Marsolutions Is the ATC’s Member of the Month

The ATC’s Member of the Month in April 2021 is Marsolutions, a specialist language service company set up in Spain and now based in the South Coast of England. We talked to Managing Director Beatriz Tennent and Commercial Director and ATC Vice-Chair Phil Tennent about continuing to build their family business in the middle of a tough, intensive year.

“We started the business over a decade ago, specialising in the electronic security industry, which is my own background, and 85-90% of our clients are still in that sector,” says Phil.

“Some clients have been with us for over a decade, but because of global developments in the manufacturing environment, we’re increasingly seeing clients and processes being consolidated through M&A, which reduces the opportunity to suppliers. A lot of manufacturing is also moving to the Far East, which also means changes to localization workflows.”

Spurred on by client industry consolidation and having identified a need to open up their specialisation, Marsolutions has over the past 12 months focused much more strongly on building a more rounded, complete service provision, and in establishing and communicating a more well-defined company brand.

“Developing and maintaining long-standing client relationships is key for us,” says Beatriz. “Corporate companies change management often, so continuous relationship-management has always been important. Our growth has largely been organic, and it’s been critical for us to listen to what clients need and working together to accommodate their wishes. Now, branching into new industries, we can make use of our technology expertise and solid supplier base to expand, whilst learning about new tools and services we can add to our portfolio.”

But it hasn’t been easy, running a family business together whilst home-schooling two children for the best part of a year – a tough time, but also an incredible learning experience and a milestone of change. “We learned a lot from the 2007 financial crisis, running our own company in Spain at the time, and maybe that’s helped us pull through this year as well,” explains Beatriz.

One of the key new elements in Marsolutions’ story this year has been the development of a quality management system and certification to ISO standards 9001, 17100 and 18587 with ATC Certification.

“We want to be recognised as a quality company, delivering a quality service, backed up by quality standards. ISO standards are something that our clients understand, but going through this process has also been hugely useful to us in streamlining our internal workflows and processes,” says Phil.

Further plans for extending ISO certification to information security, interpreting and legal translation are all in the cards for Marsolutions over the next two years.

Marsolutions joined the ATC as Accredited Member in 2019, and Phil quickly became involved in the ATC’s Council. Today, he serves as the association’s Vice-Chair.

“When we started with the serious building of the family business, we wanted to be accredited by a professional association,” explains Phil. “I have always been a member of different associations and networking groups in the industries I’ve been working in. To me, there is a huge amount of value in collaborative networking and understanding how our peers operate and what their challenges are.”

“I wasn’t sure what to expect of the ATC membership,” continues Beatriz, “but the amount of knowledge that’s in the ATC and its members is fantastic, and it motivates us to learn more.”