Moving docs to CD?

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Damien Braniff reported on <<...a talk (ISTC Area Group) by
 the chief writer for ICL. They had just moved over to
 providing all their tech lit on CD...  they provided
 mimimum hadrcopy lit (install and basic user?)  and
 the rest on CD (cheaper) as standard.  Manuals on CD were
 in a format that could be printed by the user if required.
 If the user insisted on hardcopy this was provided at EXTRA
 cost - good incentive to accept the CD version. At the time
 of the talk most had accepted the new delivery method and
 ICL had saved over ?1million pa on printing costs>>

 Can you provide more context? I'd be curious to know
 whether the customers not only accepted the change, but did
 so willingly and (better still) have benefited from it and
 decided that they like the idea. In many cases, customers
 have no alternative about accepting such a unilaterally
 imposed downloading of costs: there are no competitors to
 switch to, or else the software or hardware is so firmly
 implanted in the corporate culture that nobody's going to
 change it just because there's no usable documentation.

 A few telling questions: Did ICL consult their customers
 before and after making this decision? What happened to
 their tech. support costs? What happened to the in-house
 support costs of their customers? How many new sales (or
 upgrade sales) have they lost as a result? Have lives been
 endangered by this? (e.g., if ICL makes medical equipment,
 are people reading the new docs or just assuming that
 everything still works the same way it always did... and
 like most of us, not bothering to read the manuals to find
 out whether this is true?)

 There's no question that well-implemented online help and
 reference material can be invaluable. There's equally
 little question that if cost is the sole or main motivation
 for doing so, and if the decision is unilateral, the
 customers suffer and (in the long term) the vendor may
 suffer too. Worth pondering.

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.