murray wrote:
And if there is a vendor manager, but you write to the project manager instead, the project manager should simply reply with "let me ask the vendor manager" and CC the vendor manager on that mail.
But what is the vendor manager for? When would you need to contact one? I don’t work much for agencies any more, mainly because I miss the old days where one person handled everything, both projects and vendorness-type things, and was also a translator. It was simpler, quicker, more personal and more rewarding, and the end-product was better. Old fart that I am.
At an agency I worked at in-house, the Vendor Manager was in charge of expanding the ever-shrinking translator pool. She found translators and then had to get them to accept the conditions, which included being paid a whopping 6 months after delivery of the translation.
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| No rule without exceptions | Oct 17, 2020 |
I generally regard vendor managers with suspicion these days. However, way back, I actually negotiated a rate increase with one... the PMs were not entitled to negotiate on fees, but she was.
Alas, the helpful Vendor Manager and the good PMs left, and the subsequent management pressed employees and translators to the limit and beyond. I dropped that agency like many others...
Another client I still work for has a Vendor Manager who - yes - sends newsletters and instructions ab... See more I generally regard vendor managers with suspicion these days. However, way back, I actually negotiated a rate increase with one... the PMs were not entitled to negotiate on fees, but she was.
Alas, the helpful Vendor Manager and the good PMs left, and the subsequent management pressed employees and translators to the limit and beyond. I dropped that agency like many others...
Another client I still work for has a Vendor Manager who - yes - sends newsletters and instructions about how to work their portal, log in to online TMs etc. - and they really work, yay!
She also responds to feedback of all sorts, and I believe she has a finger in coordinating translations and DTP-work or something like that. Anyway, if I need a longer deadline for a project, she and the PM can sometimes arrange it, and they do their best.
Before Covid-19 set in, the agency (in the person of the Vendor Manager) used to arrange translator days, where they ran workshops on relevant topics for us - from Machine Translation and Trados to terminology management, and there was usually a good chance for networking over coffee and cake afterwards.
On the other hand, some Vendor Managers seem to be just PMs who have been there longer than the others. (And perhaps got more bored and disillusioned with the whole setup, who knows?) If the boss at the top does not give them scope for negotiation, they can end up between a rock and a hard place, but that does not make life easier for translators! ▲ Collapse
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