SDA Solutions:
Documentation without developers

SDA Solutions develops internet-enabled member management solutions for health, fitness and racquets clubs of all sizes. Their software helps clubs manage everything from sales prospecting and access control, to billing and collections. Helping customers to get the most out of the software is a major concern.

When SDA was first authoring their help documents they started using RoboHelp. Stuart Dyson, Founder and Managing Director of SDA Solutions, explains what that was like:

“We started off in the traditional help world with RoboHelp. The software was very powerful but was too complex for our needs and every time we hit a snag we had to get our developers involved. I didn’t want my developers having anything to do with help so I tried to think of a better way to do it.”

Stuart experimented with several solutions that claimed to be simpler, but found that all of them resulted in similar problems. Stuart wanted to create help that was more engaging, more useful and that didn't require the involvement of his development team. He finally came across ScreenSteps Live.

“ScreenSteps Live felt like it was going to be a very quick and easy way to get value to the customer’s doorstep without having to have lots of developer involvement.”

Tying it in with Zendesk

Around the same time SDA Solutions started using Zendesk. For SDA’s support team Zendesk and ScreenSteps Live go hand in hand. Support agents search ScreenSteps Live for solutions to customer problems from within Zendesk and then send those URLs out in their help ticket responses.

“Zendesk combined with ScreenSteps Live is really a key part of how our support team does their job.”

Expanding Their Use of ScreenSteps Live

SDA Solutions is expanding their use of ScreenSteps Live to do more than just create a help manual for their member management product. They are now using ScreenSteps Live to document internal processes as well. Stuart explains:

“As one of the key designers of our system, I need to be able to pass that knowledge on, so I’m now dumping a lot of my brain into ScreenSteps Live. I’m able to make sure that the really detailed, super-user, secret stuff is documented in there. We’ve done a whole section on the configuration side of things which is very complex. ScreenSteps Live helps me capture that knowledge and store it without a lot of hassle.”

How does SDA feel about ScreenSteps Live?

The adoption of Zendesk and ScreenSteps Live has been a big success for SDA Solutions. They are able to help more customers in less time. How does Stuart rate ScreenSteps Live?

“On a scale of 1 to 10 you can put me down as a 9. We’re very happy with it and it’s definitely achieved our objective of not needing developers to create excellent help resources.”