Working With “The Impossible Budget”: Making Things Possible for OnSite
OnSite Systems offers a breakthrough next generation metro-optical transport access portfolio that delivers flexible service delivery, ultra low unit cost, simple & effective network management, and a clear migration path for future services. The OnSite platform architecture ensures a smooth and profitable transition from legacy TDM to new broadband data services such as Internet access, Ethernet Private Lines and Transparent LAN.
What John Jaeger really wanted was a polished and professional installation guide and operations manual. But like most startups, Onsite was running lean and mean with little to spare. John, Onsite Systems’ vice president of product marketing and engineering, thought that he and his product manager would have to develop the documentation themselves. “We would have banged it out in Word, and it would have looked like it,” he says.
So when John met with Content Rules, Inc. to discuss technical documentation, he was pessimistic. “I just didn’t think we had a budget that Content Rules could work with,” he comments. “To my surprise, they came back with a proposal that looked as though it would work.”
Content Rules brought in a team — an editor, an illustrator and a production specialist —that worked closely with OnSite’s product manager. The product manager wrote the copy and passed it to the editor. The editor, in addition to editing the copy, shared valuable information with the product manager that enabled him to produce better targeted and more effective copy — thereby reducing the amount of editing required for subsequent chapters. “Content Rules did a really good job of helping our writer as the project progressed,” John notes. “The deeper they got into the job, the better his writing became and the less time it took.”
The project progressed smoothly with the Content Rules team in place. “I was pretty skeptical about this project in the beginning,” admits John, “but I actually found the whole process productive and pleasant.”
The Content Rules team created all drawings for the manual, including detailed hardware renderings of the product. FrameMaker templates were designed to comply with OnSite’s branded look and feel, setting a standard for future document projects. In the final stages, the document was formatted in FrameMaker and the team went over the manual with a fine-toothed comb, adding professional polish and a full index.
Although the manual was originally scoped at 100 pages, it ended up at 166 pages. And Content Rules still brought the job on time and under budget.
John is very happy with the result, a sleek and professional combination installation guide and operations manual: “The Content Rules crew represents a lot of different skill sets that we can tap into. They apply the required skills as the project dictates, and they work within our time and budget constraints.”
John adds, “They were able to work with our impossible budget, and still produce a highly professional-looking manual. I was pleasantly surprised, and we will definitely turn to Content Rules for the next release of our product.”
Note: Onsite systems was acquired by Patton Electronics in 2008.