atw: Re: Statistics to demonstrate value ...
- From: Suzy <SuzyDavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:53:35 -0500 (CDT)
I wholeheartedly agree with you Janice with regards to inhouse
technical documentation.
This is a Sales organisation and the technical documentation that
is produced is sent as part of a vendor solution. It needs to be
of high quality.
I attended a proposal writing course last year and we were given
two sample proposals to evaluate - one a better solution but badly
formatted and structured. The other was not half the product of
the other but because their document was formatted clearly, the
document structure was organised, it had an Index, it was easier
to mark it higher.
People who evaluate proposals are under just as much stress as
those who write them. They often have little care factor on the
result - they are just doing the evaluation.
So even after we were told that Product A was better, and asked to
re-evaluate so that it did come out on top, it was really
difficult to do.
For a Sales organisation the technical documentation and proposals
we provide to our customers is a marketing exercise and it
reflects the quality of our services and products to our
customers.
regards Suzy
On Sun Oct 18 21:43:57 CDT 2009, Janice Gelb <Janice.Gelb@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
> On 19/10/09 01:27 PM, Christine Kent wrote:
>>
>> I started following the KISS approach when I realised that
>> no-one but a tech
>> writer gives a pinch of putrescible matter what the document
>> looks like as
>> long as it is readable and serves its purpose. It can use ugly
>> fonts, ugly
>> layout, 27 different bullet styles, 38 different margin
>> indentations, spaces
>> to force layout changes, faulty headers and footers, blah blah
>> blah, and
>> no-one but us even sees the mess, let alone cares.
>>
>> To me this is the simple truth, so it doesn't really matter how
>> much value
>> we add or think we add, and it doesn't matter how much it &!$$@$
>> me off.
>> "They" don't think we add value, and they get what they pay (or
>> don't pay)
>> for.
>>
>
> Glad you noted that this is the simple truth *to you*. To me,
> the simple truth is that while readers will indeed put up with
> ugly,
> badly formatted, and inconsistent documents, they would prefer
> nicely formatted, and consistent documents. And while they will
> still read documents from other departments that are ugly, badly
> formatted, and inconsistent, they're a lot more likely to read a
> nicely formatted and consistent document all the way through,
> comment on it if that's the request, and think better of the
> professionalism of the person and department that produced it.
>
> -- Janice
>
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