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The content generated by your business is an invaluable asset to your company, but this precious information is often stored in an unstructured environment. Content (which includes everything from in-house presentations and marketing materials to regulatory guidelines) represents a significant amount of labor and should be treated like an important asset. Transitioning from an unstructured data storage format to Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) organization is a forward-thinking decision that will strengthen your business in the long run. Here are 3 reasons why your company needs to transition to DITA organization.
Imagine this scenario: You need to find content on a particular subject, but all of your documentation is stored in an unstructured location. In order to find the relevant content, you’ll need to search through your files manually. When you have hundreds of documents in multiple formats, finding a document on a specific topic can be a chore. Manually searching through file formats costs your business time and money. That means you can search specific inquiries such as, “All documents related to XYZ written before 2016.” This feature allows you to spend less time tediously reviewing documents and more time working on important content.
You likely have documentation that requires routine updating. Perhaps you need to change a serial number for a product in a user manual, a website and a help desk article. Reviewing each instance of the change is tedious and leaves room for error. Instead of changing the information on each platform, you can update the information in DITA and every occurrence of the information will be updated across each platform. This ensures all of your documentation is always up-to-date. Read this blog post for more information on why maintaining documentation is a necessary business practice.
One of the principal goals of DITA is to reduce the practice of copying content between documents as a method of reuse. Your organization likely reuses pieces of documentation, such as instructions, across departments. The act of copying this information between documents is redundant and consumes labor. Topic-based authoring in DITA creates a database from which users can pull content for reuse. In fact, representatives of Citrix Systems estimate the content reuse feature in DITA saved their team 1800 days of labor. With DITA, authors can rest assured knowing that when they use a topic in an information model, the architecture will process it consistently in the new context.
Transitioning from unstructured content organization to DITA saves your organization time and labor. DITA is a document management solution that ensures your valuable content will be available with a simple search. Do you need help making the transition to DITA? Contact us to find out how we can help!
Trilyon, Inc. is proud to provide exceptional documentation consulting services tailored to your business’ specific needs. We specialize in documentation and content writing. Contact us today with any questions you have and to learn more about how we can help your business reach its fullest potential.
