Pressroom

Fresh Meadows, NY, Feb. 9, 2015 – Technical communicators, tools vendors, consultants, and even client organizations and end users all feel the rapid changes coming to content preparation, delivery and consumption. To better understand these changes over time Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) and the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) are now conducting their third annual survey of practitioners, Following the Trends — Is Your Content Ready?, which is open now until March 16, 2015.

"Content creation, management and delivery grows more complex, seemingly daily," said DCL President Mark Gross. "Understanding the trends, challenges and needs of the technical communications industry, and how they change over time opens the doors to provide better solutions and evolving best practices to benefit practitioners, their organizations and their customers."

The first survey, conducted in early 2013, found that content providers in most organizations take on multiple roles. And a comparison of those roles with 2014 results shows an increasing percentage have responsibilities in technical support and in customer service. In addition, the number and variety of channels to which content is published are increasing, especially in the areas of mobile apps and mobile device delivery. The 2015 survey should uncover how these and other key areas are continuing to shift.

"While many technical communicators believe their competitors are ahead of them in delivering quality content electronically, roughly half of our respondents in 2014 believe they are ready to support their organizations’ business requirements for digital content," notes Joann Hackos, Director for CIDM. "We think it’s critical to stay on top of the barriers to digital content delivery from the business and technology perspectives, so that providers can plan for and actually meet their organization’s business requirements."