Hermes Award Voting
for EGA Board of Advisors
Lifetime and Technical Achievement
EGA’s Board of Advisors are the exclusive voters for the EGA’s Hermes Award in Localization Excellence in the Lifetime Achievement and Technical Achievement Categories. Please carefully read the nominee description below, and click the “Vote Now” button to make your selection. Voting will end once the final vote has been submitted, or when the voting ends on February 7, 2025.
Lifetime Achievement Nominees
-
Dr. Joel Snyder is known internationally as one of the world’s first “audio describers,” a pioneer in the field of Audio Description. Since 1981, he has introduced audio description techniques in over 40 states and 65 countries and has made thousands of live events, media projects and museums accessible to people who are blind or have vision loss. In 2019, Dr. Snyder was named a Fulbright Scholar to train audio describers for media in Greece over a four-week period in 2019 and conduct workshops in Malta and Ukraine; most recently (November 2024), he trained media describers in Uzbekistan, conducted media description workshops in North Macedonia and Serbia, and taught a media description seminar at the West University of Timisoara in Timisoara, Romania.
As Director of Described Media for the National Captioning Institute, a program founded by Dr. Snyder, he led a staff that produced description for dozens of feature films (broadcast here and abroad) and network series including, for the first time, “Sesame Street” broadcasts and its DVDs. He was a member of the American Foundation of the Blind's "expert panel" charged with reviewing guidelines for educational multi-media description and has been a member of several media access panels at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as well as the Disability Access Committee of the International Telecommunications Union and the Description Leadership Network of the Video Description Research and Development Center. In collaboration with the World Blind Union, Dr. Snyder conducted a survey of media description efforts worldwide determining that over 70 countries now enjoy some degree of media description activity.
Dr. Snyder is the President of Audio Description Associates, LLC (www.audiodescribe.com) and he serves as the Founding Director Emeritus of the Audio Description Project of the American Council of the Blind (https://adp.acb.org).
Dr. Snyder is the director of the Audio Description Institute which will conduct its 25th five-day session in March 2025. The Institute, now conducted virtually with a faculty of six including blind AD experts, is the foremost training platform for prospective media description writers. As such, he has helped hundreds of individuals develop the skills necessary to create audio description in way that are most meaningful. Most recently, OOONA has announced that its EDU platform will host Joel Snyder’s renowned training sessions, making them widely available to media localization professionals worldwide. In its press release, Andrew Garb, Global Account Manager at OOONA, writes: “We are thrilled to have Dr Snyder join our list of tutors on the EDU platform and help develop an audio description course tailored to our users.”
In 1995, in an effort to build awareness of audio description, Dr. Snyder coordinated the world's first gathering of audio description workers in a conference at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Since then, Dr. Snyder went on to found the American Council of the Blind's Audio Description Project, a seminal source of information and activity regarding media description: the BADIE program (Benefits of Audio Description in Education)-a contest for blind students reviewing media description programs, the annual AD Award and AD Conference, and the award-winning ADP website: https://adp.acb.org. He is a frequent guest of podcasts, network programs, and at conferences speaking on media description, most recently at the Languages and the Media Conference in Budapest and the ARSAD-Advanced Research Seminar on Audio Description in Barcelona. In 2025 he will appear as an invited speaker at the TAV25 media accessibility conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina and at the Media For All Conference in Hong Kong.
-
Under his leadership, PFT introduced the industry’s first global Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system specifically designed for M&E. This innovation has driven operational efficiencies for studios, streaming platforms, and broadcasters worldwide, enabling the seamless scaling of localization services across languages, regions, and genres.
Pioneering Innovation in Content Localization:
Ramki’s commitment to integrating cutting-edge technology into creative processes has been a cornerstone of his success. Through the CLEAR® and CLEAR® AI platforms, he has spearheaded AI/ML-driven localization solutions that streamline dubbing, subtitling, and media translation workflows. These advancements have significantly reduced turnaround times while maintaining exceptional quality.
