Challenge: Managing content across 48 countries

A structured content authoring system combines authoring, review, approval, translation, reuse and publishing into one platform. Authors using these platforms write their information in “blocks” of content that can be quickly and easily reused any time a new document is needed. Technical writers no longer need to waste their time completely recreating very similar content, freeing them up to do more important tasks.

Writers also have an easier time editing content. Here’s an example: your firm has been audited and, as a result, a portion of your legal disclaimer has changed. Normally, a writer on your team would have to make those adjustments on all associated documents and outputs (PDFs, presentations, user guides, etc.) one by one. This makes compliance very risky, leaves room for inconsistency and paves the way for trouble.

With structured content authoring, all the writer has to do is change the legal disclaimer’s “block” in the platform, and all of the outputs using that block will reflect the edit.

Solution: Implementing Author-it’s translation features

On a fundamental level, structured content authoring platforms drastically improve the technical documentation creation and management process, resulting in increased productivity and content quality.

Let’s break down the biggest benefits:

1. Greater efficiency

Eliminating laborious, old-school manual processes – such as copying and pasting thousands of paragraphs in Word – increases efficiency across the board.

2. Fewer errors and omissions

Unlike traditional copying and pasting, organizations using content blocks have better oversight of their content, eliminating off-brand messaging and replication errors.3. Simple regulatory and audit compliance

3. Simple regulatory and audit compliance

Organizations have much greater control over their documents with a structured content system, allowing for far fewer regulatory errors. Version tracking and histories also facilitate audit requests.

Impact: 30–50% lower localization costs

Technical documentation is a nuanced art form made up of many unique steps, but it’s possible to combine all of them into one platform. All-in-one structured content authoring systems, such as Author-it, consolidate multiple workflows, reduce communication backlogs and offer much greater consistency across your organization.

As the original inventors of component authoring, the Author-it team has over 20 years’ experience catering to the ever-evolving needs of technical writers. The Author-it platform offers support for automated translation plug-ins, multiple output formats, no-code collaboration between users, and legacy content integration.