About Figures

Figures is a compensation platform that helps HR teams and managers drive salary and compensation policy.

For a long time, the product existed only in French and English. Translation management remained acceptable because it was concentrated in the hands of a small team.

The person who changed the translations was essentially me, apart from the developers, and we managed more or less like that.

Alexis Toyane, Product Lead at Figures

Everything changed when customers started requesting the application in other languages: Polish, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German… At that point, manual methods were no longer sufficient, and the first translation management solution tested proved disappointing.

Before Prismy: An Abandoned Competitor Tool and Lots of Friction

Before Prismy, Figures tested a competing solution dedicated to translations. The trial was so inconclusive that the team decided to… go back.

Alexis summarizes the main problems:

• Translation keys not synchronized with the code

  The text strings in the tool were not always perfectly synchronized with what was in the code. We could spend time editing things that no longer existed in the product.

• Risks of incidents and conflicts When a developer modified a translation in parallel, conflicts would appear.

  We had to arbitrate to decide which version to keep, which reintroduced unnecessary discussions and friction.

• A UX poorly adapted to non-technical teams

  There was a lot of configuration to do, and it wasn't a product we could easily onboard Customer Success teams to.

• Per-user pricing that limited adoption The model hindered opening the tool to all stakeholders.

Result: the team abandoned this tool and returned to an in-house, more technical but controlled method. Until the need for multilingual at scale became impossible to avoid.

Why Prismy: AI, Glossary, and Global Consistency

That's when Prismy approached Figures. The proposition matched exactly the identified pain points.

1. Perfect Synchronization with Code

Before Prismy, we had synchronization problems with translation keys and the product. That's no longer the case today: Prismy integrates directly with our GitHub repo, where all the translation files are located.

Having integrated Prismy via their GitHub integration, the keys present in Prismy are those from the code, no more, no less. This eliminates:

• wasted time on obsolete texts;
• conflicts between product modifications and text modifications;
• risks of inconsistency between environments.

2. Translation AI to Go Beyond the French/English Pair

Translating from French to English and vice versa remained feasible in-house. But as soon as it came to Polish, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Italian, German…, Figures simply didn't have these skills in the team.

Calling on external translators would probably have cost us more than the tool itself.

Alexis recalls

With Prismy, Figures gets:

• a quality first version in each language, understandable by speakers;
• the ability to refine texts over time;
• the capacity to define the tone, style rules, formal/informal address, capitalization usage, etc.

3. The Glossary: The Centerpiece for Consistency

For an HR product like Figures, certain terms are critical: module titles, compensation concepts, business notions. This is where the Prismy glossary comes in.

The real work is done on the glossary. We need to ensure that translations of key terms are correct in the new language. That's where we spend the most time.

Alexis explains

Concretely:

• Figures defines, language by language, business terms and their validated translation.

• Prismy then generates all translations respecting this glossary.

• Consistency is guaranteed throughout the product: the same module or concept is always translated the same way.

Prismy ensures that terms from the glossary are translated the same way throughout the product. We no longer have "a literal translation here, a more contextualized one there.

4. Integrated Quality Controls

At Figures' request, Prismy quickly added quality control features:

• regular verification of translations;
• alerts for typos;
• detection of glossary terms misused or not used by a developer.

This was a big part of our work before Prismy. Now, the tool automatically flags consistency or spelling issues.

Setup: Operational in a Few Hours

On the integration side, Alexis describes a "super simple" setup:

1. Connect the GitHub repo to Prismy.

2. Specify the path to translation files.

3. Define, language by language, the glossary and writing rules (tone, style, conventions).

We were set up in a few hours. Defining the glossary takes about thirty minutes per language for a product like ours.

Internal Adoption: Autonomous Customer Success Thanks to Prismy

Figures wants the team to remain small but highly empowered. Prismy precisely enables decentralized translations:

• the tool is not reserved for developers;

• Customer Success teams can intervene directly thanks to the Chrome extension;

• everyone can correct a translation directly in the product, on the relevant key.

A few days ago, a Customer Success person told me she'd like to do her translations. I gave her access to the tool. She's managing on her own, without friction.

The pricing model, not blocking by user, facilitates this openness.

Results: From 2 to 9 Languages, a Real Commercial Lever

Since adopting Prismy:

• Figures went from 2 languages (FR/EN) to 9 languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Polish, Finnish, Swedish.

• Adding a new language takes: "an hour of my time, not even an hour of developer time, and it's done."

• Some specific customer requests (like Finnish, mentioned during the conversation) were handled in less than 24 hours.

Beyond internal comfort, it's a major commercial advantage:

• Figures can offer its tool in the language of local managers, even if HR teams speak English very well.

• This makes a difference compared to competitors who often remain limited to 3–4 "mainstream" languages.

We can tell a prospect: you're going to open the tool to your managers in their local language, and we can set up the language very quickly. It's a real plus in the commercial discussion.

In One Sentence: Why Alexis Recommends Prismy

The barrier to entry is so low with Prismy that we had nothing to lose by trying. For 30 minutes of effort, we immediately saw the value. We went from two languages managed with difficulty, with inconsistencies and errors, to almost ten today, in very little time, with very little effort, and beautiful consistency across all our translations.

Alexis Toyane, Product Lead at Figures