PFT’s localization capabilities include:
- Delivery of over 2 million minutes of subtitles and 1 million dubs annually, establishing expertise in Indian Regional Languages (IRL) and beyond.
- Automatic deliveries to 450+ destinations powered by AI, handling 14 million assets and making 2.5 million decisions through CLEAR®.
These innovations have positioned PFT as a preferred localization partner for global giants such as Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
In 2024, under Ramki’s guidance, PFT fortified its partnerships with major OTT platforms, with a particular focus on high-demand genres such as anime and non-English series. His vision has ensured that localized content resonates with diverse audiences, leveraging AI for both speed and cultural accuracy.
Ramki’s leadership has garnered numerous accolades, including:
- 7 Product of the Year Awards
- The prestigious AWS ISV Innovation Cup
- 13+ unique technology patents in AI and media supply chain innovation
- The 2024 NAB Product of the Year Award for the CLEAR® AI Clip, which redefines multimedia archive management through an active library approach.
- Amongst the Top 100 Leaders in Localization awarded by EGA.For his unparalleled contributions to the localization space and the broader M&E industry, Ramki Sankaranarayanan is a deserving recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Localization.
These efforts have cultivated a skilled talent pool and positioned PFT as a leading center for skill development and innovation in the localization industry.
Through these efforts, Ramki has played a pivotal role in elevating localization and accessibility from a supporting function to a strategic enabler of global content distribution, ensuring that its importance is recognized across the AV industry.
Technical Achievement Nominees
-
Description:
Deepdub's Emotion-based Text-to-Speech technology (eTTS™) is an AI-driven advanced dubbing and localization solution that produces authentic emotionally expressive voices at scale by incorporating emotional intelligence into the speech synthesis process. While traditional text-to-speech simply converts written text into spoken words and results in mildly robotic voices, eTTS™ analyzes the context and emotions behind a script, adjusting tone, pitch, and rhythm to deliver a wide range of emotions in over 130 languages.
Market Purpose:
In dubbing, voice-over work, and localization, maintaining the emotional integrity of an original piece of content is crucial to ensuring consistent audience experiences. It is, however, time-consuming and costly to achieve at scale, particularly with tight deadlines and multiple language requirements. Frustrated with the shortcomings of existing solutions, Deepdub designed eTTS™ to solve this problem, automating most of the voice-over process instantly while preserving the emotional impact of the dubbed content, reducing turnaround times and costs and delivering consistently high-quality dubbing content. Not only does eTTS™ enable media and entertainment companies to scale to new regions more quickly and efficiently, but the technology also ensures consistency in the emotional impact of performance across regions, connecting with global audiences to an unprecedented degree.Use Case:
Yes. The technology is being used by a wide range of major players in the media and entertainment industry, including one of the largest children’s entertainment networks in the US, Kartoon Channel. With a global market reach of 61 territories and 1.8 billion people, Kartoon Channel needed an efficient, cost-effective localization solution to further scale operations for Spanish-Castilian and Italian audiences. With emotional depth and voice authenticity crucial for children’s programming, Kartoon Channel needed a way to do this while maintaining the charm of their animated TV shows. By deploying Deepdub’s eTTS™, Kartoon Channel transformed its localization process, achieving a remarkable 75% reduction in turnaround time, completing 34 episodes of two animated TV shows in just 14 days. With rapid turnaround times and a faster time to market, the technology was designed to support high volumes of content, enabling the scalability Kartoon Channel needed. Additionally, the automation offered with eTTS™ resulted in a 70% decrease in localization costs and streamlined workflows, allowing for greater flexibility in handling adjustments, edits, and iterations than previously possible with traditional dubbing. While achieving unprecedented optimization and speed in Kartoon Channel’s localization processes, eTTS™ also preserved the magic of the original shows by automatically casting diverse, emotionally rich voices to retain character-specific nuances and connect authentically with new audiences. Kartoon Channel’s collaboration with Deepdub is a testament to how eTTS™ is setting a new standard of operational efficiency and product quality in localization. In the coming year Kartoon Channel projects that with Deepdub’s AI dubbing it will expand pay TV service reach by 67%, from three to five new countries, extend coverage into five additional FAST channel markets, significantly increasing access to emerging media landscapes, and broaden VOD availability by 50%, from two to three countries.
