The Asko brand originated in Jung, Sweden. The mother company, Asko Appliances, produces many models of environmentally friendly dishwashers, washing machines and dryers. More than 1,300 appliances are manufactured every week and shipped around the world.

About 80% of the machines are exported to Norway, Denmark, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the Baltic states. Asko Appliances has over 20 independent agents worldwide. It is important for Asko Appliances that their international brand is easily recognized by consumers, since over 30% of the company's customers indicate that their confidence in the brand is critical during the purchasing process.

"We've really been able to automate our document production with Skribenta. We produced a new manual for our Russian sales company in 5 minutes."

After sales technical support, and user documentation in the form of technical manuals, play a key role in building this brand confidence. Being able to provide high quality, accurate information to customers is also important for Asko Appliances. And the results of these efforts have been excellent; in fact, year after year, Asko Appliances receives top ratings by customers all over the world.

The number of models required at any product launch for each individual market is a major challenge that Asko Appliances faces in this global market. Most of the nearly 600 employees working in development, marketing and communications are involved in this constant effort. This is also a challenge for the handful of people responsible for the production of user manuals and technical documentation.

One minute rather than several hours...

How much time and money can be saved?

As Excosoft's research has shown, companies that globally manufacture and export an extensive product range can be at a disadvantage if they manage and produce their technical documentation manually. Technical writers often spend up to 80% of their time doing manual tasks that could be automated, such as formatting and page layout. A company that uses an automated publishing system, such as Skribenta, has the market advantage because they are able to reduce translation costs by about fifty percent, and also reduce the amount of time a technical writer spends on non-writing related tasks. The result is a higher quality manual with a consistent brand message to your customers.

Peder's Story: A logical data structure is extremely important

In the autumn of 2007, Peder Frisk began working as a technical writer for the Asko Appliances Technical Communications Department. This was about a year after the company started using Skribenta for most of their manuals. Peder's earlier work experience included working as a purchaser at Volvo for over twenty years.

Peder liked the challenge of using new software that could enable him to focus on explaining the product:

"I had no experience of working in a technical writing environment, but I have always had a strong interest in technology, and I like to think of ways of how to explain technical things clearly to non-engineers. Such challenges exist in this job, and because we use Skribenta, I am able to focus my time and energy writing about just that. I'm unable to comment how the process worked before Skribenta automated many tasks, but my understanding is that there wasn't much time for quality writing."

Peder also liked that learning how to use the Skribenta environment was made easy due to the excellent support Excosoft provides.

"Excosoft's customer support meant a lot to me in the beginning. Working within this type of system means that we don't see the result of what is being produced directly in the same way as in, for example, a desktop publishing program. Skribenta is really a style sheet, which automatically generates the page layout at the end of the writing process. It is a different way of working and thinking, but after a short training course, it was great. Today it is fun to work in the system. You do need to spend time creating a logical structure for all the information you will need to access when a new manual is to be produced or an existing one revised".

Peder compares the structure and working practices to a recipe that clearly explains what is in the database and how all operations will be conducted. In this scenario, the database is the recipe that tells the cook where all the ingredients are, and what's to be used in a specific dish, or actually, a manual. There is a simple production process with clear, precise steps that Peder and his co-workers use to track all changes. Peder is able to concentrate on writing while Skribenta handles many other steps in the production of the completed manual. The structure, the recipes and the concise work process also provides a measure of quality control, which will significantly reduce the number of errors as compared to a traditional non-automated process.

How Peder was able produce a completely new manual in 5 minutes

The following illustrates how Asko Appliances were able to use Skribenta to quickly and easily generate a new manual for the Russian market. Normally, when a new paragraph of text has been written, it is sent away for translation to all the required languages. At Asko, up to 15 languages are managed, and the finished translations are stored in Skribenta.

When the Russian sales office requested a new manual, Peder simply selected the Russian language code in Skribenta, which then produced a finished PDF file in less time than a coffee break. Automatically.

Peder pointed out another major benefit of using Skribenta:

"When the department was working in Adobe InDesign, there was always a risk that errors might occur when you copied and modified an original document. The farther from the original document, the greater the risk of error. By using Skribenta, we reuse text, and this resolves that problem. It also means that we are better placed to produce manuals that meet tough regulatory requirements in countries such as the USA and Australia."

Benefits of automating the workflow with Skribenta:

• A consistent visual identity maintains a strong brand image.
• Significant time savings: zero time wasted searching for information and instructions, finding which pages have been updated, controlling layout, and proofing PDF files.
• Sharply reduced translation costs: Skribenta automatically detects what portions of the material have been translated. No risk of needless translation.
• Shorter lead times: translation work can start later, which reduces the risk of costly changes in post-production.
• Version control with traceability means much improved quality.
• Uniform handling of multiple sections of text means general textual improvements.