Improve Product and Brand engagement through smart documentation

There is no doubt that the introduction of semantic technology in documentation, will change the way we create our documentation.

Increased product and brand engagement

Figure 1. Happier users
Smarter documentation will lead to happier users, who reach their goals faster and with less frustration. Documentation that exactly responds to individuals will enhance perception of the product and the brand. Although positive feedback travels less quickly on the social media than negative feedback, it will not only impact the product and brand engagement of current customers but also motivate potential customers to take a serious look at your product. It will also influence your image and reputation as a technical communicator in the market and the value you offer to your contractors or managers. In this perspective technical communication will become a profit center instead of a cost center.


 



Increased documentation engagement

Figure 2. Continuity of work
Looking at the evolution of the documentation process, adopting user-centric documentation is a logical next step. It combines the strength of the structured product-centric approach and the cost-saving aspects of the process-centric approach. The ability to generate smart documentation allows teams to add value to their work. Creating documentation becomes a growing live process, which will increase the continuity of work for both internal departments and external agencies. Multiple teams can work together in a collaborative environment, directed by technical communicators that directly control how the output is delivered to the user. The total cost of documentation in the product life cycle will decrease significantly from multiple use of models and content for various purposes and audiences.

The end result of our work is no longer a fixed set of documentation products, but a flexible knowledge product which can be deployed in the cloud as an on-line user assistant, integrated in a front-office or call center application or printed as a manual on-demand.
 
Figure 3. A bright future for technical communicators

A bright future

Embracing the immense possibilities of semantic technology opens up a bright new future for technical communication. A future in which we no longer define our work as predetermined documentation products, or have to struggle with code to make our documentation accessible. Instead, we will be creating model-driven smart documentation that will support and encourage our users in getting the most out of the documented product, resulting in a much better user experience and a vast improvement in terms of efficiency and effectivity of the documented product. Think of expert assistants that know, learn and reason as people do and can provide legally and professionally defensible results in a domain. Technical communication will become more valuable and more proactive, supporting multi-disciplinary teams in modeling, writing, testing and architecting these smart advisory services.

Download the white paper

The white paper “Improve Product and Brand engagement through smart documentation” is available for download on: http://info.beinformed.com/stc13 . Downloading requires an email address, so I can keep you up-to-date on future developments (there is always an opt-out).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using the Golden Circle Model in your resume and LinkedIn profile

Image
The last three years I worked as a (senior) business consultant and information architect at software company Be Informed in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. We worked on an amazing product, a ground breaking model-driven business process platform. And my job was to explain the possibilities of this platform to various audiences. The Be Free program, which I launched in September 2013 was a marketing campaign that targeted on making a wider group of people familiar with the product. The campaign was a great success and I had the feeling that I was really helping people in proving their ideas to their customers and managers. But the interaction was on-line and from a distance, never close enough to really understand their business goals and issues.  The sudden end of my contract with Be Informed, forced me to rethink my professional goals and ambitions. What do I really want? Do I want to be a product marketer, focused on 'pushing' a product? Or do I want to be a business cons
Read more

Improve Product and Brand engagement through smart documentation - A White Paper about the challenge of creating user-centric documentation

Image
For most product manufacturers, delivering adequate documentation is a constant challenge. The increasing complexity of products and the stricter regulations for product documentation often lead to extensive documentation sets with 500+ pages manuals on-line or in print. The question is: how effective is all this documentation? Smart, user-centric documentation Users can be overwhelmed by long, jargon-loaded user manuals, and frustrated by a lack of clear answers. When customers don’t find a solution, blame inevitably falls on the product and the company. Bad documentation - incomplete, unclear, out of date - creates a negative engagement with products and brands. Figure 1. Smarter documentation asks users what they need to know Smart documentation leads users to success and satisfaction. These are the users who share their positive experience with family and friends, and convince them to become customers in turn. Using semantic technology, we can create the smart document
Read more

Laying the foundation for an effective article

Image
In this series of articles you can follow my process in writing a new article on Robotics. In the  first episode  I explained my approach towards writing, the  second article  focussed on setting the goal, choosing an audience and finding the right approach. Now that we have a clear vision on goal, audience and approach, it is time to start setting up the structure. Writing requires a structured approach Writing is all about structuring your thoughts. And although this is a process that most of us do in a more implicit way, it sometimes helps - and is actually best practice - to write down your structure on a very high level. The goal of my article is to change the opinion of the reader towards accepting Robotics as a something that brings value to a business and motivates employees, rather than being limited to reducing FTE. So the structure of my article should be build up around the motives used to build up this case. As I want my article to be short and sharp, I don't
Read more