Divestco Deploys Flare from MadCap Software to Enhance Customer Experience, Speed Online Help Projects
Easy Import of Other Formats, Full-Featured Browser Help Capabilities, and Superior Support Cut Project Time by Up to One-Third
San Diego, CA, USA – January 7, 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 Divestco, Inc. has successfully implemented MadCap Flare 3.0, making Flare its new Help content authoring solution for its oil and gas exploration software. With 10 online Help projects already completed in Flare, Divestco has been able cut project time by up to one-third.
“We thought it would take a long time to complete our first project with MadCap Flare, which was for an upgrade of one of our software packages, but in minutes we were able to convert the older Help project, and everything moved over perfectly,” said Mat Hepton, vice president of software development at Divestco. “From there, we could simply add the new content, formatting, and contextual links into the Flare project. We were done days ahead of schedule.”
Divestco, headquartered in Calgary, Canada, is a leading provider of software, data, and services to the oil and gas industry. Its extensive line of exploration software for oil and gas professionals has been designed with a thorough understanding of the needs and demands of the land, geological, geophysical, and engineering communities. With a focus on allowing exploration teams to collaborate, the company licenses its software for on-premise use, as well as offering it as a hosted solution. To support some 30 applications, Divestco provides HTML-based online Help that can be easily accessed through a browser.
After using another authoring product for years to create its online Help, Divestco decided to evaluate alternative packages. The older Help content authoring tool lacked the flexibility to easily create different skins for its online Help projects or to find related links. At the same time, with more of its applications being delivered over the Web, Divestco wanted a Help authoring tool that easily created HTML Help.
Growing buzz in the technical writing community about a next-generation product, called Flare, led Divestco to look at MadCap Software. Upon reviewing Flare, Divestco was attracted to several features: its native XML architecture; support for Microsoft .NET, which will be important for future integration; and reusable components that cut project time.
“Flare’s ability to create snippets, which are reusable content, is a big feature,” said Mr. Hepton. “For example, we can create a dialog box as reusable content and then insert it into each appropriate topic. If we edit this dialog box in one place, that change is automatically reflected everywhere.”
Two other key features for Divestco are the ability to relate context-sensitive Help and toggling. The latter feature lets the author put content into a toggle, for example an image. A reader who wants to view the image, doesn’t have to scroll back to a previous page. Instead, he or she can click on the toggle to view the image from the current page. Additionally, Divestco has taken advantage of MadCap Flare’s patent-pending graphical user interface (GUI).
“Flare’s GUI has allowed us to provide a modern image to reflect our cutting-edge software,” said Mr. Hepton. “We’ve completely revamped our style sheet and look concurrently with our Flare updates. The efficiency we’ve gained from the style guide and formats has been really nice. Equally
important, Flare applies exactly which output and skin we want—and there’s been no problem viewing our Help over the network or using a Web browser instead of Flare’s viewer.”
MadCap’s support has contributed to the success of Divestco’s deployment as well, Mr. Hepton notes. “We took a class and spent a month to learn the product. We also purchased the platinum-level support, and MadCap was always been there immediately to answer questions or help with anything we didn’t understand.”
“Divestco delivers some of the world’s most advanced applications for oil and gas exploration and understands the importance of intuitive, easy-to-use Help systems to support these sophisticated software solutions,” said Anthony Olivier, MadCap Software CEO. “We’re excited to see the rapid gains in efficiency that Divestco has achieved through Flare’s XML-based design and GUI innovations, along with being able to create a richer online Help experience for its customers. And we look forward to supporting Divestco in advancing its industry-leading solutions with equally ground-breaking software for delivering online Help.”
About Divestco
Divestco is an innovative software, data, services, brokerage, and consulting company providing integrated solutions for the oil and gas industry. By implementing a strategy of integration between software, services, and datasets, and potentially all three together, Divestco is creating a unique set of offerings. Divestco is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol “DVT.” For more information, visit www.divestco.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.