Development Process:
The development of Deepdub's Emotion-based Text-to-Speech technology (eTTS™) was meticulously planned and executed, beginning with the preparation of a rich training dataset that included a diverse range of emotional speech across multiple languages. This foundational step was crucial for training the models to authentically replicate human emotional subtleties in speech.
Adopting novel approaches from signal processing, text understanding, and computer-vision, the team developed cutting-edge techniques specifically for the audio domain, enhancing the model’s ability to interpret emotional context from those modalities.
Extensive computational resources were then employed to train the deep learning models, focusing on generating speech that is not only natural but also emotionally resonant.
Finally, the phase of continuous improvement involved expanding the number of languages supported, enhancing the naturalness and emotional depth of the voice outputs, and broadening the speech domains to enhance versatility across different types of content. Additionally, Deepdub refined advanced controls for timbre, accent, duration, and performance reference, allowing precise customization of voice outputs to match specific character needs.
Alongside these advancements, we developed a comprehensive suite of inference tools designed to integrate seamlessly into production environments, ensuring the efficient scaling and deployment of the eTTS™ technology in real-world applications. This holistic and innovative approach to development, coupled with a robust enterprise solution strategy, has set a new standard in the localization industry, making Deepdub’s eTTS™ a pivotal solution in AI-driven voice technology.
The company’s enterprise approach emphasizes scalability, integration capabilities, and comprehensive support, ensuring that large organizations can effectively implement and benefit from eTTS™ technology across their extensive operations. -
Description:
GlobalLink Media Behive is TransPerfect's Media Asset Workflows and Distribution platform. This licensable solution is designed for production studios and distributors, combining automated workflows with hybrid workflows including services provided by teams of global professionals.
Market Purpose:
Behive's vision is to empower media and entertainment producers to effortlessly market, promote, sell, and flawlessly deliver their content to broadcasters, theaters and platforms, worldwide. By alleviating the burdens of security, infrastructure, and technical complexity in a rapidly evolving consumer technology landscape—such as advancements in TVs, streaming devices, and home entertainment systems—Behive enables creators to focus on their artistic endeavors.
Use Case:BeHive is a powerful tool used daily by approximately 50 TransPerfect Media clients, providing a comprehensive suite of features to streamline media management. The primary use cases include:
o Ingest and QC of new materials. Clients independently trigger the ingestion of their assets through the Source Request mechanism, allowing third parties to handle the upload. The QC process is a blend of automated and manual review. Auto QC leverages AI-driven tools to identify assets, while Human QC verifies and enhances these results by adding further details, such as defect detection.
o Asset Management. BeHive enables clients to easily search and browse their media assets via a user-friendly web platform. Each video comes with a web proxy for streaming, allowing clients to preview content. Clients have full autonomy over managing their assets, including editing, moving, or deleting them. They can also adjust the storage tier, transitioning assets from “hot” storage (for active use) to more cost-effective cold storage, including cloud-based archives.
o Asset Transcoding & Delivery. Clients can deliver assets directly to their customers or buyers through a “Straight Delivery” order. They can also send watermarked, time-limited viewing links to potential buyers or journalists. Additionally, BeHive offers tools for creating high-quality photograms and video clips for marketing purposes. Clients also have the ability to trigger transcoding of their assets into various required formats.
