CONTENT SOLUTIONS

We partnered with SAP – one of the world’s largest software vendors – to improve the quality of their documents, enhance their flexibility and scalability, free up time for their staff, and get their content to market more quickly.

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION TO RUN SIMPLE

SAP is a global market leader in enterprise applications and software. The company spans more than 130 countries and services more than 440,000 clients. It needs an enormous amount of high-quality content.
TWi is an approved global strategic supplier for SAP, providing services including:

• • • • Product documentation development
      • DITA-based training
      • Localization
      • User Interface (UI) design and development
      • Copy editing

We collaborate with multiple internal SAP divisions to create content solutions for SAP partners, consultants, trainers, and customers, providing:

• • • • System documentation
      • Configuration guides
      • Online application help
      • Industry-specific product documentation
      • Video scripts
      • Virtual training material
      • eLearning courses and materials

THE CHALLENGE: SAP REQUIRED A STRATEGIC PARTNER TO DELIVER THEIR GOALS

SAP operates around a methodology called Run Simple. Run Simple is designed to meet SAP’s need to accelerate and remain competitive in a changing economy, grow while expanding on operating profit, and provide a unique customer experience. It encompasses the company’s value generation capabilities, including processes, technology, and people.

As part of its mission to “win the war for talent”, SAP required the flexibility to strategically expand writing capacity in periods of increased demand. For some projects, the company needed writers to integrate seamlessly with its internal documentation teams. For others, they needed a partner to manage projects and achieve complex objectives with minimal oversight. This meant identifying a team that could work with a degree of autonomy, lessening impact on SAP resources while generating high-quality, on-time results that increase value across the entire organisation.

In all cases, SAP needed experienced writers who could quickly get to grips with its tools, processes, standards, and guidelines. Delivery of learning and training materials is a major focus for the company. New acquisitions, for example, must migrate their documentation to SAP while maintaining consistency. Equally, new technology must be explained to target users in a clear and easy-to-understand way. When SAP needed a partner to help deliver these and other strategic goals, they came to us.

THE ACTION: TWi REDUCED COMPLEXITY FOR SAP

TWi’s technical writers worked on documentation for SAP projects with experts in Germany, France, the US, India, Brazil, China, and New Zealand. Our primary role was to support development projects in locations where SAP couldn’t source local writers who shared our knowledge of SAP tools and technology or our level of skill and precision.
We worked as integrated SAP team members to support project planning, upskill their technical writers, build relationships, and handle changes to requirements and timelines.

This reduced the need for SAP to train and manage external resources.

• The TWi team looked after every element of the editing process to ensure that SAP standards and guidelines were applied consistently.
• We implemented internal quality reviews and technical client reviews to ensure that inputs and feedback were incorporated.
• When needed, our team worked on-site, visiting SAP campuses for training in new tools and technologies.
• We responded flexibly to the changing needs of the client and exploited our ability to scale up and down with demand to ensure that resources were used with maximum efficiency.

THE IMPACT: POSITIVE RESULTS WITH MINIMAL CLIENT INPUT

Our writers became experts in SAP’s language, style, processes, and tools. With our support, a significant amount of internal time was freed up at SAP for core activities such as training, development, and consulting. This increased efficiency within SAP, returning capacity to their teams to work without disruption. Feedback emphasised the high quality and technical accuracy of our deliverables.

Our relationship with SAP continues to grow, generating positive results such as:

• • • • Improved content with minimal requirement for support from SAP management
      • Enhanced flexibility and scalability
      • Dedicated technical writing resources
      • Faster time to market for content solutions
      • Consistent support from a trusted partner with extensive SAP knowledge and a proven track record
      • TWi works with SAP on complex new subject areas to produce product documentation and DITA-based training for, among others:
      • Financial and banking solutions
      • Data analytics
      • Supply chain management
      • Transportation management
      • General content

We support content efforts for strategic topics like HANA, SAP’s in-memory database platform, and Fiori. In parallel, we work on SAP custom development projects in areas as diverse as agriculture and leasing. TWi also manages migration of content to SAP from newly acquired companies and trains new SAP technical writers to use the company’s authoring tools and processes.

THE CLIENT’S PERSPECTIVE:

“TWi supported SAP Education with the early development of single-source, DITA-based training material. This material is delivered globally to customers and partners in the classroom via e-learning and SAP’s cloud-based Learning Hub. The team worked hard to understand and work around the challenges we faced during a time of dramatic change.
Their extensive SAP experience helped them to learn quickly and partner with us. They added value not only in terms of their authoring, but by co-developing processes and tweaking how we approached a new toolset and standards and guidelines for producing written content. Having worked with other vendors, we found TWi unique in this regard.
I was especially impressed by TWi’s flexibility and how willing and able they are to scale, starting with a team of ten, growing to 45, and scaling back down in response to changing business requirements. Consistently high-quality standards have been maintained throughout our collaboration.
TWi is a highly professional and valued SAP supplier with whom we envisage maintaining a long-term relationship.”

– Amy Sellers, Senior Director for Education Portfolio Management, SAP