Technical Communication as a Marketing Tool (Part 3)

by Bill Harrison

Editor's note: Parts 1 and 2 of this series were published in the November 2003 and February 2004 issues of the Galley.

I was explaining to the Director of Engineering that the great publishing machine that he had described to me before I accepted the job as Technical Publishing Manager, had a flat tire, and that we needed to fix it. He enjoyed the analogy and encouraged me to not make any drastic changes until I had drilled deep enough to get a fundamental understanding of current systems and their rationale. After I felt comfortable with the recommendations that I wanted to make, I could submit a detailed proposal, complete with an ROI analysis based upon the company's current internal rate of return (IRR). He would compare it to his stack of other proposals, then submit the best to the executive committee, and they would fund those projects with the greatest return to stockholders.

I responded that he must be thinking of a major overhaul that exceeded the scale of what I was proposing, and that it was good to know that I could ask for the moon, or an XML-based publishing system, and actually stand a chance of getting it. But right now all I wanted was to do was upgrade our archaic computers to the same workstations that the engineers were using, upgrade all of our software, purchase a decent digital camera, and print the manuals in color.

He seemed amused. I explained that I had seen ROI calculations take many forms. Some were contained within formal proposals that languished in file cabinets, neatly classified and indexed by topic, others resided in Excel files and haunted email in-baskets, others were written on the back of napkins at the local coffee shop. Some of the most effective resided only in conversation. But in this case, the ROI had already been calculated by our CFO when he stopped by my office this morning and asked why a ten-dollar disk was holding up a million-dollar order.

Now that I had the Director's full attention, he agreed that the technical publishing department played an important role within the company. Once that foundation was laid, I was able to build my argument for the expenditures. The company had recognized the role of engineers, and had supplied them with adequate equipment. Our technical writers were just as professional and dedicated. They attended universities, just like the engineers. And within their chosen craft, they were just as competent. So it was not only about ROI, it was also about parity, and about doing the right thing for the company. Professional people must have professional tools to be productive.

He agreed that there was more to increasing profit margins than cutting costs. That slashing budgets too drastically could endanger primary business activities. I insisted that we establish a maintenance level for technical publishing, and that it be on par with engineering. I also explained that the formal ISO 9001/9002 quality control guidelines, as written for technical publishing, were outdated and did not reflect current best practices. He thanked me for my candid appraisal and asked me to submit a purchase order for the items we needed.

Morale in the department picked up immediately when the new workstations arrived. Over the following weeks we added new software and a digital camera. But when it came to printing the books in color, a line had been drawn in the sand. So for the time being, I pressed ahead with other issues.

The service guides, at over 250 pages, had a lot of good information. However, the many complaints that I received lead me to believe that major refinements were required. Poor design and organization was impeding delivery of important content. The table of contents was barely more than a list of chapters. Many of the diagrams and drawings were hard to read, with arrows pointing to illegible details. The writers had used the factory default body copy format in Framemaker, which is 12 point Times New Roman, far too big for easy readability, and made the book far thicker than needed.

Typographers, before the great extinction of graphic arts craftsmen, used the term machine-set type. Machine-set type was output that just spewed out of a machine with no intelligent control or refinement for s pecific uses. Atlas Copco, a multi billion dollar corporation, had supplied a slick corporate style guide. The guide specified 12 point Times New Roman for all body copy, but the style guide itself used 10 point Times New Roman. The authors may have been mistaken or incompetent, but they definitely were not typographers, so I followed the instructions I agreed with and discarded the rest.

Because of limited staff and resources, I chose not to have any new technical illustration created, opting to use existing digital assets instead. The company had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars installing and training engineers to use ProEngineer, a three dimensional CAD mechanical design program with wire frame and solid modeling capabilities. We created specific views in ProEngineer of relevant assemblies and exported the files. These were opened in PhotoShop and refined. I developed a blueprint metaphor to give the line drawings character, and to increase visibility of indicator-arrows.

There were many engineering changes to our largest truck, the MT5010. To expedite updating the technical content and the design of the manual, we looked for input from many sources. Initially, some gatekeepers felt threatened, and resisted the process. But after talking with the Marketing, Sales, Order Entry, Purchasing, Parts, Service, and Engineering departments, our international sales companies, and many customers, we redesigned the books and incorporated suggestions that the publishing team and I agreed were valid. Everyone got respect and feedback and a sense of involvement, especially customer mechanics at mines that had generated complaints.

We produced spiral bound color copies and announced a meeting. I invited all the department heads and the President of the company. I was asking that we send not only a CD, as the company had been doing to save money, but also one full set of hardcopy manuals at no cost to the customer. I was armed with copies of the old books in black and white, copies of the new book that contained hundreds of color close-up views of highly detailed assemblies, and a spreadsheet comparing the costs of black and white to color. I stressed that recent improvements in color digital photography coupled with high-speed color laser printing on enamel papers had created an opportunity to convert to color for about $100 per book. Everyone in the room agreed, after comparing the old book with the new book, that obviously the savings in our service technicians time alone would more than offset the cost. During that meeting the President ordered that three sets of books would ship with every vehicle, and that the operators guides and service guides were to be produced in color. One full set of books would go to mine management, one full set to the mine maintenance department, and one full set to our sales company within the region.

The process of creating the books facilitated exchanges between departments and proved to be a silver bullet that solved some long-standing problems. Mining industry mavens began to talk about the books. As word-of-mouth spread we began to receive requests from around the world.

Through my experiences at ACW, I discovered new methods for creating, maintaining, and protecting the corporate knowledge base. I also learned that reliance on ISO 9002 and other quality control systems to unite core business activities may not be sufficient, and that the technical communications process can bind those bricks together with the strongest mortar.

Many companies ex pend a lot of effort to get the sale, then drop the ball when it comes to customer support. Discussions about marketing and branding seldom recognize the role of user guides and the literatu re that ships with product, beyond warnings to protect the manufacturer from liability and intrusive questions to identify the customer's marketing profile.

In business-to-business sales, typical marketing strategies are aimed at the front door offices of management and purchasing departments of prospective client companies. But technical communications such as user guides and maintenance manuals can be very effective sales tools when applied to the back door of end-user and user support departments.

People have a tendency to talk with one another about the unexpected, and the development of word-of-mouth advertising is often a primary marketing goal. User guides that are produced at the same high quality levels as marketing materials have shown surprising results at Atlas Copco Wagner. Perhaps reviewing the basic assumptions about the role of user documentation will lead to new areas of grow th for technical communicators.

After receiving his BS in Graphic Design from PSU, Bill Harrison pursued his interests in graphic arts technologies and communications theory by marketing services for trade shops within the local printing industry. He worked with leading advertising agencies and graphic design firms to produce world class advertising and collateral materials. He also worked with Fortune 500 companies and government agencies to develop systems for channeling the flow of targeted information. Today he emphasizes that communications is not a one-way street, as he looks for ways to empower those who depend upon technical content.