MadCap Flare Chosen Over Content Management Systems for Project, Facilitated Delivery of 12 Print and Online Deliverables LA JOLLA, Calif., Sept. 29
LA JOLLA, Calif., Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- MadCap Software, the leader in
multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for Microsoft
(Nasdaq: MSFT) Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft XPS, today announced that
Intentional Design has completed a major health management training
documentation project in six weeks using MadCap Flare. By taking advantage of
Flare's topic-based authoring and single-source, multi-channel publishing,
three Intentional Design consultants produced 12 print and online deliverables
in roughly half the time usually allocated for projects of similar scope.
Intentional Design, based in Vancouver, Canada, is a consulting firm that
specializes in helping organizations to create and better manage their
business-critical content. In Spring 2008, the firm was contracted by a
regional health authority implementing a comprehensive enterprise health
management system. The authority required a range of training materials to
support the new system, which would be delivered as Word documents, PDF files
and online content. Because of the tight project timeframe, Intentional Design
needed a content solution that would enable rapid development and modification
across all three channels.
"We looked at a number of authoring and content management system (CMS)
options," said Rahel Bailie, president of Intentional Design, former board
member of the Society of Technical Communication (STC), and current chair of
the Canada West Chapter of CM Pros. "I couldn't imagine us building the
content in a CMS and having to struggle with XSL style sheets. We couldn't
have developed the system in time, and ongoing changes would have been
exorbitantly expensive."
"In contrast," Ms. Bailie noted, "Flare was the best fit for the project
with its topic-based authoring and ability to publish to multiple channels
from a single source file. It meant we could simply turn on or off the
variance to deliver training materials and supporting documentation to
different audiences in the appropriate format."
The project included 12 deliverables from a single pool of content:
3 course instructor guides, 3 student guides, 2 user guides, 2 online
tutorials for different groups of users, a print version of one online
tutorial, and a topic-based knowledge base. Using Flare, a change in the
source content would be reflected over any number of these deliverables,
depending on the topic. Flare also generated the content in Word files, so
Intentional Design's customer could easily mark it up. At times, content was
published in Word for the customer to revise two or three times a day,
enabling a highly collaborative and efficient process of review.
"Flare allowed us to become heroes in the eyes of our client," said Ms.
Bailie. "Using Flare, we would put a placeholder in for a topic, so that once
our customer gave us the topic, we could produce it in a day. And one time,
when we were well into the project, our client asked how many extra months it
would take to produce a knowledge base. I explained that, by generating it as
online Help, we could complete it with the rest of the project. That's the
power of Flare."
"Intentional Design is a leading authority on best practices for content
authoring and delivery," said Anthony Olivier, MadCap co-founder and CEO. "We
are thrilled by the role our state-of-the-art Flare authoring tool played in
applying those world-class practices to a large-scale content development
project in record time. It's a great example of how the combined power and
ease of implementation with our products, versus more expensive CMS solutions,
lets customers achieve rapid success."
About Intentional Design
Intentional Design Inc., founded in 2002, is a consultancy that focuses on
performance improvement for communication by helping to organizations create
and better manage business-critical content. The firm focuses on its core
competencies in the areas of content development, content management and user
experience. Based in Vancouver, Canada, Intentional Design develops content
solutions for leading businesses and government organizations throughout
Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. For more information, visit,
http://www.intentionaldesign.ca.
About MadCap Software
MadCap Software, headquartered in La Jolla, CA, is just a new name for a
group of familiar faces that have been leading the technical writing community
for over a decade. With its flagship product, MadCap Flare, MadCap Software is
once again leading the documentation world into the future by providing
complete end-to-end solutions for content development, delivery and
management. Today more than 1,000 companies including Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)
are customers of MadCap's native XML software for content authoring and
multi-channel publishing. MadCap is home to some of the most experienced
software architects and product experts in the industry. Learn more about
MadCap Software and its documentation authoring suite at
http://www.madcapsoftware.com.
MadCap Software, the MadCap Software logo, MadCap Flare, MadCap Lingo,
MadCap Mimic, MadCap Capture, and MadCap Blaze are trademarks or registered
trademarks of MadCap Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other
countries. Other marks are the properties of their respective owners.
PR Contact:
Rebecca Hurst
Kinetic.PR for MadCap Software
rebecca@kineticprllc.com
650-679-9282
SOURCE MadCap Software
