Redefining RWS

The last few weeks have marked an exciting milestone in RWS’s long history. Ian El-Mokadem, who joined as CEO in June 2021, unveiled RWS’s new purpose, growth strategy and values – the result of a six month project involving thousands of colleagues. The announcement redefines who we are as a business, what we do and where we choose to play. 

 

It’s a landmark occasion in our development, and will enable us to realize the opportunities ahead of us and shape our future as we come together as One RWS. 

 

We talked to Ian about his experiences over the past few months and to find out more about the future direction of the company.

It’s been an incredible journey since I joined RWS in 2021. Being new to the industry, I’ve been very much in a ‘listening and learning’ mode – speaking to clients, colleagues, shareholders, advisers and partners daily about what they love about the company, our strengths, weaknesses, and how we can build an even stronger business. 

 

What struck me almost immediately is that we have a fantastic opportunity before us. We have an incredibly talented and diverse global team, industry-leading technology, and an extensive and impressive range of clients – including 90 of the world’s top 100 brands – who rely heavily on us to take their businesses global. Our clients are, and must always be, our top priority – beyond everything else. And that’s why our new strategy focuses on them and includes significant levels of investment to ensure that we continue to have the best offerings in the markets that we serve.

Our purpose is simple – to unlock global understanding. Helping people to understand each other across cultures and languages is at the very heart of what we do. The fact that we are a global business is something that we are very proud of and it’s also very important. We serve many of the world’s most successful global businesses and we have to be able to serve them wherever and whenever they need our help. We chose the word ‘unlock’ because it describes the often complex combination of client understanding, technical understanding and cultural understanding that’s key to the solutions we offer.

 

Our purpose is our guiding North Star. It’s not a strapline or a campaign – it’s something much, much deeper. It gives us a sense of direction above and beyond our day-to-day responses to client needs. It provides a picture of what success looks like so we can focus our efforts, channel our resources, and get a little closer to achieving it every day.

 

Everything we do at RWS – from our culturally insightful localization and multilingual data analysis, to our technologies and the people who make it all happen – puts us in a unique position to facilitate understanding. And as we unlock global understanding, we’re not only helping clients succeed – we’re helping our world to connect. I hope and believe that this a truly worthwhile purpose that will unite us as One RWS and encourage people to want to be part of our global team.

It’s very important that companies take a step back from time to time to understand how markets and client needs are changing and to ensure that we are positioning the business for future success. 

 

The world is clearly a very different place to the one it was when our company started life back in 1958 and the Group has changed substantially in that time too. But the qualities that defined us then are still at the heart of who we are today. A love of language. A passion for innovation. A belief in the power of shared understanding. In these times of change, it’s especially important for us to share a clear understanding of our identity and direction as an organization, as well as making clear choices about where we will focus our activity in the years ahead.

Let me start by explaining why it’s so important to launch our new values alongside our purpose and strategy. Our strategy is largely about what we will do in the coming years. Just as important to me is how we do them. Our new values give everyone at RWS clear guidance as to the behaviours that will underpin our success. They also underpin our company’s culture and the type of positive working environment that I believe we all want to see at RWS. 

 

It’s important to mention that it’s not just me or the Executive Team who have come up with these values. We’ve involved thousands of colleagues – from right across the business – to find those common traits that are most closely associated with continuing to do a great job for our clients. It’s a process that involved a lot of soul searching. The result is a set of values that I hope and believe will bring us all together to achieve our shared goals in a way we can all be proud of.

 

First, we partner, meaning that we play as one team – with colleagues, clients and suppliers. 

 

Second, we pioneer – shaping the future of our industry and always offering our clients the solutions that are best for them by combining the best of our expertise and technology. 

 

Third, we progress – we all need to choose to adopt a positive attitude, and to be focused on growth and solving problems. 

 

Finally, and importantly, we deliver. Keeping our promises to our clients and to each other is the very essence of a successful business and my ambition is that our reputation for delivering the highest quality and most valued services to our clients is second to none in our industry. That commitment to delivery to all of our stakeholders applies to everyone at RWS – whether we work in a directly client facing role or in any of our support teams like Language EXperience Delivery (LXD), Finance, HR or our small Head Office.

Our growth model is focused on five key areas – the first of which is building long-term client relationships. As a trusted partner, our clients know they can rely on us to keep our promises and deliver tailored support that meets a broad range of needs. It’s important that we continue to listen to our clients and build strong relationships that stand the test of time.

 

Deepening our cultural and technical expertise is also an important enabler of our growth. The value of our linguistic expertise is enhanced by our deep understanding of client industries and local cultures – underpinned by our expertise in content, our rich data networks, and talented people.

 

Deploying our unique technology and AI will be increasingly essential for our clients and ourselves in handling the explosion of content that we are all experiencing in our daily lives. Our capabilities are underpinned by our pioneering Language Weaver AI machine translation proposition, market-leading translation management and productivity tools like Trados, and our content technologies.

 

Developing our portfolio of services has created the resilient and diverse company that we are today. As a well-run business with a strong balance sheet, we are in a strong and flexible position to invest in our future growth. We will continue to develop our own technologies, products and services, and enhance our capabilities through strategic acquisitions and partnerships. 

 

In a world facing increasing inflationary pressures, we have to get better at leveraging our global reach and scale. We can offer nuanced cultural insight through our global reach, and we can deliver work smartly for our clients – offering 24/7 delivery through a blend of human expertise and technology, and building economies of scale to work more cost-effectively and profitably. We have to seek out every opportunity to work more efficiently by simplifying our business wherever we can and sharing best practices across our teams.

Put simply – we’re a world-leading provider of technology-enabled language, content and intellectual property services. Through content transformation and multilingual data analysis, our unique combination of technology and cultural expertise helps our clients to grow by ensuring they are understood anywhere, in any language.

 

Let’s dive into that a little deeper. Content and information is at the very heart of everything we do. In general, we don’t ‘create’ content for our clients – that’s what they do best. Our role is to transform it – and we do this in all sorts of ways: by translating and transcreating, localizing and optimizing, annotating and labelling, analyzing and advising, and by providing tools to help our clients manage all of that content. While the roles we perform vary greatly, they all work towards a common outcome – breaking down barriers to communication and understanding so that our clients can connect with audiences, solve problems, and grow their businesses anywhere in the world. 

 

While it’s been a busy few months, I have to say I’m incredibly proud of the result – a direction that that will no doubt fuel the next phase of our international growth. 

 

A big thank you to everyone that has participated in this journey!