Consulting services at itl – we put your needs first
You might have heard this one before: “Never trust a consultant. They’ll find the perfect problems at your company for their solutions.” To stop a consultant from spontaneously pulling a “I know exactly what you need” recommendation like the proverbial rabbit from their hat, you need analysis. And 80 % of analysis is listening, inquiring, and questioning. That’s what real experts specialize in. Thanks to years of experience on hundreds of projects, they understand virtually all the nuances and stumbling blocks of their profession. There is nothing more satisfying for a consultant than the chance to puzzle over a customer’s individual or unconventional requirements or parameters in order to come up with the ideal solution. For you.
Terminology consulting services
Terminology management: corporate identity powered by language
Just like colors and fonts are the foundation of corporate design, terminology also plays an important role in your brand. That’s why consistency in your corporate language is vital, from start to finish. Terminology management is crucial throughout the product life cycle: from the initial idea, to specifications and user stories, through to production, delivery, and product use, all the way to product maintenance, training, and repair. A lack of terminology is an avoidable cost factor. In fact, around five to ten percent of content development effort involves verifying terms – this could be prevented with a terminology system. Customer communication using unclear terminology can lead to serious misunderstandings that can potentially have extremely negative consequences for perception of your company on the market.
With our expert advice, we can help you set up and run a comprehensive terminology solution and establish efficient terminology workflows. We consolidate terminology lists and migrate them to your new system, ensuring centralized terminology management.
The benefits for you
- Consistent internal and corporate terminology to improve the quality of your content
- Technical documentation that is clear and coherent
- Faster technical documentation that is less expensive to produce
- Consistent terminology in all your corporate content
- Access to a central terminology system for all staff members who work with content
- Lean terminology workflows
Our services
- Rollout of terminology management
- Initial terminology creation – ideally using our [i]-match cloud platform, or using clever, entry-level solutions based on Excel
- Development of a term structure and required categories
- Semantic approach to terminology
- Vendor-independent selection and rollout of terminology systems: itl [i]-match, Congree, MultiTerm and QuickTerm, as well as Acrolinx
- Data migration from terminology lists to a terminology system
- Rollout of controlled or simplified language for your technical documentation and integration of technical documentation and translation
- Implementation and support of streamlined terminology and translation workflows
Workflow consulting services
New – and improved
There’s nothing consumers like more than something new. That’s also true of instruction manuals. Product developers and product managers like innovation too – but not necessarily when it comes to technical documentation. Printed, linear instructions have been good enough for the last one hundred years. So, if it’s not broken, why fix it? Digital user assistants, interactive, solution-based help as an app or video, Alexa with her handy hints ... none of this is really new anymore. Modern product lifecycle management also leverages augmented reality to bring user experience into the digital age. So, isn’t it time to make your technical documentation innovative too?
When you bring technical documentation into the 21st century and used it as a marketing tool for your product, workflows are transformed, and multimedia finally takes its place center stage. From product development, to IT and technical documentation, right through to translation. We can help you configure seamless, integrated workflows.
Our services
- Streamlining of technical documentation and translation workflows
- Rollout of corporate terminology management
- Evaluation of translation and terminology systems
- Creation of style guides to internationalize your technical documentation
- Implementation of effective quality assurance
- Expert advice to help you establish effective content review workflows
- Consulting services and support for system rollout
- Change management for implementation of content management systems
- Consulting services and development of a viable ROI concept
The benefits for you
- Lean workflows and lower costs for technical documentation and translation
- Adaptation of workflows to new digital documentation concepts
- Flexible adaptation of processes and tools to new concepts across your company
- Effective quality assurance
Workflows and technologies
Find out all you need to know about content management systems, data migration, and templates at itl here:
Documentation consulting services
Full speed ahead for your technical documentation
“Can we not speed this up a little?” The boss is back, and they mean business. Maybe they could have been a little more subtle, but they’re not wrong either. The boss is always right. Thankfully, when it comes to producing technical documentation, itl is at your side with the right answer: „Yes, of course! We can automate recurring content development processes, integrate all our media from print to digital, create topic-oriented, modular content, bridge the gap between content development and translation, implement metadata and DTP templates ... And before you know it, we’ll be efficient! And effective. And we’ll have optimized quality too!” It’s not often the boss is lost for words.
At itl, we help you identify changes that empower you to publish print and digital documentation at the same time without compromising on quality.
The benefits for you
- Accelerated production of print and digital technical documentation using a planned single-source documentation strategy
- Fewer errors thanks to automation and standard texts (topics and modules)
- Safeguard and optimize your quality standards by reusing approved topics and modules
- Improved user experience thanks to a specialized media concept
Our services
- Evaluation of content management systems for technical documentation
- Rollout of content management systems
- Implementation of an optimized technical documentation concept using the right tools and technologies
- Rollout of controlled or simplified language for your technical documentation and integration of technical documentation and translation
- Development of custom workflow solutions for automated content production
- Development of media, topic, and modularization concepts for single-source publishing of print, online, and mobile content
- Implementation of a metadata concept for optimized user experience design
- Development of workflow-driven templates and desktop publishing tools, for example for FrameMaker and Word
- Solutions for optimized typesetting workflows using FrameScript programming for FrameMaker and VBA programming for Word (see our solutions under “Workflows and technologies”).
