ACER realizes a 125% operational efficiency for translation overhead

ACER (Australian Council for Educational Research) is an independent educational research organization with offices in Adelaide, Brisbane, Dubai, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, London, Melbourne, New Delhi, Perth, and Sydney.  

Allion worked in close collaboration with the information technology arm of ACER to support the optimization, streamlining, and integration of ACER’s translation system and assessment management platform, with the goal to empower project staff with the ability to manage translation needs without IT involvement. 

Streamlined Integration  

Business Challenge  

ACER’s item bank and translation workflows were broken up across two systems. This required users to work across these two systems to complete translation tasks for a project. Additionally, a dedicated instance of the translation system was needed per project. IT was the only area with the ability to set up the required translation instance and re-import the translated items once completed. The IT process required infrastructure configuration and monitoring, and multiple data handoffs and checks in setting up the environment. This time-consuming task led to inefficiencies in operations management and process workflows as well as the emergence of business workarounds to avoid the need for translation set-up. 

Agile Integration  

The objective was to allow project users to create and manage translation needs without IT involvement. 
The solution was to remove the need for individually hosted instances by integrating the two systems. Allion implemented and delivered the integration harness in four months. 

Allion employed TypeScript and NodeJs frameworks for the development of an integration harness that provided a seamless user experience. This experience empowered staff to perform translation work and workflow activities, dictated by translation system, from within a single management account. 

The integration harness enabled the conception of project-specific translation pockets that use the translation system for a specific target language; it further supports progress tracking via updates on the management dashboard, easy identification of usable assessments, the export of translated items into XLIFF format, and more.  

Allion complied with ACER’s Secure Information Management Policies (ISO 27001/2 compliance). 

A statement by ACER’s CIO, Dr. Alisdair Daws: “Our partnership with Allion was a success; their team of experts enabled the successful integration between our existing translation workflow system and assessment management platform. This helped ACER increase its IT operational efficiency by up to 125% in translation work support.”  

Our Expertise  

Project Lead: Suresh Priyadarshana , proficient in Java, Spring, Spring Boot, Python, Node.js, Angular, TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, MySql, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SoapUI, JMeter, YourKit, Eclipse Memory Analyser, VisualVM, ELK stack, Splunk, AppDynamic, and more. With experience in the travel and tourism industry, logistics and retail, education, and advertising domain. 

Project Manager/Scrum: Gawesh Chithrarathne , certified in Software Processes and Agile Practices with over 7 years of experience managing projects across varying industries such as healthcare, food, music & entertainment, oil & gas, health & fitness, recruitment for over 15 startups and enterprise clients.  

Quality Assurance: Keshal Lakshika , certified in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), with over 6 years of experience in quality assurance and business analysis for clients based across Sweden, New Zealand, and Canada. 

Angular Development: Nimesh Anuradha , proficient in JavaScript-based frontend frameworks such as Angular, React, Vue, and FE technologies, backend technologies such as C#, .Net, .Net core, EF, SQL server, along with PHP and CMS platforms such as Laravel, Yii 2, CI, EPiServer, Umbraco, WordPress, Drupal. Nimesh has also worked across the healthcare, education, and transport sectors for clients based across Europe and South Asia.