BASYS MOVES TO WEB-BASED CONTENT DELIVERY USING MADCAP FLARE
La Jolla, CA, USA – August 25, 2008 — MadCap Software, the leader
in multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Visual Studio 2005 and
Microsoft XPS, today announced that basys, inc. has modernized its documentation and Help content delivery
using MadCap Flare. MadCap’s flagship content authoring software has enabled basys to migrate from PDF
documentation files to a Web-based content delivery model. Using features in Flare, such as single-sourcing,
reusable snippets, and conditional tags, basys also has significantly cut the time for maintaining its
documentation—completing some updates in minutes that once took hours. Flare replaces the Adobe RoboHelp®
content authoring tool.
“When we began rewriting our software as Web-based applications, we wanted an authoring product that was
optimized for the Web and could provide true single-sourcing. That product was Flare,” said Adrienne
Pugh, technical writer for basys. “We have been using Flare since April 2006, and it is one of the best
decisions we’ve made. We haven’t looked back since.”
Headquartered in Linthicum Maryland, basys has been a leading provider of benefit administration solutions for
30 years. More than two years ago the company made a strategic decision to rewrite its Unix-based applications
as Web-based applications using Microsoft .NET and Visual Studio. With the move to Web-based software, basys
wanted to modernize its documentation, and deliver it as Web content.
“We were jumping into a new world with our software and documentation, and it was time to look at a new
authoring solution,” Ms. Pugh recalled. “We reviewed a number of products, but most were based on
older proprietary architectures. We were attracted by MadCap Flare’s standards-based, native XML
architecture. We also liked the fact that Flare is based on .NET and Visual Studio, providing a lot of
potential for seamless integration with our Web-based software.”
It was also seen by basys as an opportunity to improve the efficiency and quality of documentation. Due to
RoboHelp’s lack of robust single sourcing, basys had to maintain some 10 projects and hundreds of in-line
styles, and each change had to be made manually in every place it occurred. Not only was this time consuming
for basys’ technical writers, it also demanded close scrutiny by quality control (QC) team members to
ensure consistency.
Since implementing Flare, basys has taken advantage of several product features, as well as MadCap’s
responsive support team and community forums, to enhance and streamline its content delivery. With
Flare’s single-source functionality, basys only needs to maintain a few projects. Condition tags combined
with single sourcing allow basys to control what documentation users can see based on their profile—for
example whether the person is an administrator, an employer, or a member. One of the most popular features is
the ability to create reusable snippets, and today they appear in every topic within basys’
documentation. Now when there is a word change, it can be made automatically throughout the Flare project.
“We love the snippets in Flare. It’s one of the things that has transformed our lives,” said
Ms. Pugh. “Now when we have an update, we just go to the snippet source, make the change, and the change
appears everywhere. It just takes a few seconds. It’s so much more efficient, and there is a lot more
control.”
“Our QC people say it has affected their process as well, Ms. Pugh added. “Before, they had to
review every topic and hope that a function or field was described the same way. Knowing that we use snippets,
they no longer have to eyeball every instance where a change occurs. It adds a whole new level of
certainty.”
The internal efficiencies have been matched by the rich, user-friendly experience for the company’s
customers using basys’ WebHelp. Customers report that the Web-based content is much more intuitive and
more in line with what they are used to seeing with other Web-based applications. The use of drop down text and
expanding text allows users to read only what they want to—and to access it faster. The
“favorites” feature allows coworkers to save frequently visited help topics so they can find what
they need without searching.
“Our Web-based documentation has become such an asset that our sales team pitches it to prospects, almost
treating it like another application,” Ms. Pugh observes. “Flare makes our technical writing team
feel like rock stars.”
“basys has taken a strategic step in extending its market leadership by transforming its proven benefit
plan applications into Web-enabled processes—supported by state-of-the-art Web-based
documentation,” said MadCap CEO Anthony Olivier. “We are thrilled by the role that our
ground-breaking, native XML Flare authoring software has played in enabling basys to deliver a world-class
customer experience along with superior quality control and productivity. We look forward to supporting basys
as it delivers new Web-optimized solutions and documentation for the future.”
About basys
Since 1977, basys, inc. has been delivering products to administer more than 1,500 different benefit plans in the United States and Canada. The easy-to-use, integrated basys system enables employee benefit plan administrators to transform their benefits processing to an entirely new level of flexibility, independence, time and money savings, and first class member service. Customers include Taft-Hartley (multiemployer) funds, third-party administrators (TPAs), non-profit groups and self-insured corporations. basys’ headquarters are located in Linthicum, Maryland. For more information, visit www.basys.com.About MadCap Software
MadCap Software is a trusted resource for more than 20,000 companies around the globe for single-source, multi-channel authoring and publishing solutions designed to streamline the process of developing and delivering training content, learning and development programs, technical documentation, online Help, knowledge bases, and more. From authoring, publishing and translation, to cloud-based project and content management, to contribution and review in the cloud, you can streamline content delivery and manage the entire content development lifecycle with MadCap Software. MadCap Software’s services include product training, consulting services, translation and localization, and an advanced developer certification program. Headquartered in San Diego, California, with offices in Austin, TX, MadCap Software is home to some of the most experienced software architects and product experts in the content development industry.
