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New Benchmark Report on Best Practices in Product Documentation Validates Astoria Software Advantage
Astoria Software, a provider of on-demand content management solutions for dynamic product documentation, highlighted key findings from a recent benchmark report, "The Next-Generation Product Documentation Report—Getting Past the ‘Throw It over the Wall' Approach.” The report, published by Aberdeen Group, Inc., validates the Astoria value proposition for Forbes Global 2000 manufacturers.
"Missed product launches, costly product recalls, and increased liability and inconvenience due to inaccurate documentation — these are some of the more serious implications of ineffective product documentation that we see as increasingly complex products are released much more quickly to a much broader market,” according to Dan Ortega, vice president of marketing for Astoria Software.
As product information becomes as important as the product itself, global manufacturers are looking to technology providers to help them deliver products to market faster and at lower costs. The benchmark report specifically points out that "content reuse” is critical for manufacturers seeking a best in class product documentation process.
This finding supports Astoria's long-standing focus on increasing content reuse levels by employing an object-based technology architecture that manages the content components of product documentation as discrete objects and at levels of granularity that far exceed any offering on the market today.
Key highlights of the report include:
• Best in class companies are seven times as likely to track reuse as a measure of readability.
• Best in class performers hit documentation targets on a 92% or better average. (82% of this group met publication/product launch dates 100% of the time.)
• Best in class performers execute two-thirds fewer post product launch changes than laggards.
After surveying more than 332 enterprises on content creation, management, translation and publishing, Aberdeen Group identified best practices in product documentation and key areas that affect process efficiency, cost and time-to-publish. Those surveyed include documentation experts, product managers and engineers, writers and publishers, translators and others involved with the creation, management or publishing process.
"The Aberdeen report is spot on with its findings and strategic recommendations, and every manufacturer should read this report to gain a deeper understanding of how the product documentation process impacts the entire product lifecycle and, ultimately, the bottom line,” added Ortega.
Critical to manufacturers, the benchmark report also addresses product documentation challenges and offers strategic recommendations that address those challenges. ‘Recommendations for Action' that align with Astoria's approach include:
• Early integration of the product documentation process into the design and manufacturing process
• Increased collaboration with the engineering team on documentation (even integrating documentation ownership to engineering organizations)
• Offering structured document and content management tools to technical writers
• Tracking content reuse as a measure of documentation readability.
Other interesting characteristics of best in class enterprises mentioned in the report include:
• 46% are more likely to use structured document authoring tools like XML and "help” types of technologies.
• 45% are more likely to manage documentation in content management systems.
• 51% are more likely to employ translation memory technology.
Astoria supports these best in class characteristics with its complete on-demand content management system for structured documentation authoring. By enabling authors to write and manage content components individually, enterprises can leverage existing content to create process efficiencies as content components are reused, reviewed, translated, and assembled for publishing to digital and print delivery formats.
For more detail on Aberdeen Group's findings, please visit http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410546&cid=3706 to download the full benchmark report. 19.01.2007, Business Wire
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