CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
14 May 2007
Company News
"Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand" Guides Manufacturers to Bring Products to Market Faster and At Lower Cost
In response to global market pressures on manufacturers, Astoria Software released a market brief defining "Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand," a new methodology for organizations to harness the full power of their product information through process automation, adoption of new information standards, and a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model.
The complete market brief, "Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand: Extending the Information Revolution to Manufacturing" is available at http://www.astoriasoftware.com/forms/whitepaperForm.asp?id=16 . The market brief defines Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand and explains how Forbes Global 2000 manufacturers can bring complex, information-rich products to market faster and at a lower cost.
"Today, manufacturers face relentless pressure to quickly build and ship increased volumes of products to new global markets simultaneously," said Alan Fraser, president and CEO of Astoria Software. "Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand confronts the pressures of Information Age manufacturing by streamlining the documentation process required to support increasingly complex products."
"Manufacturers selling similar products must rely on value-adds such as high-quality product documentation to differentiate themselves in their markets," said Dana Gardner, principal analyst for Interarbor Solutions. "The SaaS model for creating and maintaining documentation - where manufacturers can author, revise and distribute documentation content quickly and broadly - offers a significant competitive advantage. Going on-demand for documentation lifecycle management provides authoring benefits to the product or service provider, but more importantly, brings improved customer service, support and satisfaction."
Delivering across-the-board improvements, the Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand methodology enables process automation benefits across the entire product documentation lifecycle - content creation and content re-use, review and approval cycles, translation into multiple languages, and publication to print and digital delivery formats.
In general, manufacturers witness:
• Sharp reductions in the time it takes to deliver products and services to new markets, adding weeks or months to their revenue-generating opportunities.
• Reduced costs associated with creating, translating and publishing product documentation for global markets and automation of multi-channel publishing for print and electronic delivery.
• Enhanced customer experience that results in improved loyalty, retention and profitability with consistent product information accessible across all touch points - from in-package documentation, to customer support databases and online-help.
Global Market Trends: Technology Innovation Invoking Shift to Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand
Discussed in detail in the market brief, Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand supports the following tenets:
Component Content Management - Managing content components within a document, page or paragraph as discrete, independent objects allows trouble-free content re-use, repurposing and historical change tracking.
Format Neutrality - Separation and management of content from its output structure enables flexibility in how content is repurposed for multiple publishing formats and delivery channels.
Single Sourcing - As defined by Wikipedia, single source publishing, also known as single sourcing, allows original source content to be used in different documents and in various formats.
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) Information Standard - A new approach to technical writing and information management driven by OASIS, the XML standards board, enables simplified content reuse.
SaaS - As defined by Wikipedia, a model of software delivery, in which the software company provides maintenance, daily technical operation, and support for the software provided to their client.
Concluded Fraser, "Ultimately, Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand tightly aligns product documentation with organizational priorities. To be successful, manufacturers must look at product information as a corporate asset equal in value to the product itself."
In conjunction with the release of the market brief, Astoria Software has announced results of a study that estimates the total available market for Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand solutions within discrete manufacturing to be $4.4 billion annually. See the related news release, "Astoria Software Study: Discrete Manufacturers Comprise $4.4 Billion Market for Dynamic Product Documentation On-Demand" at http://www.astoriasoftware.com/news_events/press_releases/051407.asp .
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