As a remote company at the forefront of translation technology, OnTheGoSystems is embracing AI tools to revolutionize our workflows and drive innovation.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been transforming the workplace for some time now. With the recent release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, we are witnessing the transformative power of AI in our daily work.
Powered by a large language model, ChatGPT uses artificial intelligence to understand and generate human-like text. Ask it to write a story, tell you about rocket science, or for personal advice – it always has an answer. And while ChatGPT has its limitations, the advancements in AI show us just how crucial it is to stay ahead of the curve.
At OnTheGoSystems, we can’t (and won’t) deny that machines have evolved in their ability to plan, reason, communicate, and learn. Instead, we are choosing to leverage AI’s potential to work faster and better.
OnTheGoSystems’ Teams: Tapping into the Power of AI
In the last months, we’ve noticed that AI tools like ChatGPT have numerous advantages:
Better decision making: With the right prompts, AI is capable of processing vast amounts of data quickly and accurately. In a matter of minutes, AI tools can provide us with the insights we need to make better business decisions.
Enhanced productivity: Some tasks, like creating spreadsheets or writing code, can feel mundane and repetitive. AI tools can be used to automate these tasks, allowing our team members to focus on more strategic objectives.
Improved communication: With our remote team members working from different parts of the world, we are what is known as a globally distributed team. By using AI tools to help us proofread texts and put information into simple words, we can overcome potential communication barriers.
Here’s a deeper look into how we’re using AI tools to improve the way we work across different teams.
Building Innovative Products – Development Team
Our developers have always been committed to building software that meets the needs of our clients. We use a combination of technologies to build our most popular products, WPML and Toolset, and our new software translation tool, PTC (Private Translation Cloud).
Now, our software developers and AI are working hand-in-hand on our existing products and to bring big, meaningful ideas to life.
They also use AI tools to help with everyday tasks, such as:
Writing and reviewing code
Testing and detecting bugs and errors
Analyzing large data volumes to enhance the quality of services such as our WPML machine translations
Of course, it’s important to note that our developers are highly knowledgeable and always check the code ChatGPT produces. This is essential, since AI tools like ChatGPT don’t always get it right.
At the moment, our Head of Engineering, Eduard Martini is busy building a custom ChatGPT interface.
The latest AI tools have transformed our development process, speeding up projects and automating mundane tasks.
For example, we now use ChatGPT to generate release notes by simply feeding it the comments from our commits, and it compiles meaningful summaries in no time. We’ve also built our own ChatGPT UI, making it more accessible and functional.
We’re researching AI tools to improve the quality of WPML’s machine translations. While this is still in its early research phase, we’ve made steady progress and are excited about the potential impact it could have on our services and the industry as a whole.
With the help of new AI tools, I am at least 20% more productive.
OnTheGoSystems is a remote company with team members across 45 countries and 4 continents. For our teams, this is a huge benefit. We can learn from talented people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets.
But for our HR professionals, building a global team comes with its own unique challenges. Our HR team members need to make sure that anyone joining us is a good fit for working remotely. They need to attract diverse talent while also maintaining a strong company culture and ensuring good collaboration among international team members.
Currently, our HR team is using AI to find the right person for each role, create a more engaging hiring experience, and take over time-consuming administrative tasks. Overall, we’ve found that AI tools actually help us keep the “human” in human resources.
While we don’t use AI as extensively as other teams, it does add value to our HR processes.
For example, we provide ChatGPT with job specifications and it helps us craft meaningful job ads. For each role we are recruiting for, it helps us generate the questions we can ask candidates and suggests how to assess technical capabilities for specific roles. We use ChatGPT to do research and proofread texts and emails.
Overall, AI tools like ChatGPT really streamline the recruitment process.
Our content team creates a wide variety of content, including how-to guides, blog posts, tutorials, announcements, and more. This requires not only a high level of product knowledge, but also resources. Putting different types of content together takes time. From our team members, it also requires a fair share of research and a deep understanding of our products.
For the most part, AI tools don’t have the understanding or knowledge needed to produce ready-to-use content. But, they are capable of generating ideas faster than humans can.
Because of this, we use AI to help us produce high-quality content. With the right prompt, tools like ChatGPT provide outlines, headlines, and even first drafts for articles. We then carefully review what ChatGPT generates and add our personal touch to create better, well-rounded content in less time.
ChatGPT and AI tools are proving to be a great help for the Content team. AI can’t replace our skilled writers, but it helps speed up the content creation process. It’s like having a writing assistant that helps us write outlines, headings, social media posts, and even whole drafts for blog posts and tutorials.
