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Technical Writing for a Life sciences and Chemistry enterprise product

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Company Profile

Client is a leading supplier of discovery, collaboration, and knowledge enterprise solutions, desktop software, scientific databases and consulting services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical industries. The client's product, an “Electronic Lab Notebook”, facilitates daily record-keeping for scientists. This Electronic Notebook makes it possible to manage diverse types of data on electronic pages that are much like the pages of a paper notebook. It is an excellent tool to simplify the job of the analytical laboratory management team, the individual analyst, compliance authorities, and the customer; all at the same time. It has been designed to be user-friendly by utilizing such simple and widely used software tools like Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

It helps create a customized electronic notebook that matches the user’s work- flow. Users can develop new fields to manage specialized types of data, and configure their own forms to manage the information that is important to them. They can also add their own data analysis tools and customized searches to the software.

It helps in organizing a wide variety of other information critical to other work processes as well. For example, common reactants used in reaction preps can be stored in the database and shared among researchers. In large enterprises, the software can be configured to both supply and retrieve information from other Enterprise systems, such as chemical registration or chemical inventory management systems.

Business Situation

The business requirement of the client was to develop a plan to design the technical content and provide its users with a documentation that helps/ guides them to understand the software and use all its features. The following documents associated with the software were to be provided to the users:

• Online Instruction User Manual
• Quick Reference Guide
• Help Guide & FAQ
• Presentations

Technical writing was required for a product called ‘Electronic Lab Notebook’ which was intended for use in storing day-to-day reaction data by pharmaceutical and chemical synthesis industries.

Solution

Q3 developed a plan to manage the technical writing for the product from inception to completion. At the initiation level Q3 deployed domain experts with profound technical writing skills. Q3 constituted a Client Documentation team with a specified hierarchy to prepare the documentation of the software as requested by the client. Effective technical training on product features and functionalities were imparted internally to the team. Client requirements were mapped into well designed formats and designs to give best views on Word Doc, presentation and web files.

A strategy was devised to create the design help manuals using advanced tools such as Madcap Flare. Easy to follow steps and presentations for the client software were designed in a way that even novice users could easily follow and master them. Feedback and suggestions given by the client were incorporated on a regular basis. Daily reviews by peers were managed to get the quality standards on the technical content. User friendly documents helped client cover a large user base as the software could be used simply, by following the help manual. This in-turn helped the client get more orders and business opportunities.

Q3 accomplished in providing the following documentation for its client:

• Online Instruction User Manual: The online help was created using Madcap Flare. It assists in creating different kinds of online help such as Web Help, HTML Help and DotNet Help. It provides an option to change the type of help produced once the contents are added i.e. one can change from HTML help to Web Help or any other even when one has completed creating the file.
• Quick Reference Guide: As its name suggests, this is a quick reference to a detailed process. The steps to perform any action in the software are depicted with help of screenshots and callouts. Not much of text is added in this kind of document.
• Presentations: The documentation team at Q3 created presentations for training purpose. The presentations were created in MS PowerPoint. It is an easy way to illustrate the working of the software to the users with the help of screenshots and trainer notes.

Benefits

• Increased user base for client. Provided best of industry norms in technical content writing and documentation.
• Compliance to the guidelines laid by client.
• Q3’s technical writing and documentation processes and practices have provided dedicated effort in managing cost effective solutions and have improved usability of the product two-fold.
• With Q3’s in house technical expertise the project was accomplished on time and Q3 was honored as the most important contributor to the product sales which increased significantly by 40%.