December 2013 – Content Services Provider, India

Error-free Documentation Needs a Multi-pronged Review Strategy

A quintessential element of quality is accuracy or being free of errors. When we talk of content or technical documentation, the errors may be in language, structuring, or the output layout. Reviews play a pivotal role in delivering accurate content and there are many elements in a content output that need to checked, verified or questioned. Delivering error-free documentation needs a multi-pronged review strategy. Broadly, the review strategy must focus on language accuracy, technical accuracy, the visual elements, content layout and structure. Mostly importantly, the reviews should ensure that the deliverables meet client requirements and expectations. For each of those elements, there has to be a unique review instance. Let’s discuss how to employ various review formats.

Peer Reviews: Usually, the first review should be done by the writer, using some review parameters or a personalized, project-specific review checklist. Only when a writer is sure about the accuracy and completeness of the content, should there be any request for peer reviews. As the name suggests, peer reviews are done by peers, colleagues or team members—preferably from content or documentation team. These reviews are helpful in spotting the errors that don’t catch the originator’s attention because the writers read the text as they thought of putting it and not what they finally brought into writing. In other words, they are prone to ignoring the typographical errors or mistakes in translating their thoughts on the document. Another set of eyes make a difference!

SME Reviews: To check the accuracy of facts, it is best to ask the architects, designers or subject matter experts to review the concepts, descriptions, definitions, and procedures in the product documentation. In case of Supply Chain management software, there could be Supply Chain domain experts or product owners/managers who know how would the product work. They would be in a better position to tell about the precise words that explain it correctly.

Editorial Reviews: The most defining category of reviews that essentially deals with quality of language and expression. This review focuses on the organization of content, the flow of information, the language flow, choice of words, writing styles, locale, length of sentences, audience perspective, clients’ guidelines and any other aspect that affects accuracy, completeness and originality of content.

Functional Reviews: This category of reviews deals with the visual elements in the content such as graphical content and the look-and-feel of the output. If there are images used in the content then they should be reviewed for language and technical accuracy, and usability parameters that are important to make it accessible for all. The images should have proper captions and alternative text. If the content output is generated using content-authoring tools such as Adobe Robohelp, Adobe Framemaker, Madcap Flare or Adobe Acrobat, then it is recommended to view the final output. In case of web-based content, it must be viewed on various browsers or platforms for which it has been targeted. The linkages among the topics and with the application should also be checked to verify that the appropriate help pages pop up when the user asks for help.

Client Reviews: Last but the most important factor is what does your client say about the content output. It is absolutely mandatory to solicit client feedback for two reasons. The first one being the necessity of getting feedback on your work—to know if you delivered what you promised. The second reason is to gain the approval on acceptance on your delivery. While it is the best thing to meet the promised quality in the first attempt, it is also important to understand and evaluate the client feedback if it demands rework. Incorporating the feedback is so important that if one fails in doing it, the entire review process becomes futile.

Ideally, every milestone should go through Language, SME, Technical, and Client reviews. However, some milestones may not require all of them. For instance, the content layouts and structuring may not require SME or Technical reviews. With a review strategy that builds in the balanced mix of the above-mentioned types of reviews in the content development or documentation development lifecycle, any content provider can be quite sure of producing error-free documentation, subject to other influencing factors such as documented scope of work, requirement understanding, and support from all the concerned stakeholders.

Who Needs a Content Vendor?

It is as early as toying with the idea of a start-up that the wannabe entrepreneurs would need a good hand at content. Be it an impressive pitch to raise venture capital or funding through a bank loan, all entrepreneurs need to sell their ideas that must also be presented beautifully. And this selling must persist to get different potential stakeholders such as business partners, the founding team, and the first customers. An entrepreneur needs to communicate through various mediums such as the corporate website, blog, product or service brochure, online or print ads and anything else that’s thinkable. Most entrepreneurs are ripe with great ideas but not all of them can put them across a wide outreach. Why just entrepreneurs, even established businesses are also among those who might need help with corporate communication.

Let’s go deeper to find out more about who needs a content vendor…

You have an excellent idea and want to create a convincing business plan: You need someone who can organize your thoughts and ideas, and present them in words as well as statistical visuals. A business plan becomes compelling when it has everything thought out and planned. It flows in a sequence and answers questions as they come up. All this can be done by professionals who understand business as well as excel in the art of communication. So, it will help if you hire a company that can trusted enough to keep your well-guarded secrets and help you put in all on paper.

You have a product ready for market and need help with branding and advertising: Your team might believe that they created the best product for a certain market but the word needs to go out as well. You need to inform your prospective customers and distribution networks about the unique features of a great product. Who can help you better than communication specialists who can understand the technology and explain it to the world in a lucid manner? You certainly need a business content writing services provider—a content vendor capable of creating compelling business collaterals such as presentations, demonstrations, and brochures.

You have a product that can’t go without documentation: You were so busy developing a wonderful application or product that you completely overlooked the support documentation angle. Now when the product is almost ready, you find out that it must be supported by some user documentation such as a user manual, product guide or help videos. Assisting the users in installing, deploying and using a product or application is a vital part of customer relationship management.

You need to engage with your customers intelligently: Today, nobody might disagree that it is increasingly becoming crucial to engage in a constant dialogue with one’s customers. It helps you understand their changing needs, shift in choices, issues with one’s products and what’s being talking about the most. Most importantly, you get a chance to tell your loyal and about-to-leave customers about your future plans, product enhancements and new releases. A blog or social media campaign might be the first thing to start from. Again, you would need communication experts who think like your users to interact with them and find out what’s on your customers’ minds.

Your company needs content to support some products but that’s not a round-the-year requirement: Let’s say your organization doesn’t have much of regular content production needs but once or twice a year you need someone to spruce up the corporate website content or update existing product and process documentation. It might not be feasible to hire and retain a content team through the year but hiring a content vendor to provide a periodic fixed-cost service might serve the need.

Your company needs to produce and edit content through the year: There are fair chances that your company would already have a content or technical writing team in place. It is also likely that workload might at times go out-of-proportion if there aren’t a good number of people sitting idle. Maintaining a good bench strength helps handle the extra work but it isn’t a cost-effective or lean strategy. Those aiming for optimum resource utilization might consider having some content vendors shortlisted for seasonal spikes in workload. The cost would be lesser than having an unproductive team with a downward learning curve.

The competitive business scenario would leave no room for a product or service not marketed well. An excellent idea or product must not die a premature death for the want of fair publicity. It must be talked about to get its fair share of limelight. Every product needs a voice to announce its arrival. Once the product or idea takes off, it marks the onset of life-long quest to support the product to sustain in the market. This is where fresh content will always be needed and it is not a bad idea to invest in a content vendor.free translation greek to english

Monthly Archives - December 2013

Error-free Documentation Needs a Multi-pronged Review Strategy

Who Needs a Content Vendor?