The Client: Noon
As one of the leading e-commerce platforms in the MENA region, Noon offers products from an impressive online selection of reputable brands in categories such as electronics, fashion, health & beauty, fragrances, grocery, baby products and homeware. As the one-stop lifestyle shopping destination for thousands in the Middle East and GCC, it became vital for them to translate their website content, as well as all of the details of their product offerings, from English to Arabic in order to be accessible to their customer base in the region. The client first requested the translation of 10,000 words from English to Arabic to be delivered in two weeks. Since the success of that initial request, Ureed.com freelancers have been translating over 1 million words every month for the platform.
The Challenge
Managing an Overwhelming Workload
With the number of translation requests that flood in weekly, it was very difficult to manage the processes of hiring, vetting and briefing freelance translators, proofreaders and editors, as well as reviewing after them multiple times, and verifying with QA.
This led Noon to consider creating a CAT tool that would support the freelancers as well as offer a cost-effective solution by making the freelancers’ jobs easier, faster and more productive. For that, Noon required consultation from the Ureed.com team who are experienced with logistics of translation and software development. On top of consultation, the process would require the onboarding of additional freelancers who could test the software during its development process. This led to an even more urgent need to secure an efficient operations procedure.
Onboarding Expert Freelancers with Flexible Rates
In order to fulfill such a large request to the best standards possible, the Ureed.com team needed to source the best talents in the region. However, because the rate per word was not very high – due to the size of the overall project – the team needed to search beyond Ureed.com’s database in order to find freelancers who were up to par with Ureed.com standards and would be interested in working on the project while accepting flexible rates.
The Solutions
Organizing in-House Operations and Helping Develop Noon’s New CAT Tool
Ureed.com’s operation manager, supported by other experienced Ureed.com employees, began to provide one-on-one consultation to the team at Noon.com in order for them to create a vigorous CAT tool. The CAT tool was developed with the goal of optimizing the translation process and implementing a robust translation memory that would cut costs as well as save freelancers’ time by storing any previously translated words on the software. In a period of 3 months, the collaborating Noon and Ureed.com teams were able to optimize the tool and begin using it. This was aided by the team of freelancers who offered their support in testing the software.
Incentivizing Freelancers by Building Trust and Providing Mentorship
The team was able to find expert freelancers fit for the project by scouring the Internet and vetting each and everyone they hired. In order to onboard a large number of freelancers who agreed to the rates that Noon offered, the Ureed.com team provided them with professional guidance and support in the form of recurring workshops, training, and guidelines to follow, as well as round-the-clock guidance and assistance. This incentivized them to work on the project as it was not only a job, but a full-fledged learning experience.
The freelancers were also given top priority by the Ureed.com team handling the project in terms of other projects and jobs on the Ureed.com platform; the team actively matched them with top employers to support them and sustain them as they worked on the Noon project. In the end, the freelancers’ ability to work hard on the Noon project for a long period of time earned them an incredibly high profit margin.
Impact
Noon
After the successful initial request of 10,000 translated words in 2 weeks, the requests increased on a monthly basis, until they reached 1.3 million words a month. With that astounding number of translations per month, Noon was able to expand its services across the entire GCC as well as into Egypt. This cemented their place as a leading e-commerce website in the region, as well as helped spike their sales over the past years.
They also managed to secure their own CAT tool, Lingo, with the help and support of Ureed.com’s team and freelancers. This permanent feature is helping optimize all of Noon’s translation processes on a long-term basis, and it also acts as a database for all of the past transactions that have occurred, which provides Noon with a solid foundation for all of their future translations.
Ureed.com
As for Ureed.com, the team was able to secure a large number of expert freelancers on a permanent basis, many of whom grew to become top-rated freelancers on the platform. They were also able to fill in a gap in the platform with their specialization in e-commerce. The amount of experience and training that resulted from the Noon project came to improve the overall productivity and quality of work that freelancers on the platform are able to deliver. The freelancers were able to grow not only in terms of experience but also in terms of profit margins, with some earning around 1,000$ every two weeks from the job.
Moreover, as this was one of the earliest Ureed.com Enterprise projects, it helped us raise awareness about our enterprise grade solutions among businesses seeking freelance needs. Both the in-house Ureed.com team as well as the freelancers on the platform were able to benefit greatly from the experience, while providing their expertise to Noon, helping them cement their supreme position in the MENA e-commerce market.
If you’re seeking enterprise grade solutions for your business outsourcing needs, reach out to Ureed.com now and benefit from a vast network of over 35K expert freelancers from the GCC and beyond.
