About the client
The mission of our pharmaceutical client is to provide worldwide access to sustainable healthcare for everyone through every stage of their lives. They are committed to improving the quality of medicine and providing a reliable supply so patients can get the treatments when and where they need them. Their rigorous quality assurance process, infrastructure, and strategy encompass operations and manufacturing sites globally. The site in Hungary is not only a medicine testing and releasing center but also is responsible for packaging more than a thousand different pharmaceutical products for Hungary and other countries globally.
Customer requirements
Our client had two main goals in mind when calling on the technical writing expertise of Sigma Technology Hungary:
- to improve the structure and readability of their laboratory investigation reports, and
- to train the analysts writing the reports based on the findings from the analyzed sample document sets.
Challenges:
Understanding pharmaceutical standards, work instructions, abbreviations, requirements and the ways of working in the laboratory had quite a steep learning curve in the beginning. Since technical writing rules and principles apply to technical documentation everywhere, our goals were to change their writing mindset and ease the writing and reading process for everyone involved. We focused on teaching the colleagues how effective documentation can be achieved by applying technical writing methodology in practice, specifically for their reports.
Our solutions:
- We conducted user experience interviews with every participant of the laboratory investigation report document lifecycle to understand their pain points when writing, reviewing, and approving the reports. We learned about their content management system, its limitations, and the workflow used for documentation.
- We meticulously examined dozens of sample documents and applied technical writing principles to simplify the structure, language, and format to save time for writers and reviewers alike.
- We created a technical writing training tailored for laboratory investigation report writers and reviewers. In the sessions, we explained the basics of technical writing using examples from their documents during interactive activities.
- We put together language and grammar checklists, new simpler templates, and guidelines to help them save time and effort when creating the documents.
- We thoroughly reviewed three newly created reports from every writer and provided detailed feedback focusing on how they incorporated the lessons learned from the training.
Customer satisfaction:
After the first training session in 2022, several other departments within the company requested similar training. In the customer feedback form we sent out after every training session, we received ratings of over 90 points out of 100 and direct feedback from the analysts on how these essential practical skills and examples enhanced their working and writing mindsets.
Based on this client’s recommendation, we also started a similar cooperation with another Hungarian pharmaceutical company in 2023.
Sigma Technology Hungary will organize the eighth technical writing training for the client in 2025.
