Presented at CMS/DITA North America 2016 to help people tell the story around content as a business asset. We agree there is value in documentation but have been challenged at times to “prove it”. Demo of how to present to groups including sales, support, service, IT, engineering, QA/testing, manufacturing, HR, training, finance, marketing, and every other business unit in your organization. Discussion on how documentation drives sales and generates corporate revenue to managers and executives helping them see how important documentation is to them.

1. Christopher Ward
Bernard Aschwanden
www.webworks.com
www.publishingsmarter.com
christopher@webworks.com
bernard@publishingsmarter.com
Metrics That Matter:
Making the Business Case that
Documentation Has Value
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2. Overall Objectives
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 Tell the story around content as a business asset.
We agree there is value in documentation but have
been challenged at times to “prove it”
 Present to groups including sales, support, service,
IT, engineering, QA/testing, manufacturing, HR,
training, finance, marketing, and every other
business unit in your organization
 Demonstrate how documentation drives sales and
generates corporate revenue to managers and
executives helping them see how important
documentation is to them

3. What you can expect to learn
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 Gain tools and processes needed to prove the value of
documentation.
 Show that docs provide valuable information to the
intended audience
 Prove that docs benefit marketing, sales, and technical
support teams
 Explain the value of documentation through the tools and
processes used in these other departments.
 Leave empowered to walk into any discussion knowing
how to present the value of documentation and to
explain why technical communicators should always be
in charge of that documentation.

4. We will not…
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 Discuss HOW to collect the numbers
 Detail complex spreadsheets, charts, graphs
 Explain how to create a slideshow

5. Defining business case
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 Formal, written content created to convince decision
makers to approve a specific action.
 Ideally it explores all feasible approaches to a given
problem and enables business owners to select the
option that best serves the organization.
 In the context of documentation, it may be used to
justify why a documentation team is best serving a
business by showing the value to every part of the
organization.

6. The story
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 WebWorks was launching a new product
(CloudDrafts) and had a development plan
 Needed docs, and looked at that early on
 Sales (Chris) was onboard early to have professional
writers for many reasons
 Frees up developers to develop
 Provide higher quality content
 Leads to more revenue
 Had to pitch this to others in the organization

7. What we knew going into the
discussions around this project
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The business value of content

8. Today, content is the most
pivotal asset for a
company’s success
Technical Documentation
(not just “the words”) can
increase profitability but you
need to show your costs
AND show your value
Measure your success
It’s your choice…

9. Poor data quality impacts the bottom line
 By an avg of $8.2 million/yr in:
 Operational inefficiencies
 Lost sales
 Unrealized new opportunities
 Losses of more than $20 million a year were cited by
22%
 4 percent of responders put annual losses at more
than $100 million
Gartner, “Organizations Perceive Significant Cost Impact from Data Quality Issues,” Ted Friedman (14 August 2009)
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10. Content effects the whole business
 Data/Content is not a problem to be addressed by:
 Sales
 IT
 Marketing
 Development
 Any single business unit
 It is a business problem because if done wrong or
right, it will effect the whole business.
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11. How we wanted to position the
conversation with key players
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Pitch the value

12. Include in your pitch to Sales
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 Sales leads who read online docs ask better
questions, are more qualified (informed consumer)
 People review docs as part of the purchasing cycle
 Sales people need to know that docs help make
sales easier, and that numbers go up
 More time with qualified buyers, less time wasted
with uninformed consumers
 More sales helps the business

13. Include in your pitch to Support/Service
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 Writing docs means testing the products
 Reduce bugs, increase time answering “real”
questions
 Support continues to support clients, not act as
software testers (in beta… not even a final product)
 Service continues to develop solutions with clients
(billable time to a client)
 Happy clients helps the business

14. Include in your pitch to IT/Engineering
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 Provides a second set of eyes on dialogs, error logs,
anything “written for a client”
 These people were not hired to write
 Less for IT to test (writers provide some level of
input)
 Engineering develops new product (instead of writing
weak content, they provide strong input)
 Product improvements helps the business

15. Include in your pitch to QA/Testing
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 As with service and engineering, another set of eyes,
with an impartial view and no known history (no bias)
 Usability tested during content creation (if it doesn’t
work as planned, documentation will prove it)
 Let QA/testing focus on complex use cases, not the
day-to-day ones
 Stable, reliable products helps the business