Request a quote
You can request a free quote or send us your questions here:
Documentation concepts
Find out more about our documentation concepts – “Customer journey”, “Digital documentation” and “Visual documentation”
Digital documentation
The future is now
According to the German digital association Bitkom, eight out of ten smartphone users can no longer imagine their lives without mobile technology. The likelihood that those two users who could survive without their smartphones also happen to be your customers is 2 in 83 million. So, it’s virtually guaranteed that your users feel at ease in the digital age, with wall-to-wall availability of information and communication. Paper doesn’t have it easy these days. That’s why digitalization of your technical documentation also means creation of a digital assistant – so that each and every one of your customers is satisfied.
Our experts are happy to answer all of your questions on going digital with technical documentation. We develop custom strategies and tailored information concepts and workflows and are with you all the way to ensure smooth, risk-free implementation.
Our services
- Analysis and evaluation of your specific situation in order to decide on the possibilities of digitalization
- Digitalization concepts that optimize the transition between media
- Online only or a combination of print and digital: from simple PDF solutions to innovative digital assistants
- Concepts for innovative information management
- Implementation of new end-to-end workflows: from creation, to distribution, to leveraging of information
- Migration of print documentation to digital formats
- Safeguarding of digital technical documentation in accordance with legal requirements and standards
The benefits for you
- Digital technical documentation provides valuable user guidance
- Technical documentation as an app or download
- Customers benefit from a coherent transition between print and online media
- Digital information can be structured in a more user friendly manner than print information
- Forward-looking content and workflows with costs adjusted to suit your needs
The itl-newsletter (in German)
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Systems consulting services
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We’ve done it for you.
Testing new tools, technologies, and systems is a tiresome business. Pilot projects take a lot of time and can often wear you down. Sometimes weeks can pass until in-house software testers (who usually have other priorities) can finally get to grips with the system. Why wait? At itl, we test a wide range of leading-edge tools ourselves, so you don’t have to. What’s more: that’s why we know what you need to do to use a software efficiently. We have real-world experience with many of the tools and systems that might be worth considering for your requirements. Often, we already know which manufacturer promises are wishful thinking, and which ones really do ring true. Finally, evaluating new system solutions isn’t such a burden after all.
We know the standard tools and systems from our daily work: desktop publishing and graphics software, layout engines, XML and other content management systems, translation memory and terminology systems, authoring assistance, and conversion tools.
The benefits for you
- Vendor-independent consulting services to help you choose the right tools and systems for your needs
- No additional workload for in-house staff in addition to daily business
- Project management you can count on
- Express evaluation of potential solutions
Our services
- Analysis of your requirements when it comes to new tools and systems
- Comparison with typical solutions and operational tasks such as manufacturer selection, screening of quotes, progress reviews during the project and conflict management
- Startup workshops, ROI considerations and identification of KPIs, agile methodologies such as Scrum
- Project management support
- Technical guidance for individual process areas such as editing, terminology, controlled language, multilingual publishing, and translation management
Standards and directives
The “holy trinity” of technical documentation
We can keep it short and simple: EN/IEC/IEE 82079 (EN/ISO 20607), ISO/IEC/IEE 26514 and EN/ISO 9241-11. Wait, you still have questions? OK, here goes. These three standards provide detailed guidance on how technical documentation should be structured. This is important because technical documentation must warn users of avoidable residual risks associated with using a product. This is regulated in Germany by the Product Safety Act, and internationally by the basic machine safety standard ISO 12100:2010. For professionals, providing content and clarity wouldn’t be rocket science if it wasn’t for one small problem: it’s not enough that users understand the content. They need to be able to apply it effectively when using the product too. Not only that: Because users are often on the move, technical documentation must also be mobile friendly.
We develop innovative documentation concepts that put the most important standards into practice. This allows you to create content that is legally compliant and user friendly, particularly for mobile devices. That’s where great user experience design (UXD) really makes its mark.
Our services
- User documentation that complies with standards and directives
- Migration to innovative and reliable documentation concepts
- Seminars and workshops on all aspects of technical documentation
The benefits for you
- User-friendly and innovative documentation concepts (itl UxD – user experience design)
- Legally compliant technical documentation that follows the relevant guidelines
itl-NormenGuide (in German)
Our latest guide to the most important laws and standards is available as a free download now. With 160 pages, this guide is perfect for practitioners who want to know what really matters:
Analysis of your documentation with the itl DocuCheck
DocuCheck your documentation for clarity and compliance with standards. In accordance with the Machinery Directive, ISO/IEC/IEEE 82079, and DIN/EN/ISO 20607.
Your contact persons on the subject of Pro Consulting
