XTRF Translation Management System

Review of XTRF

Kommentare: In operations, XTRF helps us to streamline workflows and automate file handling, thus increasing productivity. In Finance, it allows us to implement a well-organized credit control, thus reducing overdue payments. XTRF also has a Sales module for handling opportunities, however, we do not use it yet.

Vorteile:

XTRF is easy to set up and use. The UI is intuitive. Off the shelf, the product has a vast amount of functionalities, which can be customized either by users themselves or by using XTRF's customization service. One of the features we like most is business reporting. You can create reports about just any data in XTRF and even choose the way these data are visualized (pie chart, bar chart etc.) Apart from the software itself, XTRF has a great support team who are really motivated to help.

Nachteile:

XTRF recently introduced so called Smart Projects, which allow a higher degree of automation than Classic projects. However, if projects are complex (or chaotic), we think that Classic projects are better suited. It would be great if XTRF could merge all good things from both Smart and Classic projects into one single type. Adding to this, having Smart and Classic projects can also be confusing for Project Managers.

Good product but expensive with poor support

Vorteile:

XTRF provides excellent tools for project management and translation workflow. Its vendor database is superb and suppliers can update their data themselves, saving you valuable time. Reports are very detailed and customizable, providing you with an overview of your business.

Nachteile:

XTRF is very expensive and their customer support / customer success team is very slow. It takes ages to fix an issue or answer to a query.

Prohibitively expensive, price increase by more than 100 percent in 2023

Kommentare: With new products coming up in the TMS space XTRF now has to compete with companies that are much more nimble, have a better and more intuitive product and have support which is more effective, more skilled and more able. First level support is slow and anything more intricate, well, it isn't great, to put it very politely. Success Managers, well, that overblown name gives you an idea of what to expect.

Vorteile:

XTRF is generally an acceptable system. The logic of having a client portal, which most clients can't use because of their touchy firewalls and vendor portal is good, if now also common among a variety of alternative providers. The sales team was nice, but they usually are.

Nachteile:

XTRF has a CRM feature which you can use, but isn't very intuitive. That basically applies to the entire system. It is dated and you really need to get your head around it. I reached out to the [sensitive content hidden] with some queries and a complaint about the price increase and a query about two new items on my invoice, but he chose not to respond. That is fine, and that is his prerogative. But it is a good indicator of how XTRF values customers. My major gripe is the quality of communication. The price increase was announced in a poorly written email, with scant actual hard and fast details. They now have a sort of API hit system, which may be more familiar to people in the know, but is completely new to me. The result is that my bill for the project manager seats is now lower than the NEW supplemental costs incurred by this new API system and two new items on my bill which the [sensitive content hidden] decided not to explain to me. Overall the new system lacks transparency. You get a table with API hits and how they were generated. But in 2023 that includes hits for an employee who left the company in 2022 and that account has been dormant ever since. That might all be right, but the price has more than doubled, well, and that is not acceptable. XTRF was taken over by K1 private equity in 2021 and is now one group with XTM. The previous owner and founder sold up.

I love XTRF!

Vorteile:

What I like the most about XTRF is its ease of use, how fast it works, and how every button available is self-explanatory, just perfect.

Nachteile:

What I like the least about XTRF is that sometimes it bugs, or just disconnects randomly.

Clear Leader in the TMS industry

Vorteile:

Since the implementation of the XTRF our business gained great visibility over all key business units, this data empowers us when making curtail business decisions, such as sales, purchasing, automation and process. Productivity increased with continual work on automation. Training and onboarding time has also shorten significantly due to a well designed, easy user interface.

Nachteile:

If you want a bespoke and quality system then XTRF will deliver. But it is not a cheap & quick solution. In order to be able to customise XTRF entirely to our needs, we appointed an internal Technician, for example. So if you are hesitating, mapping out a long term plan for running the system will help, because XTRF should not be treated as cost but as an investment.