Once we’ll be able to train AI tools with our own data, the sky’s the limit.
The support team members for our WPML and Toolset plugins work tirelessly to provide our clients with answers to questions and solutions to issues. To be able to provide only the best user experiences, our supporters need to know our products inside out. They also need to know how to think outside the box and prioritize the tickets that come into the support forum.
Our support team is already using ChatGPT to craft summaries for resolved tickets. The advantages are twofold:
Our clients and other supporters can quickly read the summary and understand the issue at hand
Our supporters have more time to focus on more complex and time-sensitive tasks
Now, we’re looking to use AI to enhance these human interactions. We want to train ChatGPT to help our supporters with quick replies to frequently asked questions. This means developing an AI-powered chatbot.
We’re building an AI-powered support chatbot to provide quick, first-tier support. The chatbot will try to resolve issues and provide clients with the most precise answers. Of course, AI tools are not always 100% accurate. One of the challenges is training the bot to know when to transfer conversations it can’t correctly answer to a human operator.
We’re exploring new approaches, including those from Facebook/Meta, to stay up-to-date and efficient.
We are still in the research phase, but we’re determined to find a solution that meets our expectations
As a company that builds advanced translation technologies, OnTheGoSystems is always looking for ways to take the technology available to us to the next level.
AI tools like ChatGPT play a significant role in this pursuit. While they can’t replace the knowledge and expertise of our team members, they can assist us in getting things done faster.
As we continue to explore new ways to leverage AI, we’re committed to fostering a work environment that embraces change and technological advancements. We’re excited to see how we can use AI to be a valuable asset for our team, our services, and the industry as a whole.
Raja Mohammed started as a first-tier supporter, but then he saw an opportunity and seized it! We asked Raja to tell us what it took to move into a project manager role at OTGS.
Tell us about yourself and your family.
I’m a Tamilar-speaking Indian Muslim. I’m the happy father of two lovely kids (Muhammad Sahl and Umar Abdhullah) and married to Sulaiha Shifa.
I live in a suburban area several kilometers away from the city of Chennai. I live near my parents, which is great because I enjoy spending a lot of time with my family.
When I am not working, I play with my kids, watch some random stuff on the internet with my wife, or spend time with my parents. I live close to a mosque, which lets me fulfill my religious duties on a daily basis.
Playtime with the kids
When did you start at OTGS, and what was your position?
I joined OTGS on November 5, 2018, as a first-tier supporter for the WPML (WordPress Multilingual) plugin. At first, I helped clients solve their issues with WPML. Later on, I was given the additional task of being a supporter for the Advanced Translation Editor project, where I helped with escalated automatic translation issues.
What do you do now?
I am a project manager, which means I’m the main point of contact for WPML and the Advanced Translation Editor projects.
My role is to keep the project moving without any interruptions – to collect, communicate and coordinate the project requirements. I’m responsible for prioritizing tasks based on the goals and roadmap. I work closely with the stakeholders and keep them informed about the development of the project.
How did you go about pursuing this role?
I started my career as a freelancer, but I have wanted to become a project manager since I started working 10 years ago. I believe that eventually, every freelancer develops project management skills. When I saw that there was a project management role open, I immediately applied for it.
Taking a leap and paragliding during our company team meeting in Nepal
How did you grow into this role?
The first few weeks as a project manager were tough for me. The company already follows best practices, so it took me some time to understand how things are done.
I didn’t want to rush into things unprepared, so I asked a lot of questions. I reached out to a few people (Eduard from the Advanced Translation Editor team and Cristian from the WPML team) and learned how they were managing their projects. I did a lot of research to improve and implement the best practices.
After getting to know the project and the people involved, I established a communication channel that helps the project move forward. Our stakeholders now rely on me to communicate with them about the project.
Teaching my oldest son, Muhammad Sahl, to read
Are you happy in your current role?
I would say I am more responsible, accountable, and making conscious decisions which will enhance the experience of the millions of sites that use WPML 🙂
What advice would you give someone who wants to grow within the company?
Try to stand out and make yourself appealing. There will always be new roles up for grabs.
My wife captured a snap of my father and me on a beach trip
There are some people whose career choice makes perfect sense when looking back at their childhood interests. That’s the case with May’s Star of the Month, Laura Carletti. Her interests in languages, the internet, WordPress, and a strong sense of curiosity set her up perfectly for her role as the Chat Leader and 1st tier supporter on WPML’s rockstar support team!
