About Zünd
Zünd Systemtechnik AG is the market leader in the development and manufacturing of high modular digital cutters.
Industry
Manufacturing
Explore Filestage for EnterpriseGoals
- Improved transparency
- Real-time collaboration
- Centralized feedback
Favorite features
- Compare text mode
- Virtual reviewer
- @mentions
In the world of digital cutting systems, precision and accuracy are everything. And, the team at Zünd Systemtechnik AG, the market leader in the development and manufacturing of high modular digital cutters, knows this very well.
Zünd started as a family-owned business back in 1984 in Switzerland. Since then, the company’s unbeatable solution transformed them into “your first choice in digital cutting”.
But maintaining this reputable image means that Zünd needs to constantly improve their products and internal processes. And, one important part of the equation is their technical document reviews.
To make sure communication between all reviewers and content creators is always accurate and on point, their team leader of technical communications, Thomas Nesensohn, turned to Filestage.
Let’s take a look at how improving transparency in technical reviews helped the team reduce frustration and speed up their review process.
Email-led reviews used to put a lot of pressure on reviewers
Zünd used to heavily rely on Outlook for all technical documentation reviews. But the process was overly complicated and cumbersome.
During a review-loop, some reviewers would start early, while others would leave their feedback just before the deadline. Others would hardly comment at all and delay the milestone. Since every reviewer sent their feedback in a separate document, content creators had to merge all documents into one.
Once all this was done, content creators could start to prepare the next version. But then, they would face another problem – the merged documents would contain duplicated feedback on the same topic.
“Sending documents back and forth to our reviewers via Outlook was very time consuming and exhausting. Our reviewers often felt a lot of pressure because they wouldn’t know about the feedback of the other reviewers involved in the process. This made the whole review process very obscure”.
Thomas Nesensohn, team leader of technical communications at Zünd
Increasing transparency makes everyone’s voice feel heard
To make sure the review process reflects their team’s needs, Nesensohn started looking for a dedicated review solution. Since implementing Filestage last year, the team already reviewed more than 120 files in Filestage.
“Filestage offered us exactly what we were looking for. It’s a simple and transparent solution that helped us fix all our problems in the review process. Plus, we can use it to archive the reviews and compare them historically based on comments and content.”
Thomas Nesensohn, team leader of technical communications at Zünd
This also lifted a heavy burden off the reviewers’ shoulders.
“From the reviewers’ perspective, the entire review process became much more transparent,” says Nesensohn. “This removed pressure from individuals because all reviewers are now able to see each other’s feedback. Plus, they can all interact with each other.”
Real-time collaboration helps the team find solutions faster
As part of their technical review process, the team works closely with internal and external stakeholders. After they complete an internal review in the editorial system, they upload a PDF to Filestage and invite technical experts to leave their feedback.
Currently, they have 84 active reviewers in Filestage who can all join to find the best solutions together.
Nesensohn says, “Filestage brings everyone together and serves as a platform for finding solutions as a team.”
“For example, the simple @mention feature allows one reviewer to directly ask or respond to a question from another reviewer. This way feedback becomes more collaborative and objective, instead of being one person’s opinion.”
“Ultimately, Filestage allows our reviewers maximum transparency in the review process. And in return, we receive high-quality feedback and a massively shorter turnaround time.”
Thomas Nesensohn, team leader of technical communications at Zünd
Virtual reviewer speeds up the process of spotting terminology errors
More recently, the team at Zünd introduced a new reviewer in the process – a virtual reviewer from Lexeri. By connecting the Lexeri platform with Filestage, the team is now able to automatically spot the use of wrong technical terms and replace them before it’s too late.
Nesensohn says, “Recently, our reviews have been kickstarted by a virtual reviewer. This means that the PDF document gets sent to Lexeri for a terminology check. From there on, all forbidden terms that the tool detects are selected and automatically marked in the comment section in Filestage.”
“This is a very fast and convenient way for us to check that all the content is 100% correct and compliant before it goes to print.”
Compare text mode reduces the review time for new versions
Rereading technical documents every time a new version is shared can be very time consuming. That’s why the team really enjoys the auto-compare text mode in Filestage.
“Our reviewers often use the comparison function to specifically search for the sections that changed in a new document version,” says Nesensohn. “This saves them a lot of time during the review as they don’t have to read through the entire document every time.”
The tool is so well received among the team that it’s become the only go-to tool for their reviews.
“Filestage enjoys a very high level of acceptance among reviewers. So high that when we accidentally send a PDF via Outlook for review, the reviewers don’t accept it. ”
Thomas Nesensohn, team leader of technical communications at Zünd
