Companies generate information in large amount and in various forms such as:

However, the targeted audience is not always a subject matter expert, which can be a barrier to understand the information. Besides, producing documentation can be time consuming which will prevent your expert from dedicating to his or her core business.

Finally, technical writing can also be used to design visual aids (e.g. a diagram in exploded view in a maintenance manual): using a graphical element often makes it easier to explain a procedure.

In these sectors, without a good prior technical command, the end user may struggle to understand the information in the technical documentation (whether it is a user manual or a maintenance manual).

By aiming to produce quality and comprehensible content, a technical writer will help updating documents and their distribution on different media.

To do so, simplified document management relies on two key components:

• Structured writing and XML tags make writing in a modular way possible (in accordance with the S1000D and DITA standards). When the content is updated, only the concerned block of information will be modified (e.g. when the supplier decides to modify a spare part reference) without altering the rest of the document

• Content editing and management software (e.g. Arbortext, Author-it, Calenco, Oxygen XML) associated with a version management system (i.e. single-sourcing)