When you find new authors it’s exciting to read their viewpoints. I initially started this blog with a thread of analysis of Adobe’s RoboHelp 6 release with which I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I had been watching the discussion on MonkeyPi previously, and part of the enjoyment of blogging is responding to what I call distributed discussions.

Back to RoboHelp vs. Flare: The Blog Review

It’s interesting that today’s examples are all from Utah. Being a former Coloradan for several years I have to say it’s nice to see some of the Rocky Mountain crowd. Now let’s enjoy some distributed discussion of RoboHelp 7 and MadCap’s marketing.

First, a view from Paul Pehrson on RoboHelp 7’s competitive abilities with his analysis of Adobe playing the innovation catch-up game:

RoboHelp is now in catch-up mode trying to figure out how to emulate the innovative features in MadCap’s product suite. Now it is MadCap pushing the innovation envelope here.

Will RH be able to maintain pace with MadCap’s one (or more) releases per year? Will RH be able to come out with new features that aren’t already in Flare?

Maybe so, but RH 7 wasn’t proof of that yet. Again, it will be interesting to have this discussion in two years and see where the major players are at.

I found Ben Minson’s blog when he guest posted to Tom Johnson’s blog. Ben posted a critical thesis about MadCap’s marketing which, by the way, is a great opinion piece.

The thing that has bothered me the most about what has happened with RoboHelp and Flare is MadCap’s marketing approach, which caused “Flare” and “MadCap” to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Granted, Macromedia’s treatment of the original RoboHelp team was probably less than professional. However, Hamilton seemed to make it his quest to blow RoboHelp to smithereens. It wasn’t business—it was personal. If he could carry that little ring to Mount Doom and throw it in the fire, it would be worth everything that happened in between.

In my research into my Web 2.0 Technical Support series about MadCap Software I hadn’t seen anything untoward expressed online or in print. They did, however, carry a gag gift of the die kadov tag die T-shirt, an inside joke about RoboHelp’s shortcomings.

In fact, in my podcast with Mike Hamilton in December 2007 he was neutral about Adobe. I asked Mike H. several tough and somewhat leading questions about RoboHelp and Adobe. Before, during, and after the podcast he never said anything truly outside the norm, and in fact was more generous than I was in his analysis regarding the level of dedication that Adobe may have with RoboHelp.

In my podcast program we find the relevant segment within the Hamilton podcast:

10:10
Clarifies MadCap’s focus on Adobe: “…we don’t care what Adobe does, we’re focused on solving the problems of the technical writing community… I want to dispel any myth that we’re chasing Adobe.”

11:40
Why I started analyzing the space closer: MadCap’s openness in summer 2007.

12:10
Thoughts on other blogger’s views about Adobe’s Technical Communications Suite (TCS) launch. Mike responds by comparing integration of tools within Flare and within Adobe TCS – Example of Capture’s integration with Flare to support the concept of single sourcing workflow.

We went into other discussion of workflow…

34:30
Remembering RoboHelp: we each discuss where RoboHelp came from and why it’s so different from this model MadCap’s following. Mike elaborates on the competitive edge MadCap has right now in integrating all of their products.

36:40
Mike believes that both RoboHelp and Flare will be around for a long long time, of course he and I differ on this viewpoint. He does mention the caveat of how much innovation Adobe puts into RoboHelp being questionable which we both agree upon completely.

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Just two weeks after I helped one of my buddies buy and load two tandem kayaks onto his SUV… Newsblog | Helicopter sent to look for shark

A Coast Guard helicopter is being sent to assist Solana Beach officials after a fatal shark attack was reported there this morning. A man was killed in the apparent attack, officials said.

The HH-60 helicopter crew has been dispatched and is going up in support of lifeguards and other emergency crews.

“It is not an active search-and-rescue,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Clinton Dotson. “We will help clear the area … and see if we can spot the culprit.”

Solana Beach is just a few miles up the coast from where I go snorkeling in La Jolla. I’m bummed because we’re the mainland capital of training triathletes. I just texted my buddy who is a Search and Rescue swimmer with the Navy and he says he’ll tell me later this afternoon what happened. 

Why it happened?

My opinion as a native Californian, a San Diegan since 1989, and a former Navy DWEST student is…

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For some support may not be a factor in their software purchase decision. For others, it counts as a pivotal decision.

Tech Support as a Core Competency

Today I’ll analyze the effects that the implementation of a successful Web 2.0 Technical Support strategy has on a corporation. As MadCap CEO Anthony Olivier stated last year, tech support wasn’t something they took lightly.

Update: I just found out Thursday that MadCap Software has won the ASP Online Support awards.

Continuing my previous Web 2.0 Tech Support case study, let’s revisit our initial external Web 2.0 participation of MadCap Software’s Technical Support and analyze the effects of their participation within the blogosphere and user groups. 