16. Manufacturing?
HR/Training/Finance/Marketing?
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 Every business unit in your organization is similar
 They are often overworked, underappreciated,
understaffed, or they feel they are
 More often than not this is because they aren’t doing
their core jobs, and not through fault of their own
 Dedicated doc teams helps the business
 With the right support you reduce overhead in other
departments
 People do the jobs they were hired to do, and are supported in
content creation for the customer, with a focus on user needs

17. Top 500 corporations love
content
Some of the names should be on the
list, and some are not what you
expect
Backup the idea that content matters
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18. Content is a business asset
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 Apple: Empowers people with breakthrough
services including the App Store, Apple
Music, Apple Pay and iCloud. Depends on
content, provides ways to consume it.
 Netflix: The world’s leading Internet
television network with over 75 million
members in over 190 countries enjoying
more than 125 million hours of TV shows
and movies per day, including original series,
documentaries and feature films.
 Google: Everything they do is about content.
Finding content, delivering content, creating
content. They make money when you look
for content.

19. More companies, more content
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 Adobe: Help you create content
 Microsoft: Create and manage content
 IBM: Manage, deliver, analyze content
 Samsung: Consume content
 Verizon: Deliver content
 Walt Disney: Create content
 See a pattern? Content is king

20. January, 1996 essay: Content is king
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 “Content is where I expect
much of the real money will
be made on the Internet, just
as it was in broadcasting.”
 Remains true today: Content is
a business asset
 Great content means a great
business asset
 Content is not just what is seen
by the public
 Copyright, trademarks,
software code, legal, medical
patents, help docs, sales
reports, marketing materials
and so much more
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21. Without them you have no baseline
and no hope to make a business case
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Get your metrics started

22. General ideas
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 Metrics are calculated
measurements (planned,
devised)
 They must have value as
it pertains to a project
 Used for decision making
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23. Consider all parts of a project
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 Dependencies
 Critical components
 Processes
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24. Things to measure
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 Time
 Costs
 Resources
 Productivity
 Quality
 Efficiency
 Customer satisfaction
 Others your business values

25. Benefits and uses
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 Create more accurate project estimates
 Talk clearly/numerically about why it took longer than
expected–speak with authority
 Justify expenditures (e.g. new hires, contractors),
tools (licenses, upgrades), or services (trainers)
 Have numerically sound reasons for updates to
procedures & processes, changes in software tools,
attendance at training or seminars, etc.

26. Benefits and uses (continued)
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 Justify saying “no” to increased project scope or to
insist on “yes” to your needs
 Measure time, money, resources, etc; use this for
making strategic decisions
 Present information in a way that is easily consumed
by management
 Determine your documentation improvement
strategy with customer satisfaction metrics

27. Discovery of a need for content
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The WebWorks story

28. WebWorks: Key Players
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 Tony McDow, CEO/Founder
(double as “Mitch” in Baywatch)
 Chris Ward, Director of Sales
(doubles as “Eugene” in Walking Dead)
 Ben Allums, Director of Engineering
(doubles as “Locutus” from Star Trek)

29. The Vision: CloudDrafts
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30. Development
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 No documentation existed for CloudDrafts
 Knowing content is a key business asset, helps drive
sales Chris pitched the importance of content to
Tony
 Easy pitch as Tony is already in the world of tech comm
 Tony grasped the importance of docs for both internal and
public use
 First thought was “let’s get the developers to write it”
 Then laughter, lots of laughter
 Not because the developer isn’t a good writer, but…

31. Writing expertise
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 Chris to Tony: “Ben can’t do all the writing…”
 He’s an engineer, we don’t pay them to talk to customers
 He’s paid to manage development, not write manuals
 Developers are paid to create code, support product growth,
enhance functions and features
 This is new, advanced tech, putting demand on Ben’s team
 There is an education period for customers, we need tutorials
 We need to explain the concept of our repository
 Knew we needed good docs to ensure people can relate to it
and have success. Good docs equals success.

