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Revised: 03/14/2004
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Automating Documentation Systems & Technical Writing Projects Blue Cross Blue Shield Case Study
Like most companies, Blue Cross was paying technical writers and other staff to work on projects that I knew could be automated. The first project involved moving systems-level data from mainframe to PC. Because of the unstructured format of the legacy data Blue Cross had committed two technical writers to manually complete this task, with almost 6 months time required. All within the space of one week I developed and implemented an automated solution and completed the entire project in that same week. The second project involved moving tens and hundreds of thousands of legacy documents from their IBM mainframe computers (and hardcopy filing-cabinet files) to a searchable HTML (Web) format that could easily be retrieved from any PC. Prior to learning that their projects could be automated Blue Cross was planning to utilize a combination of as many as a half dozen to a dozen employees, contractors, and temps, over a period of many months to a year or more to accomplish this same task. I reduced the minimum 1 to 1-1/2 hours that would have been required for technical writers to manually convert each document, to an automated solution that processed 180 documents per hour and could operate completely unattended. Automation increased the efficiency of their operations by 92.5% on one project, and 99.9% on another. This equates to a savings in labor and staffing costs of $50,000, and in excess of $1 million, respectively. Are you paying for technical writers to work on a project that can be automated? To find out if your project can be automated please feel free to contact me at the email address or phone number below. Sincerely, Phillip A.
Covington 517-841-0840
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