Re: Terminology

["Kate O'Neill" <kate -at- kathleen -dot- net>]

"Marc A. Santacroce" wrote:
> Sorry, I don't mean to be ignorant, but could one of you please tell
> me what is meant by "Enterprise System".

Hi Marc.

Generally, an enterprise system is an application or suite 
of applications designed to cover a range of operations 
from one end of a business to another. The system often has 
specialized interfaces for different user groups, such as 
accountants or salespeople. In addition, the software is 
usually configured for each client by a professional 
services organization or implementation partner.

ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems like SAP are, of 
course, enterprise systems. One of my clients is another 
example: they provide an end-to-end multimedia asset 
management system for industries such as advertising or 
broadcast news. 

ObTECHWR-L: Most of my technical writing career has been 
in enterprise software companies. From a tech pubs point 
of view, enterprise systems present a few challenges:

 - You generally have a much larger variety of users to 
   consider than when documenting shrinkwrapped apps.
 - Users may have a legacy system in place with which 
   they're quite familiar (whether that system is analog 
   or digital, they're bound to have trouble letting it 
   go) and the documentation has to work through that.
 - Because most clients have custom-configured software, 
   the pubs must either address each client's interface 
   or use general enough information to cover all cases 
   while still providing useful content.

And so on. Publications projects for enterprise systems 
require all sorts of special consideration. But the work 
can really be great fun. :-)

Hope this helps,

- Kate O'