A childhood filled with curiosity
I was born and raised in Rome, where I still live with my wife. Mine was an average middle-class family, both my parents were employees. But both loved (and they still do) to read and to travel. Their house is basically a library, full of souvenirs from their trips. I think this fuelled my curiosity about the world and my desire to know more about different cultures. No wonder my sister and I both took a degree in languages!
With my wife during our honeymoon in Miyajima island
I’ve always been the “strange” one, picking up hobbies not very common in my teenage years, like reading Japanese comics, playing table role-playing games or softball. I still do all of this stuff, and even more.
Since I had all these interests, and as an introverted person, the internet was a paradise for me. I wanted to build websites so I could share what I knew with others and my thoughts about the world. That’s how I eventually met WordPress, which I’ve been using on-and-off since 2005.
Me playing softball
Laura’s career journey
Before joining OntheGoSystems, I did a lot of different things – freelance translator, Italian teacher for foreigners, editor, quality assessment for websites… But I had never considered an IT job because I didn’t think I was qualified enough.
Visiting Villa Pisani in Northeastern Italy
In 2018, while I was working at a law firm, I stumbled upon a post in a Facebook group about remote jobs for Italian speaking people. I’ve always wanted a remote job because I hate commuting, and I needed a new job in any case (mine was a temporary position), so I decided to try.
That’s how I started as a 1st tier supporter for WPML. It’s still my main role – I reply to client’s inquiries, point them in the right direction. If the problem cannot be solved quickly, I do deeper debugging and act as a point of contact between the client and the 2nd tier or the developers.
I learned a lot in the first period as a supporter. You don’t need to be a programmer for this job, but you need to understand how WordPress works. WordPress has become much more accessible over the years, but as a result, many do not know how it works at its core. While I’m not a programmer at all, I started using it when the only way to customize your site was writing your code manually, and I’ve played with it long enough to know the basics of WordPress logic.
Sometimes, people ask me how to start to know WordPress, and my answer is always: create a local server and install it there, check the files, see what happens when you install stuff.
Growing with OntheGoSystems
Some months after I joined, we launched chat support, and I was one of the first people working with it. Chat support is great – you have direct contact with the client, and you manage to help many more people quicker.
I have a keen eye for detail and I’m good at finding things that can be improved, so I think that’s why I became the Chat Leader after a period. What I do in this role, beside suggesting improvements, is to report bugs or any issue we have. Chat is often the first contact our clients have with the support team, so it’s very important everything runs smoothly for them.
My taiko (Japanese drums) group
One of the things I enjoy most about my job is when I can work with other team members – mostly with the Documentation and Compatibility team. Documentation is especially important for us, because clients will often check documentation first, but if it’s not updated or clear enough they will open support tickets. So we work a lot with the Doc team, not only for fixing typos or updating screenshots, but also for suggesting new pages (I’ve contributed a couple myself) or improving existing ones.
To be successful in this role, you need an eye for detail and be able to understand what the clients might need. Everything needs to be crystal clear, also for Doc team because they can’t write a piece if they don’t understand what they’re talking about in the first place.
At TeamLab “Planets” Exhibition in Tokyo, 2019
The best and worst part of working as a supporter is directly dealing with clients. It can be really exciting when you have that aha moment when you find the reason why something is not working, and when you can really help people.
At the same time, not everyone is as nice as you’d like, and it can be really difficult to deal with some people, especially in chat where there is more direct contact. When possible, I get up, take a little walk, drink water and breathe.
A day in the life of working remotely for Laura
Doing a Japanese drum rehersal
I was recently put in charge of one of our supporter teams – they’re all in the Americas while I’m in Europe, so I changed my working hours and I still have to adjust them a bit. It’s going better than I expected though. I have about 3 hours when I get up before starting working, so I use this time to study Japanese, follow some courses (courtesy of our scholarship program), go to the gym and of course errands/house chores if needed.
When my working day is finished, I can really wind down and do something that is not so mentally stimulating, like reading or some logic game. We do a lot of food prep, so if I’m lucky dinner takes less than 10 minutes to be ready. After dinner, we play video games or watch some TV series.
I love everything about working remotely – as I said, I’m introverted, so even if I’m not shy (which many people associate with introversion) I need a lot of “me time” to recharge. When I was working in a real office, I couldn’t talk to anyone for at least 30 minutes after I finished work. Now, I don’t want to be in front of a screen for a while, which means I read more books so I guess it’s not bad at all :D
It was harder during the pandemic though – exactly because I’m always home, it’s important for me to somehow “force” myself to go out, like at the gym or to see friends. Now things are coming back to normal, and the thing I want most is to travel again. I have family and friends outside Rome and I used to visit them regularly (thanks again, remote working!) and I missed them.