The platform is designed to offer a seamless, intuitive user experience, allowing clients to manage most of their daily tasks independently. For more complex needs, a dedicated project manager is available to provide support. By using BeHive, clients benefit from enhanced efficiency, fast turnaround times, and competitive pricing.Development Process:
Behive was organically developed from the ground up by TransPerfect Media, leveraging the latest cloud technologies, development practices, and the company's audio-visual expertise. Its agile development process, featuring continuous integration and releases, allows for a swift response to client requirements. Free from legacy constraints, Behive permits rapid and flexible evolution of the platform. -
Description:
3Play Media’s AI Dubbing technology represents a breakthrough in the field of content localization, combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence with expert human oversight to revolutionize how global audiences access and experience media at a fraction of the cost. This innovative solution redefines traditional dubbing workflows by integrating advanced machine translation, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and audio extraction models while incorporating critical expert human discernment throughout, delivering a product that is as scalable and efficient as it is accurate and authentic.
Core Components of the Technology
1. Advanced AI and Machine Learning Models
At the heart of AI Dubbing is a system of connected AI and machine learning models tuned to the customer's content combined with humans who specialize in transcription and translation to ensure the last mile of quality is delivered at each step. AI has made leaps in generating great outputs for transcription and translation, but a human is still best to provide oversight to the final quality to ensure we capture the tone, intent, and emotional depth of spoken dialogue while adapting it to culturally appropriate equivalents in the target language. This is achieved through:
- Tuned Automatic Speech Recognition: Tuned on millions of minutes of truth data, our transcription has the highest measured accuracy across a variety of content types. Human corrected transcripts are then fed back into our system to ensure our engine is continuously improving.
- Glossary Supported Machine Translation: We ensure customers can provide a glossary of do not translate and accepted translations through the machine translation process, which further reduces turnaround time on dubbing.
- Large Language Models (LLMs) For Translation Correction: We also deploy LLMs to further correct machine translation outputs such as proper gender usage.
- Audio Source Separation Model: For lower tier media content, you might not have stems available, so we automatically extract dialogue from the video and re-mix the target-language audio track back in with the non-speech audio for a seamless audio experience.
- Text-to-Speech (TTS) Synthesis: Leverage best-in-class TTS models for each language. Humans are brought in to review pronunciation and timing of model outputs to ensure consistent quality from start to finish.
- [Future] Speech-to-Speech: Currently we are testing speech-to-speech models to further enhance pronunciation and eventually emotionality in the TTS output.
2. Human-in-the-Loop Approach
Unlike fully automated solutions, AI Dubbing incorporates human expertise at critical points in the workflow to ensure quality and precision. This hybrid model enables:
- Context-sensitive adjustments to translations.
- Quality assurance for pronunciation, character consistency, and lip synchronization.
- Mitigation of AI errors, ensuring a polished and natural output.
3. Seamless Workflow Integration
The technology is built to integrate seamlessly into existing localization pipelines, allowing media companies, broadcasters, and OTT platforms to incorporate dubbing into their workflows without overhauling their systems. Features include:
- API integration for automation.
- Support for multiple file formats and platforms.
- Scalable infrastructure for handling high volumes of content.Market Purpose:
Net new content production is down over 25% in the M&E market, which means studios are exploring alternative paths to revenue growth. Traditionally, only the most popular shows were localized given the high costs of legacy dubbing. 3Play Media’s AI Dubbing technology was developed to make it possible for lower value content to have a path to localization and additional revenue for studios.
Why 3Play Media Bridges The Localization Gap
The value of 3Play Media’s AI Dubbing solution lies in its ability to address the core challenges of traditional localization methods: high costs, slow turnarounds, and scalability limitations. As media consumption transcends borders, ensuring that content is accessible and engaging for diverse audiences has become a critical challenge. Traditional dubbing methods, while effective, are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and often prohibitively expensive—especially for organizations with tight production schedules or limited budgets. AI Dubbing addresses these challenges by:
1. Accelerating Turnaround Times
A typical dubbing project that could take weeks is significantly shortened, enabling faster global releases and supporting time-sensitive projects like live broadcasts or simultaneous global premieres.
