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Producing external and internal documents DNS Entrepreneurship Centre, April 2015 Emily Taylor

Producing external and internal documents , Emily Tailor

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Producing external and internal documents DNS Entrepreneurship Centre, April 2015 Emily Taylor

n  Manuals and guidelines n  Strategy and operating plan

Agenda

Documents for external audiences and partners

n  Who is your audience? n  What information do you need to communicate? n  How to communicate effectively:

•  Simple, focused messages •  Use language that your audience will understand •  A picture (or a diagram) can paint a thousand words

n  What medium will best suit your message? • Web – mobile or fixed? •  Printed materials? •  Audio / Visual

n  What is your budget?

General considerations

Communicating with end users (registrants)

Tone of voice is important to help your message get through

Communicating with end users (registrants)

Navigation and Menus Will users understand?

Managing your reader’s journey?

Very nice home page

…but it quickly becomes heavy going!

What do you want your users to do?

Call to action

Teaser

Don’t forget your core business

Easy, step by step instructions

What is this page about?

What do I need to do?

An alternative medium (brochure) can help reinforce your messages

Learn from others

…within reason, of course!

Technical and business communications Manuals and guidelines

n  Technical manuals •  How to configure technical interface with registry systems (eg EPP) •  Lists for reserved names, premium domains •  How to do key functions: create, update, delete, trade & transfer

n  Test environments •  Operational Test and Evaluation environments (OT&E) •  Ensure that your live system matches your OT&E environment J

n  Legal and policy documents •  Registration agreement (end user) •  Registrar agreement •  Policies and rules •  Privacy policy

n  NB Version control, easy to find from multiple locations

At a certain point, you have to get down to business

n  Remember, other people will not be as focused on your business as you are •  Communicate your schedule clearly and often •  Use graphics to reinforce the timelines •  Build in ‘quiet periods’ to sort out problems

n  Things to avoid: •  Launching on a non-working day •  Launching the day after the clocks change (server

clocks!)

Tips – launch processes

n  Other providers’ sites can be a good source •  For creating checklists of documents you need to prepare •  For individual terms or ideas

n  But beware: •  They may be too complex for your environment •  Some of them may not be of a high quality! •  They may not match your service •  They may use language that is not suitable.

n  Use others’ materials as a reference point, but don’t copy them (no matter what Picasso said)

Tips – external documents

Internal documents: strategy and operating plan

n  “The job of a strategist is to understand and cope with competition” (Michael Porter, 2008)

n  Strategy can be •  Deliberate (Porter), emphasising analysis and planning •  Emergent (Mintzberg), emphasising flexibility and

responsiveness to events

n  Strategies tend towards: •  Price • Quality

n  Strategy is not: • Operational planning, an important but slightly different

job

What is strategy?

n  Operational decision making •  Investment priorities •  Deployment of human or technical resources

n  Alignment of staff •  As organisations or environments become more complex,

a strategy can help to coordinate people towards the same objectives

•  Linked to vision statements that are memorable and motivating •  ‘a computer on every desk and in every home’ (Microsoft) •  ‘to make people happy’ (Disney)

n  To beat the competition!

Why have a strategy?

n  Long term changes in the far environment which may affect our industry (eg STEP analysis)

n  Industry structure and rivalry (Porter’s five forces) – understanding our competitive environment

n  Stakeholder analysis (who are we here for, and what do they expect from us?)

n  Identify organisational assets and capabilities (what do we own, what are we good at?)

n  Make a plan n  Operationalise that plan n  Review and adjust (the feedback loop)

Strategic planning

n  Keep in mind your strategic objectives

n  Base budgeting on reality – look at actual spending in previous years as a prompt

n  You will also need to include investment to achieve your strategic objectives

n  Try to get a detailed budget for the next 12 months, and an outline for 3 years to reflect your strategic path

Constructing a budget