Systems for producing and maintaining better documents in less time: Single Sourcing, CMS, XML and DITA
For organisations struggling to deliver the right information, at the right time, in an efficient way and at the right cost.
When many versions of the same core document exist, they have a habit of becoming more and more different from each other. Differences in wording and content start to creep in, which can lead to confusion in the minds of both your customers and your document authors.
The risk of out-of-date legal, safety and compliance information being sent out can lead to some nasty consequences.
Then there's slide presentations - often bearing no resemblance between one presenter and the next, even when they work for the same company and they're talking about the same topics.
What would it mean if you could:
- Have greater consistency and accuracy of content
- Publish content and documents more quickly
- Reduce the cost of producing content and documents
- Deliver content to increasing range of media
- React more quickly and flexibly to the changing demands of stakeholders
- Make the information "just better"
Cherryleaf can give you the power to address these challenges and risks. Not only can you control who can modify or publish content, you can also control who can view it as well. As information design consultants, not product vendors, we use a simple step by step approach to focus on your actual needs and provide impartial advice on the range of possible solutions.
Simply contact us by email or telephone. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.
Single Sourcing
We asked the consultants at Cherryleaf for tips on implementing a single sourcing solution. You can get these tips free.
Single Sourcing reduces the need to create and maintain duplicate content, by enabling you to use existing "chunks" of content. This means you can have the same information in different publications, and you can have a library of existing content to re-use when you're developing new documents.
The content is stored independently of the formatting, the same content can be published to different media. These can be used many times to generate paper manuals, Web pages, online Help and e-learning material. Single Sourcing can significantly improve the way you create, develop and maintain content:
- Increased quality and consistency
- Reduced time
- Reduced cost
Because single sourcing enable you to reassemble documents quickly and easily, you can change your documents to meet new requirements over time.
DITA XML
If you're involved in information development, then it's likely you've heard of Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). DITA is an increasingly popular open source XML-based framework for designing and delivering well-structured technical documentation efficiently and consistently in a single-sourcing environment. Cherryleaf can help you understand when, why, where and how to use DITA.
We also offer an e-learning course on DITA.
How do you manage information that's an asset for your business?
Poor and inefficient management of content is expensive. Staff can spend hours dealing with content that's unstructured, disorganised and unable to be reused.
Content Management Solutions
Many of the tools are integrated solutions for creating, managing and publishing reusable content, but you may already have a Content Management System (CMS) in use with in your organisation.
However, it might not have all the capabilities you need. For example:
- A good editor that makes it easy for anyone to create content
- The ability to publish to print as well as to online
- Only being able to re-use documents and not phrases or sentences.
Cherryleaf can help you integrate these capabilities into your existing Content Management or Document Management system.
Simply contact us by email or telephone. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.
Project examples
- A travel industry client of ours is looking to increase efficiency, productivity and achieve associated cost savings by implementing single sourcing for its user information - approximately 12,000 product Help files, 8,000 pages of printed information and 700 elearning elements. Failure of this project could cause delays in the release of products, and additional costs to retrieve/recreate information.
Cherryleaf is working with them to determine the requirements for a in-house single sourcing tool they will develop. We are also developing a single sourcing style guide for print and online documents.
- Our previous relevant work includes the development of a single sourcing methodology for Hewlett Packard UK.
- Our previous relevant work also includes the production and presentation of a Style Guide detailing the process, consultancy and training for the production of a single sourcing methodology for Tertio Telecoms, resulting in the following comment:
"There's an initial effort involved in learning the product, customizing templates, and setting up your workflow. You could teach yourself, but some training/consultancy is a good idea, as it's important to get good practice in place from the start. The initial cost pays for itself quickly. We used Cherryleaf to help set this up, and they were excellent."
Contact us for more information.
There are many ways we can help you
It depends on your situation:
- Developing the right strategy
- Developing a prototype system
- Implementing a document delivery solution that meets your needs
- Where required, assisting you, converting either some or all of your content.
- Assessing the effectiveness of your current business content delivery systems
- Capturing and recording information
Simply contact us by email or telephone. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.
Further information
Contact us if you would like to know more about how we can help you. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.