2. Reducing Costs
Automation reduces the reliance on large teams of voice actors, editors, and engineers, offering substantial cost savings without compromising quality.
3. Enhancing Accessibility and Cultural Resonance
Beyond linguistic translation, the workflow ensures cultural and emotional authenticity, creating localized content that resonates deeply with its audience. This is particularly impactful for markets where cultural nuances significantly influence audience engagement.
Advancing the Localization Industry
AI Dubbing is transformative not just for companies adopting it but for the broader localization and accessibility ecosystem. It democratizes access to high-quality dubbing by making it accessible to organizations of all sizes, from major networks to independent creators, enabling them to compete effectively in the global marketplace. Furthermore, it addresses the industry’s scalability concerns, making it possible to dub large content libraries for multiple languages simultaneously—a necessity in today’s multilingual media landscape.
This innovation:
- Empowers Global Reach: By enabling faster and more affordable localization, AI Dubbing allows content creators to expand into emerging markets with diverse linguistic needs.
- Drives Audience Engagement: By delivering emotionally authentic, culturally relevant dubs, it builds stronger connections with audiences.
- Streamlines Operations: Organizations can focus resources on creative and strategic initiatives instead of being weighed down by traditional localization bottlenecks.
As the media landscape evolves, the ability to provide fast, affordable, and high-quality localized content has become a strategic imperative for companies looking to maintain a competitive edge. 3Play Media’s AI Dubbing stands out by not only solving existing problems but also positioning its adopters for long-term success in a globalized content market.
Use Case:3Play Media’s AI Dubbing technology is currently used by leading media companies, content creators, and broadcasters to localize their recorded content for international audiences. This includes dubbing for movies, series, documentaries, and other pre-recorded media for markets across Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Content Localization for Global Streaming Platforms:
OTT platforms and streaming services leverage AI Dubbing to translate vast libraries of movies, TV shows, and original content into multiple languages. The product’s ability to balance automation and human oversight ensures that localized content maintains cultural and emotional authenticity, resonating with audiences worldwide.
Sports Broadcast Highlights:
AI Dubbing is adopted by broadcasters and networks to localize recorded sports highlights. This enables them to deliver compelling multilingual content to global sports fans.
Documentaries and Live Events:
Broadcasters and production studios use AI Dubbing to dub documentaries and live event broadcasts, ensuring that these culturally rich narratives are accessible to international audiences.
Development Process:
The development of AI Dubbing by 3Play Media was driven by the need for a faster, more cost-effective solution in the field of media localization. The technology was specifically developed to serve the audio-visual localization industry, addressing challenges such as the high cost of traditional dubbing, slow turnaround times, and the complexity of ensuring quality across multiple languages.
AI Dubbing represents a significant improvement over previous technologies. Traditional dubbing relied heavily on human voice actors, which made it expensive and time-consuming. AI Dubbing, on the other hand, integrates voice synthesis technology with human-in-the-loop review, creating a solution that combines automation with the nuanced understanding of human expertise – effectively an on-demand voice actor. This improvement allows for more scalability and efficiency in producing high-quality dubbed content.
The technology also stands out because of its ability to understand context, emotion, and tone, making it superior to earlier AI dubbing solutions that often lacked these nuances. The incorporation of human verification in the workflow ensures that the final product meets the high standards expected by global audiences. -
Description:
At the core of XL8’s solutions is MediaCAT, a powerful AI-driven platform specifically trained on high-quality, hand curated, colloquial data, which is essential for language processing tasks such as media localization. It makes the localization process faster and far more cost-effective, while maintaining the quality expected. XL8 has taken huge strides with the MediaCAT platform, adapting it to meet the demands of live environments like broadcast, sports, news, global live streaming events and meetings (conferences, education forums etc.) through its EventCAT service.
