Better Contracts And Proposals With Dita

Most organizations that regularly produce contracts or proposals should consider using XML, and in particular the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Why? These documents use the same or similar sections over and over again, with enough variations such as customer names and select clauses to become the basis of expensive horror stories when mistakes are made as a result of search-and-replace or copy-and-paste errors. New technologies based on DITA can significantly reduce the risk of mistakes, while saving time and stress for staff as well.

Consider the common scenario of using the same basic contract or proposal for different customers. In this scenario, the only difference between one document and another is the customer information, such as name, address, and account numbers. These documents are typically created with a word processor. First you use the Save As command to create the new contract from an earlier contract. Then you use search-and-replace commands to update the contract with the new customers personal information. Finally, you curse silently when you discover the new contract includes information about the earlier customer.

You are not cursing alone. Manually searching and replacing information is inherently problematic. Fortunately, DITA-based solutions offer a better way to create contracts and proposals. Rather than manually swapping one customers name for another, you can make the change through cleaner, less error-prone methods. The customers name can be entered in a form and stored in a referenced file that the system uses to automatically populate fields in the document.

By extension, any information that changes between contracts and proposals can be easily and programmatically changed if you are using DITA. For example, an organization can set up a form to collect the customer name, contact information, execution or expiration dates for the contract, etc. to be stored as fields. The DITA system not the user assembles each customers document based on the information entered into the form for the customer.

Another scenario in which DITA technologies can help is one in which each document is compiled from a shopping list of optional sections. For example, insurance companies typically offer a variety of policies, with the extent of coverage for different types of losses varying from policy to policy.

Creating each policy manually as one big word-processing document is an error-prone exercise. Beyond search-and-replace errors, you risk copy-and-paste errors when creating new contracts by pulling together content from earlier contracts that may include outdated information. Furthermore, final control over the wording of all sections is in the hands of the person doing the copying and pasting, which is not appropriate in organizations which require sections to remain under absolute control of particular departments or individuals.

As with manual searching and replacing, DITA-based solutions reduce the errors associated with manual copying and pasting. DITA-based solutions typically include graphical user interfaces for choosing which sections are appropriate for the required contract or proposal and can assemble the contract or proposal document automatically. Organizations can set security levels on different parts of a document to prevent writers from changing sections that they are not authorized to change. The high amount of re-use between contract and proposal documents makes them one of the 7 Signs that an Organization Should Use DITA.

Acting on DITA. Typically, the people who generate proposals and contracts are busy professionals who need easy-to-use tools for preparing their documents. Although DITA is familiar to many technical communications specialists, it is an XML standard rather than a single product and is still a foreign concept to most people involved in contract and proposal creation. Some organizations can learn enough about DITA by themselves to apply its concepts to the needs of their own organization; however, assistance from a DITA expert is usually a first step in planning and configuring a system in which content can be effectively re-used across multiple contracts or proposals.

Fortunately, DITA tools have evolved to the point that using these systems is easily within the capabilities of non-technical staff. Once the system is set up and underway, nobody will want to go back to the old copy/paste methods.

DITA in Action. This case study of an Australian consulting company offers a good example of using DITA for contracts and proposals. Much of the companys work is won by its responses to requests for tender, requests for information, and expressions of interest.

Before adopting DITA, generating those responses was a time-consuming, expensive and exacting task. Response documents were prepared in word processing software, with new proposals based on earlier ones. That meant the person preparing the proposal had to:

1.browse through previous documents to find a close match,
2.find and edit any obsolete information if the earlier matched proposal was out of date,
3.delete irrelevant information, and
4.add the necessary information that was not included in the earlier matched proposal.

Additional information might be cut-and-pasted from other potentially incorrect documents. Occasionally, obsolete financial and price figures would find their way into proposals. The overall process perpetuated errors, produced inconsistently formatted proposals, and was slow and tedious. And as more proposals were completed, the pool of previous proposals became bigger, which made it harder to find the right model document.

The company moved to DITA to eliminate the arbitrary nature of selection of proposal content, prevent the inclusion of obsolete information, reduce the overall chance for error, and reduce the time and effort required to build a proposal. Now, it can rapidly create essentially unique, but modular, proposal documents that are automatically assembled by its DITA-based solution. In turn, the company has greatly reduced the time taken to produce proposals, lowered the risk of error, and delivered consistency of structure and presentation.