Many entrepreneurs have been advised to launch their companies with the urgency of someone whose house has gone up in flames. Phyllis Smith had the misfortune of experiencing this situation more literally – as her nonprofit employer underwent a merger, and she was about to launch her own company, her home burned to the ground.
Smith and her husband, Doug, spent more than 18 months haggling with their insurance company, which delayed the launch of
LSP Ware, a cloud-based program that matches linguists with organizations that need a translator or interpreter.
LSP Ware was written by Doug, founder of the software development company Xseena Group, to replace an older system with a trio of hassles: cumbersome paper bills generated for language-service providers, mystery checks mailed to interpreters and administrative exceptions created by scheduling.
The program allows organizations to log in online, post jobs or search for providers. Meanwhile, interpreters log in separately, and can search for and accept jobs online, or even connect to the site with a mobile device to find directions to the jobsite. To date, Smith’s clients seem glad to have tried the program – one even wrote to thank her for a well-organized bill.
Already developing a plan to nationalize LSP Ware’s user base, Smith also hopes to expand to users in other industries, which may one day include salons or other service providers. For the moment, however, she’s intent on cornering “a very niche market.”
“There are about 2,000 language service providers in the U.S. as of the 2007 economic census,” Smith says. “A lot of things are done very manually in this business – we’re trying to change that.”
By Robin Donovan
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.