Utilizing AI-driven tools like low latency AI-STT (Speech-to-Text) and machine translation, XL8’s EventCAT service has been fine-tuned for precision and speed, turning spoken language into text with high levels of accuracy. In these situations, timing is critical and our STT tool ensures captions are generated immediately. These features cut down the time between content airing and global distribution / streaming, making it accessible to a global audience almost instantly.
EventCAT provides multi-Language Support (41 languages), which enables broadcasters and news or event presenters to deliver content in several languages at once. Not only does it deliver accurate translations and captions, including the use of glossaries, it ensures captions are synchronized with the live feed and provides transcript downloads upon conclusion. MediaCAT was designed to handle large-scale media content management, making it capable of supporting the complexities of high-volume media environments and EventCAT takes advantage of this scalability, making it adaptable to both small-scale and large international live events or broadcasts.
Designed to integrate seamlessly with global streaming and conferencing platforms alike, EventCAT delivers real-time translations and captions for all meetings participants. Also tailored for in-person events, it generates live translated subtitles to display on-screen. And for live streams and broadcasts, EventCAT creates subtitles for multilingual viewing. Since it’s built on the MediaCAT platform that has been trained on high-quality, colloquial data, the EventCAT service excels in contextual understanding and regional nuances. Imagine the wider audience reach, accessibility, and improved viewer engagement that this can bring. By providing subtitles in multiple languages, news channels, event producers, and organizations can cater to a global audience and break down language barriers.Market Purpose:
For content creators trying to expand their global reach and accessibility for live news broadcasts, events, and meetings, real-time translation is essential. It means that viewers with different languages can have access to content simultaneously and have the same experience, regardless of language barriers. Subtitles in a language of choice can also make content more accessible for viewers who are hard of hearing, which offers a more inclusive experience.
According to Business Research Insights, the global interpretation market was valued at US$ 9.49236 Billion in 2022, with an expected CAGR of 10.76% from 2022 to 2031, reaching US$ 26.6 Billion by 2031. The Interpretation market has been throttled by the cost-prohibitive and limited supply of interpreters, and with the addition of AI-powered platforms like EventCAT, corporations, education institutes and schools, non-profit and government organizations, houses of worship, event companies, and broadcasters can deliver accurate and cost-effective translations, connecting audiences and participants in real-time.
Traditional methods can’t keep pace with the demand for fast and efficient translations. To make matters worse, there is minimal growth in the number of new linguists entering the field, creating a capacity bottleneck.EventCAT bridges the gap between increasing global localized content demands and the challenges of traditional translation methods.
For businesses, broadcasters, and content creators, offering real-time translation helps them connect with a wider audience and improve the overall customer experience. By allowing people who speak different languages to access content live, companies can reach new markets and grow their audience. This not only boosts engagement but also gives them a strong competitive advantage.
Use Case:Real-Time English-to-Spanish Captioning Debuts in Tennessee
XL8 provided its AI-powered translation engine for the real-time translation of closed captions from English to Spanish for a NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0) test bed station in Cookeville, Tennessee, part of Public Media Venture Group (PMVG). This is a significant milestone in audience inclusivity and accessibility for public broadcasters.
This pioneering project is a joint effort by XL8, DigiCAP, PMVG, RAPA, and PBS station WCTE, and leverages artificial intelligence to detect, translate, and integrate multilingual closed captions into live broadcasts.
Through its large language model technology, XL8 facilitates highly accurate English closed captions in a TV program and converts them into Spanish. XL8’s translation engine is incorporated into the LiveCAP service (provided by DigiCAP), which offers translations to many different languages, with this project focused on Spanish for the time being.
It’s very simple for viewers to use and the LiveCAP service requires no additional hardware for viewers with ATSC 3.0-enabled devices. They use the built-in accessibility menu on NextGen TV sets to switch caption languages.
This initiative showcases that potential to expand multilingual programming across new markets at a fraction of the cost of traditional human translation. Viewers can experience this first-hand by tuning into WCTE PBS channel 35 (W35DZ-D) and selecting Spanish captions for the primary channel (CH 35.1).
