BigLever Software, a provider of product line engineering (PLE) technology, and MadCap Software, a technical communication software provider, have announced that the companies have partnered to integrate MadCap Flare with BigLever's Gears PLE technology. The new bridge integration is designed to optimize document sharing and simplify the complexity of documentation management for organizations that develop and deliver complex product lines. As a result, organizations can streamline technical communications throughout product engineering and business operations to achieve new levels of efficiency, according to the company.
"Organizations that build complex product lines inherently have large sets of documentation that play a vital role in the creation, delivery and maintenance of their product lines, as well as in the use of their products by end users," said a company spokesperson. "These companies must effectively manage a broad array of technical specifications and all of the diversity needed to support the different types of products within a product line family. The new bridge integration solution combines the capabilities of MadCap Flare and BigLever Gears to provide a single, unified mechanism for end-to-end document management across each stage of the product engineering lifecycle, and throughout business operations such as portfolio planning and definition, marketing, sales, manufacturing, deployment, service and finely tailored documentation for end users."
"The BigLever/MadCap partnership is not only beneficial to their mutual customers, but also offers an interesting opportunity for companies needing to automate similar complex interactions and tasks," said Allan Behrens, Managing Director of technology consulting firm Taxal. "This type of product line approach to engineering and documentation should bring significant business value to their customers by enabling them to more effectively automate product variation across a broader set of operational processes and applications."
According to Dr. Charles Krueger, BigLever Software CEO, the Flare/Gears Bridge allows companies to establish well-structured and consolidated document "supersets" that support the full diversity of documents in a product line. These document supersets can be automatically configured based on the specific features of the individual products within the product line. "The Flare/Gears Bridge addresses a long-underserved strategic challenge of product line organizations," said Krueger. "Even organizations that have transitioned to mature PLE practices continue to struggle with the complexity of managing their document variants based on conventional word processing tools. The synergy that arises from the Flare/Gears integration is strikingly greater than the sum of the parts."
"In an era of continuous improvement, shrinking product cycles and multiple product variations, businesses need to ensure that their documentation keeps pace with each new rollout," said Anthony Olivier, MadCap Software founder and CEO. "Now organizations have an integrated solution to this challenge with Flare/Gears Bridge, which synchronizes BigLever's industry-leading Gears PLE Lifecycle Framework with MadCap Flare's best-in-class technical authoring and publishing software. Using MadCap Flare, BigLever customers can take advantage of topic-based authoring to speed content creation and promote reuse, along with multi-channel publishing to streamline the delivery of content to where customers will use it - whether in print or on their desktops, Web browsers or mobile devices."
For more information contact:
MadCap Software, Inc.
7777 Fay Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037
888-MadCap1 / 858-320-0387
info@madcapsoftware.com
www.madcapsoftware.com
BigLever Software, Inc.
10500 Laurel Hill Cove
Austin, TX 78730
512-777-9552
info@biglever.com
www.biglever.com