The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) and Data Conversion Laboratories (DCL) announce the results of our 2015 Industry Trends Survey. Comparisons with these surveys in previous years provides you with a comprehensive view of what is the same and what is changing in technical information best practices.
Turning task workers into professionals
Focusing on content and context rather than formal publication
Facilitating communication – Mike Lewis’ example
Add to this information of every type and kind – reports, proposals, data sheets, specifications, service manuals, even blogs
First choice DITA XML, second choice Madcap Flare, third choice Adobe FrameMaker,
Also RoboHelp, Markdown, Camtasia, Author-IT, Wordpress, Wikis
Insufficient staff time for converting in-house
Insufficient budget to support conversion
Lack of knowledge as to how to start a conversion project
Prior negative experience with effectiveness of automated conversion
Legal requirements to deliver paper, PDF is considered good enough; need to develop new content; don’t have enough people to do that. Manager doesn’t understand; fear of change; resistance to change; lack of understanding that a wiki is not a content management system, and cut and paste is not reuse
Search needs improvement 68.50% –
Content doesn't support customer needs 48.35%
Customers want own PDFs 44.69%
Need faceted search 39.56%
Customers can't find content 30.04%
Customers want videos 27.84%
Customers want topics 21.61%
Better info on the web
Change now or be left behind
Develop and convert everything in house 56.74%
Hybrid approach…combination of in-house teams and outsourced services 41.40%
Get training for our in-house team 29.77%
Outsource the development of new delivery mechanisms and legacy data conversion