Re: To Index of not to Index
Pulsar makes fiber-optic and Power-Line carrier communications equipment,
for utilities, with a plethora of options. There's a multitude of
abbreviations used throughout the books, PLC, V4T, SRD and numerous
industry abbreviations, processes and protocols. I would imagine an index
in these books would be quite an undertaking. (job security?) hmmm.
I have no idea where to start, or even if I should even think about
including an index. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Job advancement opportunity:
Prepare a brief proposal. Try to keep it to one PowerPoint slide (using speaker notes to hold the detailed justification).
What you are proposing to do is:
1. Research the need. Try to get hard numbers from the company's customer support operation about how much time they spend answering dumb questions that anybody could have easily found were there an index. Also find out how much time they themselves waste thumbing through manuals. Convert all this time into dollars, using the fully burdened cost per employee (a multiple of actual salary) that your company uses for such cost analyses.
2. Screen indexing providers. Indexing is an art, and doing this massive a project requires that the person doing it be good at it. No sense wasting a bunch of your time creating a poor-quality index. But you know what you're looking for and how to find the best person for the job.
3. Manage the project. Ensure that deadlines are met, budgets are respected, indexer or indexers receive the specialized industry training they need, and quality is satisfactory.
4. Measure the results. Develop one or more metrics (with the customer service folks), so that you can track improvement as the new, indexed, documents are distributed.
Successfully completing this project (without getting bogged down in doing the work yourself) will demonstrate your ability to manage others on a complex task.
Good luck!
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- RE: To Index of not to Index, Miriam Lottner
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To Index of not to Index: From: dan . gallagher
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