Helping themselves
Leading pensions and benefits administration software maker, Profund Systems Ltd, is streamlining the production of its Help and user manuals.
Profund Systems Ltd is the biggest pension and benefits software maker in the UK - and has arms in Europe and the U.S. Government agencies and major companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Scottish Amicable, Heinz, and Unilever use the firm's "Classic" and "oPen" software to administer the accounts of their customers and clients.
Not surprisingly, Profund's Internet-based software - which includes applications for pensions and benefits administration, payroll, and accounting - is vast and complex. It has to be: hundreds of thousands, even millions of people depend on it to get the money they are entitled to.
Did you know?
More than 50% of the leading third party pension administration firms use Profund Systems' software.
These include AON, Gissings, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Hewitt Bacon & Woodrow.
Firms that use it to administer pensions in-house include Rover Pension Services, Unilever, Heinz, Polaroid, and Michelin.
Such complexity demands user manuals and Help systems that deliver. That way, users of software can be more productive and spend less time puzzling how to use it. Training is made easier and more efficient. And it means fewer calls to technical support help lines - which is the goal of software makers everywhere.
Profund Systems has had a technical documentation team in place since it was founded in 1984. But when new CTO David Jordan joined the firm in April this year, he felt that Help and technical documentation production could be made more user-friendly and efficient.
"We used to use Dreamweaver to create Help documentation. Our technical writers had been using it for web page creation and were very experienced with it. It's a powerful tool, but isn't the best solution for Help," explains Jordan.
RoboHelp
Jordan called in Plain Words for advice. He had used their services when working for previous firms, so knew they were experts in all aspects of technical documentation.
"Plain Words were able to give us an external view as to whether our Help production was as effective as it could be," says Jordan. "They advised us to use RoboHelp, rather than Dreamweaver, as it is better integrated with the Windows platform. It also offers a multi-user environment, which is a big bonus. Previously our authors were doing overnight compiles and then altering each other's source files, which wasn't so good. RoboHelp has solved all this."
Once RoboHelp was put in place, Plain Words trained Profund's technical authors in how to use it. Now all Help files are produced with the new system.
Context sensitive
The biggest benefit is that the Help will be targeted at what users are trying to do on the screen they are working on - rather than general Help, which they have to navigate through to find what they need. In other words, it will be "context-sensitive".
Profund hope this will cut down on requests for Technical Support.
"Like most software firms, support is a big issue for us," says Jordan. "People tend to call the support department rather than use the Help in the software application. So we are trying to reduce support loads by making sure that documentation is clear and focused - and doesn't cause people to phone support at the drop of a hat."
Whether this will prove to be the case or not won't be known until May next year, when the full results of the new Help drive will be available. Plain Words eLetter, however, will cover the results as soon as they come in - so watch this space.
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