32. Initial steps
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 Discussed budget numbers
 Asked vendors for a few quotes/bids,
reviewed them,
 Didn’t make the call JUST on the
dollars
 Also looked at experience in writing tech
content
 Vetted writers based on knowledge of similar
(but obviously substandard competing tools
)
 Had discussions with stakeholders, got to
know the personalities and found a good fit

33. Initial onboarding of writers
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 Demo to show functions and ask
questions
 Both the writing and development teams
asked questions
 The product evolved with writers questions
 Expectation of lower service and support
needs due to questions (anticipated issues
before product release based on input,
changes made before RTM)
 During testing and docs writing, WebWorks
reorganized the product, value added to the
engineering team

34. Delivery of the finished product
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 From the beginning,
content was in DITA
 Published via WebWorks
(drink our own
champagne)
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35. Once content was published…
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 Finished product seen by CEO/sponsor
 Positive impression, understood the benefits of what was done
by the content team,
 Delivered content and attached metrics
 Tracking who looks at what, how often
 Content achieves the goals it was designed for
 Easy to use
 Educates and encourages people to use the product
 Helps drive sales

36. Moving forward
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 Helps with future product development
 Pinpoints where people have trouble
 Identify the most common topics searched for, time on page,
search results
 Through discovery realized more features were
needed
 Docs helped provide a clear roadmap to CloudDrafts
v2.0

37. Net results
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 24/7 educational responses to
customer inquiries
 Feedback for customers to express
true needs, to see what they wanted to
do
 Better than a focus group, it was live
results, and evolved as content was
updated
 Allowed WebWorks to realize revenue
quicker with solid documentation
 All backed with metrics using Google
Analytics

38. It can be your proof that this where
you make the business profitable
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So what is the value of docs?

39. Top 10 lists are awesome
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 Ask support for the top 10 questions
 Document how long to answer them
 Document how often they answer them
 If 2 times per day, per rep, and it’s a 5 minute answer
 Rep spends 10min/day. If 6 reps, 1 hour… Each day
 365 hours per year (about 9 weeks assuming 40hrs/week)
 Document how long a team needs to create answers
 Assume it takes 2 weeks with 3 people = 6 weeks effort
 Compare the savings
 2 weeks pass, you “spend” 6 resource weeks, to save 9
weeks/year
 Resource cost = 6 units, return is 9 units (50%) within 2 weeks…

40. Top 10 your sales reps
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 What do they demo the most
 Create videos so that the world can see it
 Add tutorials to the demo version (if you have one)
 What do they find most complex to explain
 Write clear information to summarize it
 Free up reps to say “sure, let me send you a copy of the specs
for IT” and then move on

41. Top 10 your content
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 Not only the 10 things MOST read/reviewed
 Also the 10 things LEAST read/reviewed
 Is it because the content is not ‘findable’
 Or no longer relevant
 Has the issue been fixed
 In any case, if no one reads it, why do you create/edit/manage
it

42. Tools, tips, processes
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What you can do to improve

43. Stop doing “the same thing”
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 Just rewriting content doesn’t help
 If you repackage bad content into good content, but
do not solve a problem, no one wins

44. 18:23@publishsmarter
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45. Comparing two sets of text
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 If you prefer not switching to one of
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 If you have any questions, please
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 From 114 words to 67 ~40%
reduction!
 Message is clean, easy to
understand
 Translation costs decrease
 Message removes the feeling of
blame
45

48. Add metrics
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 You can start to see how to build a story
 Make it relatable, talk about what others have done
 Talk about successes and about failures
 Explore your metrics
 Then get to know what people are looking for
 Take the story and make it personal

50. Summing up the discussion,
and options to continue it.
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Conclusion and contact

51. Your next challenge
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 Go tell the story around content as a business asset.
Use information in this session to “prove it”
 Present to groups including sales, support, service,
IT, engineering, QA/testing, manufacturing, HR,
training, finance, marketing, and every other
business unit in your organization, using their terms,
and show value to their teams
 Demonstrate how documentation drives sales and
generates corporate revenue and help managers
and executives understand how important
documentation is

52. How to do it
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 Stats (Gardner) and case study (WebWorks) are
tools and process to prove value
 An engaged and educated audience reduces
support, complaints, costs, increases sales cycle,
increases profits
 Show that good docs (written by good people)
reduce overhead and turnover of staff in other
departments, improving the entire organization
 Walk into any discussion and present the value of
documentation
 Explain why technical communicators should always
be in charge of that documentation.

53. And do your fact checking
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 Just because you DO have great documentation
 Doesn’t mean users love you
 https://www.lowes.ca/floor-tile/del-conca-8-in-x-32-in-fast-
locking-porcelain-wood-floor-tile_g1515060.html
 Ensure you take the time to review what people say about you
 Learn from the customer, update your content regularly

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55. Follow up contact information
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905 833 8448 (Eastern Time)
bernard@publishingsmarter.com
www.linkedin.com/in/bernardaschwanden
@publishsmarter
www.publishingsmarter.com