Systems for producing and maintaining better documents in less time: Single Sourcing, CMS, XML and DITA
How organisations deliver the right information, at the right time, in an efficient way and at the right cost.
You're faced with users - customers and prospective customers - who expect more. The problem is: how you give them better quality, more relevant, technical information and user assistance, when you're faced with tighter deadlines, resources and budgets. You need to be flexible and adaptable in what you create, and be in control of it - all at the same time.
Your bosses expect more, too. Poor and inefficient management of content is expensive. Your staff can spend hours dealing with content that's unstructured, disorganised and unable to be reused. Your company can waste money on unnecessary translation costs. As for your customers - they can end up with documents that just don't meet the needs of today.
- If you've already got a well-established Content Management System - we can help you.
- If you've not got a Content Management System, and you're thinking about taking the first steps - we can help you.
What's more, our membership of TechComm Alliance means you can also call draw upon international expertise of large and complex single sourcing, DITA and Content Management solutions.
User documentation is changing - and the old ways don't work any more
Your customers don't want to search and scanning through lots of information that's irrelevant to their situation. They often need specific documentation supplied in the way they like - instead of a standard one-size-fits-all document.
It means you need to produce lots of information pieces only slightly different from each other - for different contexts, situations and users. When many versions of the same core document exist, they have a habit of becoming increasingly different from each other, unless you have the right system.
Internationalisation intensifies the burden even more, with the need to provide translated versions of documents. It also means that same information can be written and translated more than once. Translation costs, even when "translation memory" software is used, can be very very expensive, so it makes sense to re-use existing translated content as much as possible.
Call +44 (0)1784 258672 or send us an email. Tell us your situation, and let's see if we can help you.
Free items for you
We asked the consultants at Cherryleaf for tips on implementing a single sourcing solution. You can get these tips free.
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For organisations that need to implement a Content Management System (Single Sourcing, XML and DITA)
"Cherryleaf is one of the hubs of the UK Technical Documentation scene. Ellis is very friendly, professional and knowledgeable. If it is offering a service that you are interested in then you can rest assured that your needs are in fully capable hands." Arjuna Krishna-Das, Documentation Manager , Frontier Silicon November 17, 2008
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.
Single Sourcing
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.
There are many ways we can help you
"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."
Here's where you might need Cherryleaf's input:
- Assessing the effectiveness of your current business content delivery systems
- Developing the right strategy
- Business case preparation (Need Analysis and ROI)
- Project Scoping and Planning
- Content modelling workshops
- Developing a proof of concept and prototypes
- Statement of Requirements - covering content and technology
- Selecting the right Content Management Software (including authoring tools and hosted solutions)
- Configuring the system to your needs (such as XSLT development for publishing; variants and specialisations)
- Implementing a document delivery solution that meets your needs
- Setting up your information architecture
- Setting up your publishing system/Publishing Systems Implementation
- Integration with Corporate CMS or publishing systems
- Legacy content conversion
- Where required, assisting you, converting either some or all of your content.
- Training your team - We've trained over 100 people in DITA, and run special workshops on DITA topics.
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.
Call +44 (0)1784 258672 or send us an email. Tell us your situation, and let's see if we can help you.
If you have a CMS and want your writers to write (& not spend their time tweaking the system)
Leave the technical aspects to us and let your writers do what they are good at - writing. We can help you with:
- Customisations
- Publishing output configurations
- XML and DITA specialisations
- Look and Feel for different media
- Importing or legacy content - both structured and unstructured
Call +44 (0)1784 258672 or send us an email. Tell us your situation, and let's see if we can help you.
For organisations needing technical authors experienced in writing in an XML and DITA XML environment
Find out more about our our recruitment services for hiring technical authors.
Call +44 (0)1784 258672 or send us an email. Tell us your situation, and let's see if we can help you.
Project examples
- A travel industry client of ours looked 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 worked with them to determine the requirements for a in-house single sourcing tool they will develop. We developed 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.
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.