Key Findings from Adobe Tech Comm Worldwide Survey 2016

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CMS Usage Analytics

Published OutputFormats

StructuredAuthoring

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Executive SummarySpeed, accuracy and complexity make strange bedfellows. But increasingly the world of the technical content creator is a strange amalgamation of these three sometimes con�icting elements.

Content professionals are realizing they either need superhuman capabilities or need to use content solutions that will enable them to manage enterprise content requirements, within cost and time constraints.

�e Adobe Tech Comm Worldwide Survey 2016 looks at the changing world of technical content creators and how they are adapting to stay on top of their game. �e survey received responses from over 1000 content professionals across geographies ranging from North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Paci�c and Japan.

�e respondents worked in 32 industry verticals and the companies they represent ranged from large enterprises to small businesses.

Key Findings

Structured Authoring �is is the fastest growing trend in the Tech Comm industry. Over 30 percent of the survey respondents have already migrated to structured authoring. Large corpora-tions have adopted faster but medium and small �rms too are biting the structured authoring bullet.

Published Output Formats It’s all about multi-format publishing! Mobile friendly publishing is the fastest growing trend. Over 40 percent of the users already publish to mobile while there is strong interest among the rest to follow suit. In terms of format, PDF continues to dominate with over 80 percent of the respondents using the format. Other popular formats include HTML5 and WebHelp.

CMS UsageIncreasingly popular with teams that have to collaborate over large content projects. Most respondents use a CMS as a shared repository or for version control. Microso� SharePoint is the most popular CMS amongst the respondents.

AnalyticsA li�le over 25 percent of the respondents use content analytics, with a further 12 percent planning to use it in the future. Google Analytics dominates with 80 percent of analytics users choosing this product.

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Scope and Coverage

�e Adobe Tech Comm Worldwide Survey for 2016 received 1118 respondents, distributed across 15 countries. �e survey covered 32 industry verticals. �e sizes of companies the respondents work for range from small, medium to large enterprises.

Over 50 percent of the respondents are technical writers. Documentation managers account for a li�le over 12 percent of those surveyed. Around �ve percent of the responses came from senior executives (Directors and Vice Presidents). Information developers and architects account for another �ve percent of the survey size with UI designers, UX experts, trainers and editors making up the rest of the sample.

�e respondents use a wide range of authoring and publishing tools, not just Adobe tools.

50%Technical writers

15Countries

32Industries

5%Senior executives

5%Information developers

and architects

1118

Respondents

12%Documentationmanagers

UI designers, UX experts, trainers and editorsmake up the rest

Structured Authoring

Structured authoring is well on its way to becoming the new normal in content production. �e survey points to a consistent 30 percent rate of adoption of the format over the last couple of years. A good 15 percent of the respondents are considering migrating. More interestingly, the number of professionals undecided about the format has reduced from previous years.

2015 - Split 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%

Not doing

Already doing

In the process of migrating orplanning to do

Undecided

31%

15% 43%

11%

Structured Authoring Adoption Trends

20%

2012 2013 2014 2015 20160%

5%

45%

40%

35%

30%25%

20%

15%10%

50%

28%34% 31%

46%

Structured authoring – an authoring work�ow created by engineers at Hughes-Fullerton aircraft – is increasingly viewed as a cost and time e�ective method for creating content that can be easily deployed across a diverse range of platforms.

Modern content needs to be machine-readable for semantic technologies. It needs to be responsive and easily deployable across a wide variety of user devices. Structured authoring allows writers to create mix-and-match chunks of content that can be reused and recombined for diverse audiences. The methodology separates presentation from content creation so writers don’t need to worry about formatting. Translation and publishing can be automated. This results in signi�cant cost and time savings.

The inherent bene�ts of structured authoring have made it the fastest growing trend in the technical communication industry. Interest for structured authoring is especially high in the Asia Paci�c region with 44 percent of the respondents already using it for content production. Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and North America lag behind Asian adoption rates at 35 and 28 percent respectively.

Structured Authoring – By Geo

APJ

EMEA

NA

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120%

Already doing In the process of migrating or planning to do

UndecidedNot doing

44% 19% 29% 8%

35% 16% 37% 12%

28% 15% 46% 11%

Large organizations have been relatively more proactive in migrating to the format. About 33 percent of the respondents from large enterprises already use structured authoring. The number for medium and small enterprises is 25 and 23 percent respectively.

Professional services and technology (high tech) lead adoption of structured authoring among industry segments. The telecommunication sector is a little behind the leaders while �nancial services and manufacturing still have a way to go in moving to this format.

