The Firm’s in-house business services division routinely provides high-quality staff training courses, and would devise and deliver the phased training required for the changeover. However, a requirement for documentation to provide ongoing user support was recognised which the trainers had neither the relevant experience nor the time to produce.

Together with a number of other documentation specialists, PDA was invited to submit ideas and initial cost estimates for developing various forms of user documentation. These met with general approval, and the next stage was to conduct a detailed analysis of user requirements across the company, from which we created the final documentation plan. This included:

• a series of self-study packs covering important document-related tasks and designed for self-paced individual learning.
• on-line help giving stepped instructions for performing hundreds of company-defined procedures.
• a pocket quick-reference guide to the most commonly-used procedures.
• a ‘mobile working guide’ addressing procedures and problems specific to working on portable PCs away from the Company offices.