Multilingual Connections at SK AI Summit 2024
In November 2024, EventCAT helped make SK AI Summit in Seoul a connected experience. The SK AI Summit is one of the most important platforms for discussing the future of artificial intelligence and showcases presentations from global visionaries. The summit brought together over 30,000 participants (online and in-person) and EventCAT provided translated subtitles on large venue screens, with synchronized captions for all virtual attendees.
EventCAT brought the summit to life and during panel discussions and Q&A, participants who spoke and understood different languages could fully engage, thanks to translated captions. It became about connecting and engaging with the ideas, not just following or listening to a conversation.
Technology doesn’t need to be complicated to make an impact. With XL8 and EventCAT, it’s a powerful way to bring people together, helping to break down barriers and support people by creating connections.
Development Process:
The development process started by exploring the unique needs of live events, working closely with clients, event organizers, and broadcasters. This means digging into the technical demands of live streams, tackling latency challenges, and figuring out how to adapt translations in real time. It also means testing in simulated and actual live environments to ensure that the system performs under the pressures of live.
XL8’s engineering team has tailored and optimized the MediaCAT platform for EventCAT to thrive in the fast-paced environment of live events and live broadcasts. Latency capabilities were also top priority of the development process, re-engineered to deliver low latency times so that translations are delivered nearly instantaneously. The team has also incorporated different streaming and broadcast protocols, so that EventCAT is adaptable across various platforms, distribution channels, and devices.
Glossaries created for the translation process help to improve the quality and consistency of translated content.The XL8 engineering team have customized and adapted language glossaries to be applied in near real-time, which is particularly important in live news broadcasting and live events where quick and accurate translations are required. For example: in live environments, translation systems must accurately match and apply glossary terms within the appropriate context to avoid errors or misunderstandings.
XL8 is also continuously incorporating user feedback and release updates to refine the platform further. -
Description:
One of a kind project management tool designed particularly for the localisation industry where studios- especially small to mid-size studios engage into mundane yet complicated daily tasks of juggling between artist scheduling to meeting client requirements to complete an assigned job.
Imagine if you had a tool that could streamline your day to day atsks, book appointments with artists, enable invoicing and schedule AOR signatures as well? Wouldn't life be simple?
GrapezGrid is a comprehensive SaaS platform designed to enhance and streamline various business operations. It integrates project management, customer relationship management (CRM), and appointment scheduling into one unified system. GrapezGrid aims to improve organizational efficiency, foster better client relationships, and facilitate seamless communication through robust and customizable tools.
Key Features:
1.Project Management: Includes task management, Gantt charts, time tracking, and
collaboration tools.
2.Appointment Booking: Features calendar integration, automated reminders, and an online booking system.
3.CRM Functionality: Comprises contact management, sales pipeline management, email campaigns, and customer support.
4.Report Generation: Offers custom reports, export options, and real-time data.
5.Email notifications for End Clients: Provides easy configuration, secure
communication, and support for notifications using custom domain emails.
6.User Roles and Permissions: Defines user roles and controls access using role based access control systems.
7.Mobile App Access: Allows management of all features on the go with real-time notifications.
8.Analytics Dashboard: Provides advanced analytics with customizable widgets.Market Purpose:
GrapezGrid addresses the growing need for efficient management tools in the corporate sector. It serves businesses of all sizes, from small enterprises to large corporations, by
providing a unified platform for project management, CRM, and scheduling. The primary purpose of GrapezGrid is to solve common business challenges such as disorganized project tracking, ineffective customer relationship management, and inefficient
appointment scheduling.
By offering a centralized and customizable solution, GrapezGrid helps businesses enhance productivity, improve client communication, and achieve better organizational alignment.
Use Case:GrapezGrid is currently in use by an audio localisation studio and can be used by several companies across various industries.
