Support needed!

[Alison Craig]

Just a few thoughts:

Do you use conditional text to create multiple manuals from one book? If so, you will have to recreate an individual Word manual for every product - which will absolutely guarantee that they will have to hire at least one more writer and slow down manual completion. 

Additionally, if you then translate those manuals, turn times and costs will soar even with reuse through a TM.

Higher costs in time and money are usually excellent tools of persuasion.

I've taken over a series of Marketing docs recently (Product Specifications) and by using conditional text, they are much easier to control as a significant amount of information is repeated between products - but it's detailed, finicky crap that's prone to errors if you have to keep it up-to-date in 6 different source files. Marketing loves the fact that they no longer have to deal with it (the web/graphics guys was doing a mediocre job of it in Word) and Management likes the fact that the data is much more reliable. 

FYI: I am also a sole writer and after convincing everyone that the move to Frame was necessary (an 18 month process), management has come to depend on it - even though no one else can use it while I'm on vacation. They've been able to hold off on a second writer (bad for me!) and translation costs are much better given that they get 6 product manuals translated in one go.


One other thing... Why can't anyone in Marketing use InDesign? As tech writer, I've never used it, but 95% of what comes out of our Marketing department is done in InDesign!

Maybe look online to see what you can find about job descriptions for Marketing types and show them that InDesign (or a similar program) is an industry standard program. Ditto for tech writing.

Local technical schools may offer some information you can borrow to add weight to your arguments as well.

Alison



-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of laura at lavadome.net
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 12:58 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Support needed!

 Dear all

 Please tell me I'm not going mad or being unreasonable.

 Have just come into work to find that the company which acquired us a  few months ago wants me to use Powerpoint for creating datasheets  instead of InDesign (definite) and "a more flexible tool" (Word) instead  of our beloved Framemaker (proposed).

 I could cry. I am the only tech author in the company of about 100  people and the marketing department used PP for datasheets which they  say is "adequate" for the job. This all arose on Friday when someone  else needed to edit a version of my ID files when I was on holiday.  Now  I come in to find:

 "...For more technical documentation (e.g. product manuals) then I  understand the argument for use of a more specialist tool - but even  here we can use more flexible tools."

 Such as????? I have long user guides with masses of conditional text. 
 Just let Word have a shot at that. In fact, they were trying to do just  that before I started this job 4 years ago - and it wasn't working.

 Sorry to clog up the forum with this but I think of you all as friends  who feel the same way about FM as I do.

 How do I persuade them otherwise? In fact, it's just one person really  I think I need to convince - not in my office.

 I can just about cope with datasheets in PP but using anything other  than Frame for long user guides is unthinkable.

 L

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