How HyperSTE helped Elekta standardize its authoring and save cost
Elekta is a human care company pioneering significant innovations and clinical solutions for treating cancer and brain disorders. The company develops state-of-the-art tools and treatment planning systems for radiation therapy, including brachytherapy and radiosurgery, as well as workflow enhancing software systems across the spectrum of cancer care.
“The small details can have large impacts on efficiency.”
Elekta, Medical Devices
Elekta, Medical Devices
Major issues driving the need for change
- The mountain of words that continued to grow
- Translation costs escalate proportionately
- Information is difficult to maintain, reuse, and consume
- Different versions of the same information across different documents
- Foreign language users find content difficult to understand
The solution
As part of its Global Information Management (GIM) initiative, Etteplan helped Elekta to create its own standard for creating clear, consistent and concise information, called EASE (Elekta Approved Simplified English). The implementation included:
- Training global authors in the new way of writing
- Creating a terminology list with approved vs. non-approved words
- Using HyperSTE to check the work of the authors
The results
- Total translation budget for FY2011 = $824K; achieved translation cost savings up to 40%
- 66% COGs reduction in print cost per manual
- 30% page count reduction
- 20% word count reduction in a user manual
- Cost savings that were a result from poor communication, which can lead to:
- Confusion
- Lost production time
- Service calls
- Content proved to be easier to manage, access, integrate and reuse as part of the total GIM initiative
