Throughout the worst health and economic crises in modern history, CSA Research have been sharing aggregate feedback from multiple constituents, including 193 CEOs from their global rankings.
Midway through the pandemic, they asked members of the Leadership Councils to share what they’re thinking about their next steps in business and recently checked back in so hear their plans for 2022.
Joshua Gould, CEO of thebigword Group said: “2021 was an interesting year for thebigword. As we continued through the pandemic, we started to see long-term trends emerging that we have aligned with our business strategy going forward.
With an inflation rate of over 5% in Europe and the US last year, buyers now have a better understanding that rates for Interpretation and Translation services must be increased in order to protect the supply chain and to ensure a more sustainable service.
2021 proved to be the beginning of the end for the pricing model which merged costs of translation technology development with per word rates which decline each year despite overall inflation. I think we all realized that this way of working not only hides the true value we bring to our clients as an industry but is unsustainable. We have also seen a large-scale shift to remote interpreting services, with only 30% of the volume predicted to return to face-to-face interpretation.
While this was driven by COVID-19 we believe that this shift will become permanent to offset the shortage of interpreters that has taken place across most of Europe and the US. Language access within Government and the Healthcare industry will continue to be an area of focus for thebigword, as we realise the importance of providing quality mission-critical services through our WordSynk platform.
At thebigword we look forward to what the next year will bring our employees, linguists, clients, and the industry as a whole.”
The full Insight from CEOs at Leading LSPs list, including thebigword Group, can be seen on the CSA Research website.
