InfinityQS Cuts Time and Costs to Deliver Documentation in Four Languages by Using MadCap Software and MadTranslations Service

Meet InfinityQS International, Inc.

Manufacturers worldwide rely on InfinityQS^® statistical process control (SPC) software and services to automate their data collection and analysis during the manufacturing process—empowering them to make real-time process improvement decisions and prevent defects before they occur. As the leading provider of Statistical Process Control (SPC), InfinityQS currently has more than 40,000 installed licenses at manufacturing companies, including many Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 customers.

Developed by industrial statisticians using proven methodologies for quality analysis and control, InfinityQS solutions are saving leading manufacturers millions of dollars each year. To help customers optimize their use of its software and services, InfinityQS delivers modern web and print documentation in four languages using MadCap Flare, MadCap Central, and the MadTranslations service from MadCap Software.

Cloud Serves as Catalyst for Modern Web Documentation

For years, InfinityQS relied on Microsoft^® Word to produce documentation and Help content for the company’s ProFicient^™ software. Collaboration was difficult since a subject matter expert (SME) would have to provide a write-up in Word that a technical writer would then need to weave into the documentation. Moreover, re-using content required manually cutting and pasting from one document to the next. Finally, the team needed to use third-party add-ons to split Word documents into topics and index them to create a searchable Help system, increasing complexity.

When InfinityQS began planning a new cloud-based solution that would free customers from requiring extensive IT support, the technical writing team knew they needed a more advanced authoring solution. Not only would this new solution support creating modern Web documentation and Help that foster user self-service; it also would ensure that new documentation kept pace with frequent cloud solution updates.

The technical writing team evaluated several authoring tools, but quickly decided on MadCap Flare after determining that it provided all the features InfinityQS was seeking in a single product.

“I looked at Flare and said, ‘I think we found the perfect solution that checks all our boxes’,” recalled David Wright, a technical writer at InfinityQS. “The thing that particularly ignited my interest was the content reuse provided by Flare. Communication is all about consistency, and with Flare, I saw for the first time a solution that could ensure this consistency.”

While InfinityQS began building the new cloud solution, Enact^®, the technical writing team migrated some 300,000-plus words of Help content for its existing ProFicient software over to MadCap Flare. With the launch of Enact, the team delivered a Web-based documentation site featuring more than 150,000 words of content.

More recently, the company added two more offerings from the MadCap Software: MadCap Central for collaboration and analysis, and MadCap Capture for image capture and editing. Additionally, InfinityQS relies on MadTranslations, a services division of MadCap Software, to cost-effectively translate its original US English content into UK English, German, and Latin American Spanish.

Tailored Content for InfinityQS Solutions

Today, InfinityQS offers different content experiences tailored to the expectations of customers. For its ProFicient software, the company takes a traditional approach, providing both a searchable, online tri-pane Help system and print documentation available in the form of PDFs. Meanwhile, for its Enact cloud-based quality platform, InfinityQS delivers a modern, searchable, responsive HTML5-based documentation site with a table of contents (TOC) for users to navigate to the information they need.

“The documentation site for Enact required a radical redesign from our traditional output, but I was able to find a template in Flare and use it to create the framework,” David explained. “Then, because our design team was very familiar with the Cascading Style Sheet standard, they were able to simply modify the MadCap CSS to add our branding and get the look we wanted.”

While customer documentation experiences may be different, much of the actual content is the same. To customize different documentation versions and maintain the correct version numbers, InfinityQS uses conditions and variables in MadCap Flare. Perhaps the biggest application of conditions is for a mini suite of powerful services that ship with ProFicient, which the company now also offers in Enact with slight variations.

“When I update for a new version of ProFicient services, I automatically update the corresponding docs for Enact services, which are almost—but not quite—the same. I have already conditionalized the source docs to identify the differences between the two platforms, hiding the ProFicient-only content and displaying the Enact-only content,” David explains. “It can’t be overstated what a big deal this is since the services account for almost half of the Enact documentation.”

Conditions in MadCap Flare also play a key role in helping the technical writing team publish updated documentation as soon as a new version of ProFicient or Enact is released.

“I can create conditions that say, 'new version’ or 'quarter one update’, and then I can write new material and never worry about accidentally publishing that new content before it's ready to go live,” David notes.

More recently, InfinityQS has also taken advantage of the branching functionality available with both MadCap Flare and MadCap Central.

“Today, we are using branching in MadCap Central and Flare to compartmentalize content for different features and then merge the branches that are ready to be included in a new documentation release,” David says. “However, we also have customers who are still using our 2012 version of the software, so we see an opportunity to use branching to keep different product documentation versions separate and provide them to specific customers as needed.”

