The generation of the thirty-somethings entering the industry today no longer wants traditional technical information. She wants fast, easily accessible information that she is now used to find on Internet, through videos or tutorials.
Technical documentation is being hit hard by this new trend. Yvon Cosandier, director of RédaTech, a company specializing for 28 years in technical communication for end-users of all types of products, takes stock of the situation: "This phenomenon is inevitable. I am currently fighting to make the professionals concerned aware that it is not a matter of years. This trend is knocking at our door". His company therefore proposes to break the codes of traditional communication while preserving its intrinsic value. It has developed a number of tools that now enable it to offer a broader range of services and respond to this new way of consuming information.
LabTech The LabTech department offers virtual reality and augmented reality solutions using a simple tablet, for example. By walking the objective on a machine, it recognizes the various elements, which it has in its memory, and is able to display the technical characteristics. This information may also be linked to other information in different databases. Yvon Cosandier explains his vision: "Users generally spend too much time searching for and understanding information. In the long run, it must come to him as easily and quickly as possible. This is not so obvious because it is a radical change in the way information is approached. You have to lose the reflex of tedious research. Success in changing mentalities will certainly be LabTech’s biggest challenge. However, the fact that some clients are starting to take a very close interest in these new types of benefits seems to bode well for the future".
Information must be alive Another tool designed to make information easily accessible is the ADN platform. It is a collaborative platform where everyone, from the product designer to the end customer and the service technicians, is invited to participate. The information thus conveyed becomes alive since it evolves according to users’ feedback. This feedback is now increasingly important and can undoubtedly contribute to improve after-sales service by improving technical documents. This multi-directional communication channel could very well become a forum for exchanges, in which the manufacturer would naturally act as moderator. RédaTech remains, for its part, a privileged partner in charge of the regular updating of information including validated comments for the manufacturer.
Yvon Cosandier said it, the mentalities of the regular users of the technical documentations will have to change. He notes, however, that the way he and his staff have worked for years is also changing. Used to dividing product communication into four distinct sectors: pre and post-sale documentation sent internally and pre and post-sale documents sent externally, the RédaTech team will have to juggle with somewhat less well defined boundaries: "We must be able to destructure all the information to extract the element that interests the user at the time of his research. At that moment, anything not directly related to his problem is superfluous in his view. But this destructuring must in no way undermine the coherence of the whole ».
Knowing how to subcontract time-consuming work Among the new services implemented, RédaTech now offers to help its customers during phases of overload of their technical office. In a punctual way or in a longer term on certain parts of the work, RédaTech can place its draughtsmen at the disposal for tasks of setting in plans and CAD, small construction of components or explanatory illustrations.
Committing to a quality approach must enable a company to improve its performance and achieve the objectives set by its management. This approach is of great importance but quickly proves to be an « hours-eater". Here too, RédaTech specialists are able to contribute their expertise in identifying needs and making an initial diagnosis, then to propose a tailor-made project taking into account constraints and objectives and finally to support the client throughout the project.
Risk analysis RédaTech also offers to accompany its customers in their risk analysis approaches in several fields such as CE conformity assessment, CE certification according to 2006/42/CE, conformity certificates, functional safety according to EN ISO 13849, certification according to Atex 95, application according to Atex 137, safety at work or conformity assessment of machines in the USA and Canada.
All the additional information on services and the notion of destructuring can be found on the new site of the company which, fortunately, is well structured.
