Using optimal methods, without being restrained by conventional approaches

Urban Connections assisted with the creation of Sansan Corporation’s 2022 Integrated Report (Japanese and English)

As a leading SaaS company domestically, Sansan Corporation offers services that solve business issues faced by both companies and individuals, by establishing innovative technology and original operations.

Generally, the flow for the translation and layout of documents is to finish one step before moving onto the next one. However while this helps to maintain the accuracy at each step, it can take a long time, and can make it difficult to envision the finished product or make speedy changes and edits.

To make an integrated report in particular, requires repeated confirmations and coordination across several departments of an enterprise. If a company were to decide “we need to speed up the production of the Japanese version so that we can produce an English version too” then this can put a strain on the people working on the report and have a large impact on the overall quality, creating headaches for the people in charge.

Therefore for this project, we adopted a method of working on the pages as they became available, updating the content of pages and sections as needed, until the content, translation, design and layout were fully completed.

Layout with translation in mind, translation with layout in mind

As if assembling two models of the same car side by side, redesigning and modifying them as necessary to perfect one for a Japanese release and one to be released internationally. This method requires information to be managed in detail, with close communication between stakeholders. Urban Connections used the customer’s chat tools to maintain close conversation and cooperation when working on the report, and we believe this was a major factor in the completion of the integrated report and the overall success of the project.

A team working within the company’s team, until the job was done

The Urban Connections internal team, formed to work on the translation and layout, worked as a single member of Sansan Corporation’s own integrated report team, as an additional layer of the operation, until the integrated report was fully formed to the standard we were aiming for. Due to this, we were present from the creation of the material to be included, repeatedly touching upon Sansan Corporation’s corporate values, and were able to approach the English translation based on this deeper understanding.