FRx Software Corporation FRx ® Financial Reporting

Download (pdf)

The Customer

FRx Software Corporation, a part of Microsoft® Business Solutions, provides financial reporting and analysis solutions to customers worldwide. FRx Software products have an interface to the general ledgers and ERP systems developed by more than 30 of the leading mid-market General Ledger and ERP solution providers.

The Challenge

FRx Software planned the release of a major upgrade to their FRx ® Financial Reporting product in 1999, and contracted with Intelligo to update all the end-user documentation for the product, including two user guides, a tutorial, and individual online Help systems for four product modules. Both the printed documentation and the online Help programs were developed in English and optimized for translation into French, German, and Spanish. FRx Software needed a single-source master document that could produce customized versions of the documentation to support Enterprise, Professional, Desktop, and Standard editions of the FRx Financial Reporting product.

The Solution

Working in Adobe ® FrameMaker ® source files for the existing user guides, Intelligo seamlessly integrated the content for new features and developed additional chapters covering new functionality in both the user guide and the tutorial. Using FrameMaker's conditional text capability, Intelligo created a new single-source master document structure to produce custom editions for each level of FRx Financial Reporting product.

Intelligo updated three existing Windows-based Help systems and developed an additional context-sensitive Help system for FRx ® WebPort, a new product component.

Intelligo coordinated with a local printing and binding vendor to produce 2000 copies of the final documentation set.

Intelligo worked closely with French, German, and Spanish translators to produce localized editions of the documentation set. Intelligo consultants familiar with the target languages captured more than 200 localized replacement screen shots for each translated version, and restored the raw translation files into finished user guides and online Help files.

Intelligo's Value-Add

With ten years experience in developing formal end-user documentation for publication and online Help systems, Intelligo provided expertise for every facet of documentation revision and publication by accomplishing the following:

		Developed new FrameMaker master document files, capable of producing four versions of the FRx Financial Reporting User's Guide in print-ready format
		Updated the FRx Financial Reporting Tutorial with new instructional material
		Created soft copy versions of each manual in PDF format to include on the product installation CD
		Updated context-sensitive online help files for four product modules
		Captured correctly configured replacement screens for localized versions in French, German, and Spanish
		Crafted final versions of the documentation suite, fully localized for French, German, and Spanish users

Working in teams of two or three, as needed, Intelligo consultants completed this extensive documentation update project on time and under budget. FRx Software realized considerable cost savings on this project by outsourcing the work to Intelligo, with time and materials charges only for actual hours worked. Additional cost savings were realized with Intelligo's smaller team of two to three consultants, compared to the additional expenses of FRx Software Documentation Department larger team of five writers and a department manager.

As approved Microsoft vendors and proven experts in all components of FRx Financial Reporting documentation management and development, Intelligo continues to be FRx's documentation vendor of choice. Intelligo provides ongoing documentation service and support to FRx Software, including interim release documentation updates, on-demand customized Getting Started Guides for FRx Software integration partner installations, and documentation and template design consultation. Intelligo is currently developing a fully revised suite of re-branded product documentation for Microsoft® Business Solutions for Analytics-FRx® in a new FrameMaker template optimized as a single-source root for output to Adobe PDF, on-demand printed editions, and WebWorks online Help authoring application.

INTELLIGO, Inc. 2450 S. Downing Street | Denver, CO 80210 | Phone: 303.721.1187