WebWorks ePublisher Customer Case Studies
Pitney Bowes
Today Publishing at Pitney Bowes Business Insight is Light Years Beyond Where We Were.
Two of Pitney Bowes Business Insights three documentation teams recently achieved their aggressive three-year goal: single-source publishing of all help resources for legacy products and a growing number of innovative new products.
Today we are light years beyond where we were, it is pretty cool, says Roger Curtis, Senior Technical Writer for the Customer Data Quality group.
In 2005, the companys technical writers were each responsible for producing help and PDF deliverables locally using separate RoboHelp and Adobe FrameMaker sources. But with seven technical writers in seven locations on two continents, and a growing number of software products, Pitney Bowes Business Insight was facing several workflow challenges.
Content consistency, look-and-feel uniformity, duplication of effort, and the time required to produce each document were a constant, and worsening, problem, notes Erik Balisi, Principal Technical Writer of the Customer Data Quality group.
Rather than look for short-term solutions, We asked ourselves: Where do we want to be in three years? says Roger. We decided that we wanted to create all documentation from a single source, and we wanted machine, not human, processing of the product build.
The two teams learned about WebWorks products from the acquisition of Group 1 Software in 2002. One of the product lines that Group 1 had acquired early in 2002 had been using WebWorks Publisher since 1999.
The Writers Love It
The teams achieved their process-improvement goals in the summer of 2008 with nearly 50 projects in AutoMap that run nightly, building help and CHM for 14 products. The payoff has been significant. The system is extremely flexible and stable, say Roger and Erik. Plus, the writers love it.
Writers now access source material from a single location for most products. There is a lot of reuse that would not be possible without the WebWorks process automation, says Roger. Writers simply transform content existing in one source-control system into one of three distinct structural views for each product. They are freed from the tedium of re-creating the same content over and over, and of individually setting conditions and variables for each product help resources.
Writers also enjoy the fact that they now simply check in new work at the end of the day for automated document build overnight. They love seeing their work completed the next morning, notes Erik.
In fact, Roger and Erik cite a long list of benefits for writers, users, and software developers:
- Writers : Single-source updates, documentation produced directly from FrameMaker, consistent and repeatable help and PDF generation, more time to focus on content development, and less tedious production work.
- Users : Information accuracy and completeness, familiar help-like interface, and Web browser accessibility.
- Developers : Reduced coding to integrate context-sensitive help, automated product builds, easy documentation bug verification, and automated document builds
Leading the Charge
It is not a coincidence that the Pitney Bowes Business Insight documentation teams use todays leading-edge electronic publishing system. The company supports a culture of innovation, offering a unique combination of location and communication intelligence software, data, and services that can help organizations make better, more insightful decisions. Pitney Bowes Business Insight technology helps organizations gain accurate views of their customers and integrate that intelligence into their daily business operations to increase revenue, improve profitability, and enhance operational efficiency.
The documentation team has completely embraced the company innovation philosophy. Thanks to our powerful ePublishing operation, our groups are now ahead of the production innovation curve, and even leading the charge in many ways, says Erik. In fact, our writers now have time to be involved in content development at the product development stage.
While the traditional documentation entry point is engineering, We often receive product information before the software development team gets it, says Roger. Our writers enjoy the chance to contribute to our products overall messaging. It stretches their creativity.
This approach benefits users too, because now there is greater continuity of product messaging at all stages of customer communication, including pre-sales, sales, and user support, notes Roger. Our goal is to be involved with the global view of our consumers. WebWorks has been a key element in achieving this strategy.
Another important ePublisher benefit is ROI. Overall, documentation productivity has improved measurably in many ways. One example is that the company has added new products without adding new writers. We even lost one writer and did not have to replace the position. So we have already reduced our budget by one salary, says Roger.
