Replacing Framemaker and Robohelp with robust Content Management

An SAP Silver vendor, and the developer of xSuite® for SAP, as well as other ERP solutions, xSuite Group offers innovation and deep technical expertise in SAP-ERP process solutions. Standardized processes and interfaces to existing ERP systems facilitate end-to-end business processes in all scenarios. xSuite can be deployed in a diversity of settings and in combination with a wide range of technologies.

Matthias Lemenkühler, CEO at xSuite Group, tells the story of how they needed to change their technical documentation management and decided to move to Paligo.

Before Paligo, xSuite Group was working with a combination of the file-based documentation tools Adobe FrameMaker and RoboHelp. Working with a file and folder based system can quickly become really messy when dealing with complex technical documentation, as Matthias explains:

“Handling of files became tedious, ensuring that images are stored in a proper location, and never ever removed or renamed, publishing documents involved lots of time in the proof-reading/review process, as numbering or table figures were often inconsistent, translating FrameMaker files required conversion into MIF-files as only those were supported by the translation memory (memoQ).

And back then, as we weren’t using XML-based documents, keeping an overview of the translation status was always a manual effort.

Overall lots of many tedious tasks were required in maintaining and publishing documents.

An increasingly complex technical documentation situation required a change to find a better system for content reuse and single-sourcing:

“We are working with several full-time technical writers and one in-house translator, plus freelance translators. We have three product suites and a total of 12 products, requiring documentation in German and English.

This includes user manuals, admin guides, installation and configuration guides, and developer guides.

Aside from the documentation we also create system requirements and release notes. New product releases are published every second quarter. Re-usability is key for our daily business in order to keep up with the speed. Now that we are offering a real cloud services ourselves, this requires even more speed due to the faster release sprints.”

Paligo has made our daily life a lot easier from day one!

xSuite Group needed a full CCMS to manage the complex technical documentation better. Traditionally, such CCMS systems have been very expensive to deploy as Matthias explains:

“We’ve had a look at 3-4 solution providers, but none really satisfied us. Most solutions were on-premise installation requiring high license costs, but also many man-days for implementing the solution. Overall we had the impression that those solutions were feature-rich, but not really full-filling our requirements in regards to enterprise software documentation needs.”

Eventually xSuite Group discovered Paligo was a offering a new way of acquiring a full CCMS as a modern cloud-based system requiring no installation or deployment time.

xSuite Group learned that they could move from a problematic file-based FrameMaker/RoboHelp environment into a full-fledged CCMS without breaking the bank. If you want to find out what Paligo can do for your technical documentation challenges, get in touch with us for a personal demo below.