Medical technology / Customer story
Localization savings.
Control across generations.
The reported impact
30%lower localization costs*Source summary says 30%; the main text says one-third. Historical reported savings, not a current measurement.Conceptual illustration
“The technical documentation team at GE Healthcare Austria initially adopted DITA and the XDocs CCMS in 2010 looking for greater efficiency in time and costs. Years later, with industry growth and product development, the team is finding new efficiencies in new versions of the XDocs CCMS.”
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides a broad range of medical technologies and services worldwide. They are leaders in the field of medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement, and performance solutions. Though the headquarters are in Chicago, Ill., there are GE Healthcare teams operating around the world.
The Challenge
The GE Healthcare team in Austria documents medical technologies that are used in women’s healthcare.
This documentation team faces several challenges. The team creates and maintains user guides and service guides for growing product series and systems where, within each, there can be multiple generations of products—and product documentation.
Even with the reuse of core content, a given product manual can still have 1600 files, which includes about 500- 600 DITA files and many images. Manuals are published from the source DITA content to both PDF and help files. Additionally, the team must manage the translation of these manuals into 30+ languages. The team has also grown to include writers who document a set of products from an office in Korea.
The Solution
As pioneers in the DITA space, the GE Healthcare documentation team in Austria made the initial move to DITA and the XDocs CCMS version 2.3 in 2010 for cost efficiency and time efficiency in the creation, management, and publication of product manuals. The initial move required a degree of persistence from the documentation team. This persistence allowed them to adopt DITA and the XDocs CCMS, to realize cost efficiencies and time efficiencies—and to continue finding new efficiencies in new versions of the XDocs CCMS ever since.
Of the initial implementation in 2010, a technical writer at GE Healthcare Austria reported,
“There were many processes to go through until we received the final clearance for the switch to DITA. Thanks to the great support from Bluestream, the rest seemed to work out without any problems.”
Since 2010, the team has seen much growth and technological advancement in the product series and systems, but they are still able to meet their challenges in creating, updating, versioning, publishing, and managing content for the manuals.
GE Healthcare Austria has continued to upgrade their XDocs CCMS to make use of new functionality. By adopting the XDocs Localization module in XDocs 4.0, they were able to reduce translation costs by 1/3 and realize tremendous savings. In XDocs 5.2, they adopted XDocs Release Management, with the ability to author and archive documentation on multiple branches.
When it comes time to perform the upgrades to new versions of the XDocs CCMS, a technical writer from the team says, “Thanks to the great support of Bluestream, the transition became easy for us. They patiently helped us out, despite the limitations of tools within our company.”
As new members join the documentation team, they have adopted a learn-as-you-go approach. For example, a colleague will provide some mentorship as the new member takes on a small learning project, such as to turn smaller word files into DITA, which weren’t meant for publishing.
A tech writer reports, “My colleagues and I still learn as we go, but working with DITA, XDocs, and Oxygen makes things easier to understand and we figure them out on our own.” In an ever-changing world, the team will continue to face new challenges, and the XDocs CCMS will keep evolving to meet the new challenges.
The Results
Localization
- Reduced translation costs by 1/3 for localization to 30 languages
Release Management
- Documents can easily be branched, allowing GE Healthcare to create archive copies that can be stored and updated as/if required and satisfying regulatory requirements.
Last Minute Updates
- The reuse model allows last minute updates to be easily incorporated into multiple publications at once.
Authoring Efficiencies
- Cost efficiency and time efficiency in the creation, management, and publication of product manuals.
Questions & answers
More about this case study
When did GE Healthcare Austria adopt DITA and XDocs?
The team initially adopted DITA and XDocs CCMS version 2.3 in 2010. It later adopted the XDocs Localization module in version 4.0 and Release Management in version 5.2.
How did XDocs support complex documentation?
The team reused core content, published manuals to PDF and help files, and managed localization into 30+ languages. Release Management enabled branching for variant authoring and archived documentation.
What localization savings does the case study report?
The main story reports that translation costs fell by one-third, while its In Brief summary states a 30% reduction. Both are historical reported figures, and the original wording is preserved here.
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