Gorenje is one of the leading home appliance manufacturers in Europe. They sell over five million large home appliances under the global brands Gorenje and Asko, and under six regional brands (Atag, Pelgrim, Upo, Mora, Etna and Körting), in over 90 countries worldwide. In 2018, they joined Hisense Group. They are considered to be one of the most environmentally aware companies in Slovenia, where they are based. Gorenje’s vision is to become a leader in design-based innovations that bring added value to consumers and simplify their lives.
Before switching to Skribenta, Gorenje was using InDesign to prepare user manuals for all products. A task that was so time-consuming and labor-intensive, it required a dedicated department.
Translation was also costing Gorenje unnecessary time and money. They were working with an external translation agency which would translate each manual into multiple languages. The fact that much of the content could be reused from previous translations was a cost-saving opportunity that was not being taken advantage of.
As Gorenje searched for a CCMS tool that could help them prepare user manuals faster and more efficiently, their colleagues from the Asko DW competence center spoke up and recommended Skribenta. Asko had been using Skribenta for years and reported satisfaction with the product and service.
Since implementing Skribenta, Gorenje’s documentation process has improved significantly—both in terms of productivity and the ease of day-to-day work.
“It has changed the way I work,” says Ben Smeenk, Documentation Manager and Master Key User of Skribenta at ATAG, a Gorenje Group company. “I used to work in Adobe InDesign but I’m more of a programmer now. Thanks to Skribenta, I’m not doing any DTP work anymore and I have a total overview of everything.”
Now, technical writers at Gorenje use a common workspace with the same content for products from the same product group. Also, an HTML style sheet has been introduced for web and mobile publications. Integration with SAP gives the additional benefits of reducing manual work and possible errors in the system. Furthermore, user manuals are now aligned on the brand level, with one style sheet being used all product groups to unify the publication.
“Skribenta is very good and beneficial for creating a faster user manual preparation process using one master document,” says Boštjan Sovič, Director of Shared R&D Units at Gorenje. “We see opportunities to use it in other departments as well, such as in the field of internal standards and regulations.”
“Being able to reuse existing text is a significant advantage when you have a lot of languages as we do.”
When it comes to translations, with Skribenta, imported text is now automatically placed in the correct position and only text that is not in the Skribenta memory is sent for translation by agencies. Translations are then handled with the XML file format, which contributes to a faster and more exact process.
"We used to always let manuals be translated by an external agency,” says Ben. “Now, we don’t need them for DTP work, so we save money. The translation memory also helps cut down on costs since we only need to translate new text. Being able to reuse existing text is a significant advantage when you have a lot of languages as we do,” says Ben.
Sometimes it’s the little things that make a difference to your workflow. Gorenje has also discovered some unexpected, but much appreciated, features while working with Skribenta.
“Skribenta puts links in the PDF file, which is very handy for PDF files published on websites,” says Ben. “I also appreciate the fact that I can open more than one Skribenta session and copy-paste content between them.”