--- John Sgammato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am thinking of something along the lines of output > pages per writer. I appreciate any help. =================================== Using an ROI estimate to justify changing over to a structured approach is definitely the right way to go. But coming up with a number is complex. The fundamental purpose of structure is to greatly improve the management of your legacy documents, as well as improving the productivy of writers creating new content.
Although output pages per writer (in the case where completely new content is being created) definitely shows gains in productivity (after writers have become familiarized with structured authoring) it's only part of the ROI number. Here are some other, equally important, factors needed to come up with a realistic ROI: * The structure view, the element catalog and metadata (attributes) provide powerful new tools for systematically managing information. For instance, you can quickly locate chunks of information needing updates, as well as facilitating information re-use, using more systematic Find or Find/Change operations. For instance, you can use Find to locate all instances of a particular attribute value within all instances of a particular element name. * By reimporting a document's EDD into itself with Remove Format Overrides turned on, all format overrides of the EDD-specified formats are removed. This capability eliminates any necessity for editors to tediiously find and fix such overrides. Also, both authors and edictors can quickly use the Validate command to find and correct all anomalies in the structure. * A validated structured document with all illegal format overrides removed assures that conversions of FrameMaker structured document to other output forms can be accomplished successfully. * The ultimate ROI value is the certainty that, at some future date, you can successfully store your legacy documents in a content management system (CMS), which, I believe, will become the gold standard even for small companies. If you continue to produce unstructured documents, you assuredly will incur huge conversion costs, and thus an estimate of what that cost will be should legitimately should be included in the ROI. _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.