MadCap Central for Collaboration and Control

In addition to managing documentation versions, InfinityQS relies on MadCap Central to facilitate collaboration. Notably, the ability to add and review content using MadCap Central has facilitated the ability to leverage the company’s SMEs.

“In the past, using multiple authors was a multi-step process, and it was easy for something to be lost or forgotten,” David recalls. “With MadCap Central, I can say to our SMEs, ‘Go to this website, log in, make your changes, and submit. Our subject matter experts are excited that they can add text, images, and tables with MadCap Central instead of exchanging emails.”

Incorporating content from multiple authors with MadCap Flare has been especially useful in building an internal knowledge base for Enact.

“With Enact, we're learning as we go, and there are a lot of questions we need to answer to create the best customer experience possible,” David observes. “Through the collaboration supported by MadCap Central, we are capturing the insights of our engineers, sales team, and other SMEs in a central location with our Enactbase knowledge base.”

InfinityQS is also looking at the newer Viewer user level in MadCap Central to manage internal user access to Enactbase and other content.

“The Viewer user option in MadCap Central is a game changer,” David says. “It’s a powerful and secure way to guarantee that only approved users have access to content, since they each have individual usernames and passwords, and when an individual leaves the company, it’s easy to deactivate their account.”

Optimizing the User Experience

Beyond facilitating internal collaboration and control, InfinityQS relies on MadCap Central Analytics to improve customers’ documentation experiences. For example, through insights into customers’ documentation usage, the technical writing team can analyze where users are not getting the search results they want.

“Gauge is the preferred spelling of a measurement device our software can connect to—and it is what we use in our documentation—but over the years, more people have started using ‘gage’,” David notes. “Through MadCap Central Analytics, we discovered that many customers searching with ‘gage’ couldn’t find the topic they needed. So, I added a synonym to the Flare project, ‘gauge = gage’.”

InfinityQS also increasingly uses filters, micro content, and drop-down menus in MadCap Flare to help users find the information they need faster.

“The micro content enabled by Flare is such a great way of quickly answering a question, and people have noticed when their search results include a little bar on top that says, ‘Here's information you can use right now, and here's a link to more’,” David says. “Meanwhile the drop-downs let us hide a lot of information until the reader needs it. They can expand the section that they want to read, but never lose where they are in the overall document.”

To complement its written documentation, InfinityQS also incorporates screenshots and other images using MadCap Capture. The technical writing team is also able to reuse images more readily by adding a layer and using conditional statements that let the team effectively flip a switch to show the new image layer.

“I've become completely spoiled by Capture. The whole idea of creating layered images—and text inside images that can then be translated—is pretty fantastic,” David notes.

MadTranslations

Because InfinityQS serves customers worldwide, localization is another element of the total user experience. With the Enact cloud solution, the company saw a perfect opening to begin supporting multiple language versions, since customers can simply choose their language preference on the documentation website.

“Flare is built for a world with multiple languages, so the expectation is that we can deliver Enact documentation in multiple languages,” David says. “We reached out to a number of different translators, and the one that impressed us the most was MadTranslations. They know Flare, so we can just send them a Flare project, and they do the rest. The result has been nothing short of breathtaking.”

In addition to the original US English version, the Enact web documentation now includes UK English, German, and Latin-American Spanish. Prior to working with MadTranslations, InfinityQS received estimates of $50,000 or more for each language translation. However, once the company sends a project to MadTranslations, the translation is completed in 2-3 weeks, and InfinityQS is only charged for changes.

“I point out to management that the cost for a translation would have been $63,000, but the actual cost was $2,000 because our team and MadTranslations use the same tools, and there is only 10% of new content that needs to be translated,” David notes. “Working with MadCap Software and MadTranslations is saving our company tens of thousands of dollars every quarter.”

“Also, we’re not only translating our documentation,” David says. “We work with MadTranslations on numerous projects throughout our company—supporting 13 languages for the corporate website and various marketing documents.

Empowering Users’ Self-Service

The intuitive user experience that InfinityQS provides with its documentation played a central role in helping the company meet its goals for customer self-service with its Enact cloud offering.

“When we first rolled out Enact, we were getting perhaps a dozen questions a day about how to use the system,” David recalls. “Now with our Flare-based documentation in place, those requests have basically gone to zero.”

David adds, “I look back at my original notes, and MadCap Software has enabled us to accomplish everything that we had identified as goals. Looking ahead, we have so many more features to explore with MadCap as we continue to evolve our documentation.”