Structured Authoring – Top Five Industries

Technology/High Tech37% 13% 41% 9%

36% 17% 32% 16%

21% 17% 55% 7%

29% 16% 44% 11%

23% 13% 53% 13%

Already doing In the process of migrating or planning to do

UndecidedNot doing

Professional Services(Technical, Web, IT)

Manufacturing

Telecommunications

Financial Services

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Structured Authoring – By Org Size

Small23% 17% 39% 14%

25% 14% 43% 12%

33% 13% 37% 8%

Already doing In the process of migrating or planning to do

UndecidedNot doing

Medium

Large

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Published Output Formats

�e survey throws up some interesting results in terms of the most popular content publishing formats. �e most signi�cant is the increasing use of multiple formats to make content available on as many devices as possible.

PDF continues to be the format of choice for over 80 percent of the respondents. HTML5 and WebHelp are growing in popularity with around 35 percent publishing in these formats. �e big mover in this segment has to be mobile publishing, with over 40 percent of those surveyed saying they already publish in mobile-friendly formats. Interest to do so among those not yet publishing for mobile is high.

Published Output Formats

EclipseHelp EPUB Export as HTML/CHM HTML5 JavaHelp Kindle Mobile Apps Adobe Digital Oracle Help PDF WebHelp WikiPublishing

solution XML

3%

Planning to publishCurrently publishing

0%

10%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

100%

2%1%1%

3%4%

2%2%8%

12%

11%15%

7% 36%

5%

32%

21%

20%

10%5%

83%

4%

4%29%

6%

3%

.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

0%

10%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

Adoption of Mobile Publishing Formats

28%

32% 32%

54%

30%

HTML5 EPUB KindleMobile Apps

2013 2014 2015 2016

11%10% 8%

21%

5%3% 3%

8%

12%11% 10%

Mobile Publishing Trends

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

15%

37%42% 39%

78%

0%

10%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

100%

Mobile publishing adoption

Content Management Systems

Analytics

Content professionals are beginning to realize the value of analytics in producing contextually relevant, quickly searchable, easily consumable and immediately actionable content. According to the survey, around 25 percent of the respondents already use content analytics. Interestingly, 12 percent are planning to use it in the future. Among those using analytics, Google Analytics is the clear market leader with 80 percent share. Using in-house tools is the next preferred option of content professionals. Other tools gaining in popularity include Adobe’s Analytics suite (part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud), Webtrends and Coremetrics.

�e increasing interest in content analytics among those surveyed is not surprising given the huge bene�ts to be derived from adopting analytics. Using analytics helps connect people with relevant content, provides solid business insights, and boosts productivity and most importantly revenue. Content consumption pa�erns can help signi�cantly re�ne content strategy for higher user adoption and ROI around content.

Analytics Usage 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

24%

12%

57%

7%

Not doing

Already doing

In the process of migratingor planning to do

Undecided

Analytics Tools Usage 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

1%2%

1%2%

10%20%

4%4%

27%54%

4%7%

Mobile app analytics tool

In-house analytics tool

Webtrends

Google Analytics

Coremetrics

Adobe Analytics/Omniture

Already doingIn process or planning to do

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Collaboration across teams, geographies and subject ma�er experts lies at the heart of an increasingly quick adoption of content management systems. Large enterprises with global footprints are driving the move towards sophisticated CMSes to help their disparate teams collaborate more e�ciently and e�ectively on increasingly large content projects.

Li�le wonder that 54 percent of content professionals in this survey say they use CMSes as shared repositories. Version control is another important aspect with 46 percent of those surveyed saying they use a CMS for this. While 41 per cent say they use it for publishing.

Content professionals say the need to work on �les in a shared repository and collectively working with subject ma�er experts are the primary reasons for moving to a CMS driven content environ-ment.

Microso� SharePoint is the popular choice for basic requirements like versioning and shared repository. Open source products like GIT and SVN are also commonly used by the survey respondents.

CMS Usage

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

As a shared repository

Work�ow management

Collaboration with SMEs

CMS based authoring

Publishing

Hosting of content

Translation

Version control

Don't use a CMS

54.5%

33.9%

29.5%

23.5%

41.0%

25.4%

15.7%

45.9%

25.4%

ConclusionStructured authoring tools have made the move from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have’ for the digital enterprise. A li�le less than half of all respondents already use some form of structured authoring. Keeping in line with this trend, a good 15 percent plan to migrate to structured authoring platforms in the near future.

Enterprises that have made the move are already reaping bene�ts in their ability to deploy content rapidly across multiple languages, formats and devices. �is has resulted in signi�cant cost and time saving. �e rest also are aware of the need to migrate to more sophisticated content solutions such as structured authoring tools, content management systems and content analytic tools.

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