Singlevision

It may be that a single solution is what you need, or perhaps your software is best served by a suite of documentation. It’s all part of our service to help you make that decision.

When designed for the users of software packages, these guides are based round the question ‘How do I?’ to give a user all the information they need to use the software to perform a range of tasks. Such user guides include screen captures and flowcharts to assist the reader.

A high-quality user guide can:

Online help text to help a user solve problems while using a software package. Our help systems make full use of graphics, contain hyper-linked text and can include a glossary.

A user will often refer to online help text before thinking about using a manual so it acts as instant support.

Typically, these are comprehensive books into which a user can dip for information and so are fully indexed and cross-referenced. Such manuals typically cover an entire software package.

For portability and ease of use, large reference manuals can also be generated in pdf format so that they can be accessed online or from a CD.

Particularly suitable for software houses, these documents are typically aimed at your own staff and expert end-users and describe at a high level the new and enhanced functionality in a software release.

Often we are asked to produce additional documentation that assists your staff to upgrade a client’s software from one release to another.

Supporting your sales literature, these overviews give a more in-depth view of the particular area of functionality you are promoting. They work well for both new and existing clients and enable them, in conjunction with input from your specialist staff, to make informed decisions.

As a company grows, so does the need to document standards and procedures. These bring together the wealth of knowledge within a company, help new staff learn the ropes and ensure that everyone is working in the same way to the same end.

Standards and procedures are an ideal way of underpinning your internal quality systems.

Your company will undoubtedly have some members staff to whom others always go for information and advice because of their knowledge of a particular aspect of your software or their business experience.

A series of skills books captures this knowledge so that it can be shared by all and ultimately reduces the pressures on expert staff. Such books can also be used to drive internal training sessions.

We are sometimes asked to work with business analysts prior to the implementation of a software package to map a new client’s current business processes.

Alternatively, you might feel it is time to review all your business processes to check whether there are gaps or overlaps in the way you are operating.

In both cases the result is a set of graphical process flows that can be used to identify a need for bespoke software or as the basis of internal procedures documentation.

Technical staff, while highly-skilled and very knowledgeable, frequently have difficulty in putting their thoughts on paper. We can act as the middle-man, making sense of technical jargon or scribbled notes and producing readable, grammatical specifications.

These interactive solutions combine text, sound and graphics and work well for presentations, demonstrations and tutorials.