Documentation:

Writing technical and business documentation requires professional expertise. Writers must:

• analyse the audience,
• understand the subject matter,
• interview a variety of people,
• determine the appropriate medium,
• design the content, and
• produce it in a way that suits the audience.

All this must be done quickly and accurately. Mistakes cost time and money.

Trained:

ECG invests heavily in training our writers and consultants to be efficient, accurate and fast before they visit your site.

Experienced:

We at ECG are experienced in analyzing your requirements and producing both paper-based and on-line documentation.

Strategy:

ECG consultants are experienced in analyzing your documentation requirements to produce a strategy that ensures that your documentation is:

• relevant,
• accurate,
• up to date,
• easy to understand, and
• produced in the most appropriate medium.

Paper-Based:

While the trend today is to move all documentation on-line, paper-based documentation is still appropriate in a variety of situations.

ECG produces quality paper-based solutions, including

• Software User Guides,
• Style Guides,
• ISO 9000 Manuals,
• Equipment User Guides,
• Policy Manuals,
• Methods and Procedures Manuals,
• Use Case Analysis Documents,
• Quick Reference Guides,
• Training Materials,
• Process Documentation, and
• Desk Instructions.

Current Documentation:

Some of the problems you may be experiencing with your current documents:

• Is your current documentation sitting on shelves not being read?
• Is important detail hard to locate?
• Are your people constantly asking how things are done?
• Are major ideas buried?
• Are subheadings ambiguous?
• Are instructions, directions and action items difficult to find or not included at all?
• Is your documentation out of date and hard to update?
• Are there pieces missing?
• Are there inconsistencies?
• Is relevant data not where you want it?

Our Documents:

ECG can solve all these problems for you. Our documents:

• are easy to read and understand,
• are intended to be used,
• make it easy to find the key information,
• all relevant subject matter is present,
• easily maintained and updated,
• logical and visible organization to facilitate scanning,
• are reader based and not writer based,
• relevant information can be easily retrieved.

Benefits:

Research has shown that some of the performance benefits you will see:

Types of Documents:

ECG answers all your documentation requirements. We can produce any type of document your organization may require, including:

• training materials,
• user guides,
• procedure manuals,
• systems documentation,
• reference manuals,
• ISO9000 documents,
• operator instructions,

Conventional Version:
This version of the audit instructions is formatted in the conventional way. Paragraph driven and wordy. It is hard to read and difficult to find relevant information.

Preparing Your Data For The Audit:

One of the most important steps in the audit is to make sure that all the data required for the audit is correct and that you have completed all the auditing steps.

1. You should try and obtain the run data from the computer room as well as a sample of the data items selected for the audit from the source document.
2. As an audit "insurance policy", you should make sure that the information you record is sufficient or descriptive enough for easy identification for the next audit or any succeeding audits.
3. Using the worksheets, you should make sure that the information you record is sufficient or descriptive enough for easy identification for the next audit or any succeeding audit.
   The minimum information you need for a data item contained in the sample and the minimum information you need to describe the attributes of the sample are the least you should list on the worksheets. Account Name, Account Number, Type of Business would be some examples of minimum information needed for data item information. Sales Territory or Effective Data would be minimum information for attribute identification.
4. You should compare the sample data to the programming instructions in effect when the source document was begun.
5. You should compare the sample data to the company requests you find.
6. You should compare the sample data to any statistical guidelines.
7. You should compare the source data that you have recorded on your worksheets to run data printouts you obtained from the computer.
8. Record any errors or differences you found in steps 4 through 7 on a Worksheet.
9. Once you have completed steps one through eight, you should prepare to a summary sheet noting all the discrepancies and analyze by data item to compute the accuracy ratios for the audit sample data.
10. Once you have completed steps one through nine, you should prepare to discuss your findings with company management. You should be very specific both in your discussions and your report to point out the problems and differences. These discussions will help management correct errors.

ECG Version:
This version of the audit instructions is formatted by ECG. It is very easy to read and relevant information is quickly found.

How To Prepare Data for an Audit:

Introduction

One of the the most important procedures in an audit is preparing the data.  Careful preparation ensures that the data is correct and that each step of the audit has been completed.

Procedure:

Follow the steps below to prepare the data for the audit

Final Step:

Prepare to discuss your findings with company management. Be specific in both your report and the discussions.

Note: These discussions are important to

• Point out errors and difficulties, and
• Provide management with information to correct the errors.

Examples:

Below are some before and after examples.