MadCap Software's Flare helps basys to modernize and streamline content delivery through single-source publishing and support for Microsoft .NET and Visual Studio

LA JOLLA, Calif., Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- MadCap Software, the leader in multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft XPS, today announced that basys, inc. has modernized its documentation and Help content delivery using MadCap Flare. MadCap's flagship content authoring software has enabled basys to migrate from PDF documentation files to a Web-based content delivery model. Using features in Flare, such as single-sourcing, reusable snippets, and conditional tags, basys also has significantly cut the time for maintaining its documentation -- completing some updates in minutes that once took hours. Flare replaces the Adobe RoboHelp content authoring tool.

'When we began rewriting our software as Web-based applications, we wanted an authoring product that was optimized for the Web and could provide true single-sourcing. That product was Flare,' said Adrienne Pugh, technical writer for basys. 'We have been using Flare since April 2006, and it is one of the best decisions we've made. We haven't looked back since.'

Headquartered in Linthicum, Maryland, basys has been a leading provider of benefit administration solutions for 30 years. More than two years ago the company made a strategic decision to rewrite its Unix-based applications as Web-based applications using Microsoft .NET and Visual Studio. With the move to Web-based software, basys wanted to modernize its documentation, and deliver it as Web content.

'We were jumping into a new world with our software and documentation, and it was time to look at a new authoring solution,' Ms. Pugh recalled. 'We reviewed a number of products, but most were based on older proprietary architectures. We were attracted by MadCap Flare's standards-based, native XML architecture. We also liked the fact that Flare is based on .NET and Visual Studio, providing a lot of potential for seamless integration with our Web- based software.'

It was also seen by basys as an opportunity to improve the efficiency and quality of documentation. Due to RoboHelp's lack of robust single sourcing, basys had to maintain some 10 projects and hundreds of in-line styles, and each change had to be made manually in every place it occurred.