GÜTERSLOH, Germany, June 12 /PRNewswire/ --
- New Report on Best Practices in Product Documentation Confirms Empolis
Approach for Forbes Global 2000 Manufacturers
empolis GmbH, a leading provider of Component Content Management software
for customer-centric product information, today highlighted key findings from
a recent benchmark report titled "Publishing Technical Communications to a
Multi-Channel World". The report, published by Aberdeen Group, Inc., confirms
the empolis approach to supporting customers meet Global Product Launch
schedules and faster time-to-market.
"When it comes to Product Information such as Operator Manuals, Service
Information or Technical Marketing material, our customers are under
increasing pressure to deliver higher quality, to more languages, in shorter
timeframes with the same or less budget", says Andreas Rempe, Vice President
of empolis GmbH.
To meet these demands, leading manufacturers are turning to solution
providers such as empolis to help them deliver products to existing and new
markets faster and with fewer costs. The benchmark report specifically points
out that those enterprises with best in class product documentation processes
are using structured authoring and DITA, as well as utilising a modular or
topic-based review process.
"Product documentation is as important as the product itself - in many
industries, customers can't launch in a country until the product information
is available in the local language. Additionally, a delay in product
information or poor quality of documentation directly impacts the revenue
streams our customers can expect from their products. Therefore, it's
absolutely critical that product documentation is shipped at launch and with
a high quality. The quality of product documentation becomes an important
point in the view of potential customers and their products comparisons. In
some cases it generates a USP", explains Rempe.
Key findings in the report include:
- Best in class enterprises are 67% more likely to use topic based review
processes. Rather than sending a whole document for review, empolis customers
can send an individual topic out for approval to subject matter experts,
capture those comments quickly and easily, and send them back to the
technical communication department for integration into the document. This is
particularly important for discrete manufacturing enterprises using a
platform-based approach to manufacturing, where typically, the level of
similarity between different versions and variants of their products is very
high.
- Best in class enterprises are twice as likely to use DITA. DITA allows
product documentation to be written more concisely, improving its usability,
and allows organisations to re-use content in more places. One empolis
customer recently announced that for some product lines fully 78% of topics
and graphics were used in more than one product document.
- Best in class enterprises track the success of their product
documentation by monitoring support calls. empolis provide software not only
for the creation, translation management, review and approval processes of
product documentation, but also for the delivery of that information to call
centres, field service agents and web self-service portals. As such, empolis
customers are ideally placed to monitor the impact of documentation process
changes on the number of support tickets coming in from customers and the
field.
Rempe again: "The Aberdeen report correctly highlights the correlation
between industry best practises such as working on content at a component
level, using standards such as DITA, and deriving a dollar impact figure on
documentation process improvements and the Best in Class performers."
For more detail on Aberdeen Group's findings, please visit
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410787&;cid=3990 to download
the full benchmark report free of charge.
About empolis:
empolis - The Information Logistics Company - offers enterprise content
and knowledge management solutions for company-wide information logistics and
for improving business processes. empolis' core competencies are information
management, service management, product & catalog management and media
management.
As a full service supplier, empolis delivers everything from consulting,
design and creation to implementation of solutions - from a single source.
empolis is an arvato AG subsidiary. arvato is the international media and
communications service supplier within the Bertelsmann group and therefore
belongs to a unique network of over 270 companies in 37 countries. Among them
are printing companies, data storage media manufacturers, logistics and IT
service organisations. empolis employs 180 people in Germany and Poland.
For more information:
arvato AG Public Relations
Tel: +49-(0)5241-80-3408
Fax: +49-(0)5241-80-3315
empolis GmbH
For more information: arvato AG Public Relations, Tel: +49-(0)5241-80-3408, Fax: +49-(0)5241-80-3315