Web 2.0 Beyond The Firewall: Winning Their Hearts & Minds

I’ve already blogged about MadCap’s external Web 2.0 Tech Support efforts. It’s a strategy that has worked well for MadCap. If business can be described as warfare, almost from the very beginning there was an asymmetric war going on between Adobe and MadCap for the Technical Communication / Help Authoring Tool space.

In comparison I’ve witnessed a hardcore Product Manager / Evangelist approach to the Rich Internet Applications market in researching my Silverlight vs Flex analysis series. While that’s to be expected by career marketing staff, Tech Support Web 2.0 usage beyond the firewall is a more guerilla tactic. 

Although the battle is far from over, in most online user accounts MadCap has been declared the victor currently as far as Tech Support goes. For some users, that’s a very important part of the buying decision.

That would be the ‘winning hearts and minds’ of asymmetric warfare. This gives another example of a classic military tactical description / acronym: The OODA Loop.

From Wikipedia: It has become an important concept in both business and military strategy. According to John Boyd, decision-making occurs in a cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. [OODA]

…Boyd theorized that large organizations such as corporations, governments, or militaries possessed a hierarchy of OODA loops at tactical, grand-tactical (operational art), and strategic levels.

In addition, he stated that most effective organizations have a highly decentralized chain of command that utilizes objective-driven orders, or directive control, rather than method-driven orders in order to harness the mental capacity and creative abilities of individual commanders at each level. He argued that such a structure would create a flexible “organic whole” that would be quicker to adapt to rapidly changing situations.

An entity (either an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain a military or business advantage.

MadCap’s gotten inside Adobe’s OODA loop regarding their customer service and if it’s a metric measured by comments from users, there is a large gap between them.

No Groupthink Allowed

In this instance, by empowering their internal staff to participate in Web 2.0 conversations throughout the internet, I observed the MadCap TS staff multiply their effectiveness.

This is because each individual acts quickly and without undue delay for review from the hierarchy. Looking again at the ‘force multiplier’ aspect from Wikipedia:

Force multiplication through technology - A small force is multiplied when a small number of units are made as effective as a much larger one.

Swarm Philosophy

Honeybees don’t ask for permission to pollinate flowers and return to the hive, they just do it. Same with what I previously blogged about MadCap’s Web 2.0 strategy.

From Wikipedia about the OODA Loop:

…Since the OODA Loop was designed to describe a single decision maker, the situation is usually much worse than shown as most business and technical decisions have a team of people observing and orienting, each bringing their own cultural traditions, genetics, experience and other information.

It is no wonder that it is here that decisions often get stuck and the OODA Loop is reduced to the stuttering sound of “OO-OO-OO” [2] 

OO-OO-OO - Adobe’s Tech Support Loop

In 2007 Adobe made two grave errors in the Technical Communication space. First, they canned the entire RoboHelp support team located in San Diego. Second, they were not quick enough to regain key support staff competency within the RoboHelp community.

MadCap quickly capitalized on this by hiring the brain trust of Adobe’s San Diego-based Tech Support and formulating a positive beyond the firewall Web 2.0 offensive. This was a strategic coup for Anthony Olivier. Yet another timely decision last year in hiring Var Galpchian after Adobe made her a free agent.

From Does Tech Support Count? Can Good Service Sell in the 21st Century? posted here in 2007:

The question is, will this create a better user experience, and therefore, a better product?

MadCap’s CEO thinks so: “We’ve made it our mission to deliver the ultimate customer experience through next-generation content solutions and a locally based, highly experienced support team that understands our users’ needs. It is a great honor to be recognized as a 2007 AeA High Tech Award finalist for our success in delivering on that goal,” said Anthony Olivier, MadCap CEO.

Although eHelp and Macromedia were both prior web support winners, Adobe is absent from this year’s 2008 ASP Online awards. Microsoft happens to be a four time winner, within the organization’s ‘Hall of Fame’. And now MadCap brings home its first ASP Online award.

With just a few of Adobe TCS staff (and not one Tech Support staffer) posting on external blogs to assist users it doesn’t seem as if the same level of trust exists within Adobe’s Technical Support staff as it does with MadCap’s Technical Support staff.

Related Articles:

• Does Tech Support Count? Can Good Service Sell in the 21st Century?
• Web 2.0 Tech Support: Part 3
• Web 2.0 Tech Support Usage On HATT Re: flare evaluation
• MadCap Software’s New Digs | More Adobe Layoffs
• Web 2.0 Tech Support (Part 1)
• Adobe and MadCap’s Cold War: Who’s the Superpower Today?
• Another Satisfied Adobe Customer…
• Company blogging 101