SCHEMA ST4 pays off for Agilent Technologies

About Agilent Technologies 

Agilent Technologies‘ Life Sciences Group is decentralized, operating worldwide with locations in Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Japan, and the US. The Waldbronn, Germany location is responsible for the “Liquid Phase Analysis” business. Here, about 650 employees develop, produce and market entire analysis solutions used in pharmaceutical and chemical industries, as well as in research institutions around the world.

Data modeling and authoring support in SCHEMA ST4

to improve the quality of documentation by using a unified, consistent structure, Agilent decided to implement a semantic data model following the Funktionsdesign® method. With the help of the workflow manager integrated in SCHMA ST4, the release process for example was modeled to adhere to specifications. The status model in SCHEMA ST4 ends with “ready for release.” With this, the version-controlled information products leave the editing system and are produced e.g. as PDF files which are then stored in SAP. In addition, translation costs are reduced because authors can now reuse existing content instead of repeatedly creating the same content. Variations of the same phrase now no longer incur expensive translation costs. The larger reduction in localization costs came from eliminating external DTP costs. Layout is now done inhouse, and thanks to the seamless integration of SCHEMA ST4 with the IT solution, it is automated to the highest degree possible. In addition to cost savings, the measures described shortened the time needed for creating documentation as well. In addition, the elimination of redundant content removed the effort for reviewing and releasing, as well as managing the various publications in which this content is used. 

After the first large update of the business unit’s product portfolio the investment was already amortized: “Using the old model, we would have had to spend more than what we invested in development, implementation and rollout of the new solution based on SCHEMA ST4,” enthuses Richwien.