Finding potential in the dark. The joint roadshow from itl and gds sheds light into the corners

From May 4 to 13, 2009, in cooperation between the service providers for technical documentation, global document solutions and itl AG, a roadshow took place under the title "Reserves - recognizing and utilizing them. The potential of technical documentation". About 80 participants in Munich, Vienna, Stuttgart and Dortmund learned how to increase efficiency and benefit from the resulting savings potential.

Four lecturers provided insight into the question of which optimization possibilities lie in the area of technical documentation and translation. They supplied practical examples showing how companies can cushion against industry-spanning, increasing cost pressure by utilizing content management systems, controlled language and process optimizations for foreign languages. Last but not least, the advantages of the complete outsourcing of document creation and translation were also demonstrated using an individual case study.
The lecture series began with the keynote speech by Dr. Ulrich Thiele, visiting lecturer for the education of technical editors at various universities. In his lecture on content management systems and DTP, he provided one insight above all: When these types of systems are introduced without careful analysis of the initial situation, they do not solve any of the problems and, indeed, they create - at best - only new ones.

A report based on experience in the field followed, presented by Dieter Flach. Mr. Flach, who leads the technical documentation department of the process instrumentation business unit at ABB Automation Products, reported about an outsourcing project that was successfully executed. Cost savings were achieved here in the areas of technical documentation and translation by outsourcing these tasks to an external service provider. The experts from global documents solutions modularized and optimized the document creation using the docuglobe content management system. A consistent terminology is being realized for ABB using the [i]-match solution from itl. By providing access to terminology and standard sentences, the software helps the authors of the documents during the creation process to formulate their writing in a uniform way.

In the next lecture, Ulrich Schmidt, head of the Product & Process Solutions department at itl AG, demonstrated how every sentence that does not need to be typed in and translated again can save money. His concrete sample calculations made it apparent to everyone how much cost-savings potential there is in optimizing the creation process in conjunction with "controlled language".

This point was also picked up by Ulrich Pelster in the topic "Fewer sources, fewer sources of error". In the final lecture, the head of global document solutions showed how using a well thought-out modularization concept, implemented into a content management system, can simplify and slim down the documentation process.

There were interesting and illuminating conversations between the hosts of the event, lecturers and guests both during the event as well as at the end of the day. All participants were pleased with the roadshow's success.
"The complete solution presented by docuglobe and [i]-match impressed me a lot", was frequently heard in the conversations. There was also a lot of discussion about concrete realization scenarios utilizing the solution portfolios of both presenting companies.

"Time and again, important impetus traditionally comes from the market for further developing our products and services", sums up Ulrich Pelster. "Against this backdrop, the four consecutive dates with more than 80 participants from the market are particularly productive."