For example:
• Audio Localization Company: An audio localization company uses GrapezGrid to manage their complex projects that involve multiple languages and regions.
They benefit from the project management tools to assign tasks to translators and voice actors, track project milestones, and ensure timely delivery. The sales management functionality helps them maintain relationships with global clients, manage contracts, and handle support tickets efficiently. Additionally, the reporting tools provide detailed insights into project performance, helping the company optimize their workflows and improve client satisfaction.
• Marketing Agency: A mid-sized marketing agency can use GrapezGrid to manage their client projects, track deadlines, and schedule meetings with clients. The agency benefits from the customizable dashboards that provide real-time insights into project progress and client interactions.
• Healthcare Provider: A healthcare provider can use GrapezGrid's appointment booking module to streamline patient scheduling and manage staff availability efficiently. The platform's flexibility and integration capabilities make it suitablefor diverse environments and use cases.
These use cases highlight how GrapezGrid can be adapted to meet the unique needs of different industries and environments.
Development Process:
The development of GrapezGrid followed an iterative and user-centric approach. The process included the following stages:
1. Market Research and Requirement Gathering: Conducted extensive research to identify the pain points faced by businesses in project management, CRM, and appointment scheduling.
Our aim was to gather detailed requirements from potential users and stakeholders. This phase was crucial for achieving clarity and mutual understanding between the development team and the clients. It involved extensive meetings, discussions, and documentation to ensure that both sides were on the same page regarding the project's objectives and scope. Understanding the pain points and needs of businesses was essential to shaping GrapezGrid’s features and functionality.
2. Design & Mock-ups
Interactive UI Design: Once the requirements were clear, the design phase began. We created interactive and professional UI designs that illustrated the user-friendly flow of GrapezGrid. These mock-ups helped stakeholders visualize the final product and provided a blueprint for the development team.
User Experience: A significant emphasis was placed on designing an intuitive and seamless user experience to ensure that users could easily navigate and utilize the platform's features.
Finalizing Designs: After the UI designs were approved, we developed a prototype or demo of GrapezGrid. This prototype allowed stakeholders to experience the look and feel of the application on both web and mobile platforms.
Front-end Freeze: The front-end design was finalized and frozen at this stage to maintain consistency during development.
3. MVP Development: Developed a minimum viable product (MVP) based on the research findings and tested it with a group of beta users.
Technology Stack: With client approval, the development phase began. We selected the best-suited technologies to build GrapezGrid, ensuring scalability, security, and performance.
4. Feedback Integration: Collected feedback from beta users and incorporated their suggestions to refine the features and functionality of the platform.
Client Feedback: Stakeholders provided feedback on the prototype, suggesting changes and additional features as needed. This iterative feedback loop ensured that the final product would meet their expectations and requirements.
Approval: Development proceeded only after obtaining confirmation from stakeholders on the required changes.
5. Agile Methodologies: Employed agile methodologies to ensure continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs
6. Focus Areas: Prioritized user experience design, scalability, security, and integration capabilities to create a robust and reliable platform.
7. Deployment Final Testing and UAT: Before deployment, GrapezGrid underwent rigorous testing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to ensure all features worked as intended and met the specified requirements.
Training: We provided training sessions to help users understand how to effectively use GrapezGrid.
8. Launch: Finally, we assisted with the deployment of GrapezGrid on the clients' platforms, ensuring a smooth transition and successful launch.
9. Upgrades & Updates
Ongoing Development: We continued to support clients by providing Phase 2 development and product upgrades. This included adding new features and enhancements based on the latest industry trends and client feedback.
Competitive Advantage: Our goal was to help clients keep GrapezGrid up-to-date and competitive in the market, ensuring they could leverage the latest functionalities to enhance their business operations.
This detailed development process ensured that GrapezGrid was built with precision, met client expectations, and delivered a high-quality user experience. If you need further details or adjustments, feel free to let me know!