We offer consulting and project services in Business Communication and Technical Communication
Our services in this area cover:
Research and Training Projects
Standards Design & Implementation
The nature and source of communication problems is usually far from obvious: some research is usually necessary to track down the problems and develop carefully targeted solutions. In most cases, these solutions will involve training, though it may be sufficient to refine systems or procedures.
Perhaps you can identify specific communication problems in your organisation. Perhaps you know they exist but you can’t put your finger on them. Perhaps you just have the uneasy feeling that things are not working as well as they should.
In all these cases, BRANDLE can help. We can work to your brief — as broad or as narrow as you wish; or we can work with you to prepare a brief. Within the scope of that brief, we will study the communication processes in your organisation: we will identify the problems, then define, develop, and deliver solutions.
When the solution does involve training, we will usually offer one of our standard training programs, tailored to your specific needs. Even when presented in their standard form, our courses are fine-tuned to ensure relevance and appropriateness to the needs of participants. In rare instances when an appropriate standard program does not exist, we will develop a client-specific course to meet your precise needs.
All our training programs are designed to be reinforced by follow-up sessions after a few weeks, so that old habits do not creep back undetected.
Follow the link for more information about our standard training programs, or email us to request our Education and Training Services booklet or our comprehensive Course Directory.
In-house "standards" affect the quality and effectiveness of written communication in three major ways. First, many instructional or procedural documents can be interpreted more quickly and more accurately if all such documents use a common approach to structure and style. Second, forms — standardised documents for information collection — can, if poorly designed, encourage incorrect completion, whereas well designed forms are easy to fill in correctly. Third, many common situations call for "form letters" which, if designed effectively and consistently, save time and effort for both the writer and the reader.
Brandle offers design and implementation services for all such cases:
- We can design standard structures for instructional and procedural documents, and instruct your staff in their use. We can develop word-processing "templates" to automatically generate required structures.
- We can design effective forms which encourage error-free completion. We can develop "on-line" forms, with built-in instructions, for completion by computer users.
- We can design computer-based form letters, either completely standardised or with built-in "tailoring" facilities to handle common variations.
We test our designs to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. Tests are planned with client input to ensure that they reflect real-life usage.
Our services in this area cover:
Technical Documentation Projects
Standards Design & Implementation
Methodology Implementation
Personnel and Recruitment
We will structure documentation development projects to suit your needs. We can work to a fixed-price quotation or on a time-and-materials basis. We can work at your premises or ours (though of course we will always need some access to your expert staff). We can even edit or re-write documentation drafted by your own people.
Out-sourcing your user documentation with Brandle can bring significant benefits in both quality and cost. You get the protection of contractually-defined quality criteria, schedules, and budgets. You concentrate on your own strengths — making your own products, or delivering your own services. You rely on us to concentrate on our strengths — developing effective documentation.
- Your development people, and especially your technical management, can concentrate on what they know best — product development, support, or service delivery.
- Agreed criteria for quality and effectiveness place the responsibility for achieving results in the hands of documentation experts, yet you retain authority for approving results.
- Documentation projects, like most kinds of development project, are prone to schedule slippage and budget overrun. We can negotiate fixed-price projects so that Brandle absorbs these risks.
- Fluctuations in product development activity, and slippage in development schedules, can lead to idle resources at some times and over-stretched resources at others. An out-sourcing arrangement with Brandle can reduce the impact of many of these fluctuations.
We can design, write, and publish documents, including publication in hard-copy or on-line form. Publication products we use regularly include Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe InDesign, Adobe PageMaker, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft FrontPage. To convert print documents for on-line use, our preferred products are Adobe Acrobat, Virtual Media's Hypertext Development Kit (HDK), and Quadralay WebWorks Publisher.
Effectiveness of technical documentation depends on many factors. Logical arrangement of contents (document structure) is perhaps the most obvious. Another factor, often neglected or poorly understood, is physical design (the "look and feel"). It isn’t enough that technical documents look and feel "good" (whatever that means): the physical design must be appropriate to the conditions of use, and the visual design must foster and enhance the transfer of information.
Physical design includes document size, paper weight, and paper finish. Appropriate physical design makes for ease of handling in cramped conditions (inside a computer, or under the bonnet of a car), and ease of reading in difficult lighting conditions.
Visual design itself is complex, and includes typography, margin sizes, and the use (or non-use) of colour. Consistency of visual design helps fast and efficient information location and retrieval, and generates a feeling of familiarity that counters the aversion many people feel towards technical documents.
Logical design and visual design both lend themselves to standardisation.
- Brandle can design standard structures for technical documents, and instruct your staff in their use.
- We can develop word-processing "templates" to automatically generate required structures, and to impose visual design standards.
Brandle’s approach to design combines well-established principles with the latest research results to ensure effectiveness and ease of use.
If you decide to implement an in-house solution, we can help to ensure that you make the right planning and implementation decisions — to maximise documentation quality and project control.
Brandle’s Methodical Approach to User Documentation is a disciplined way of ensuring that technical documentation does the job it’s meant to do. We can tailor this methodology to the needs of any User Documentation function, providing a powerful and flexible framework for all documentation projects — and, important to software developers, it’s fully consistent with AS 4258.
Tailoring the methodology includes defining the quantity and level of skills required, and specifying development and production systems — which might take the form of PC-based word processing, more advanced desktop publishing (DTP), or full-scale electronic publishing systems (EPS). We can even accept prime contractor responsibility for the installation and maintenance of these systems.
We can provide support for the staffing of your User Documentation function in a variety of ways. We can provide consultancy services to define positions and job specifications; we can place advertisements and perform first-level "culling" of applications; we can refer individuals from our database of professional writers and editors; we can even assemble a complete team for your approval. We are not a conventional recruitment agency, collecting piles of resumes and hoping for the best; we are experts in identifying the communication skills you need and the individuals who can supply them. (Brandle is licensed in NSW as a Private Employment Agency; our licence no is PE7916.)
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© Brandle Pty Limited, 1997-2006
Last modified: April 12, 2002