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Your user information – created professionally

Technical Documentation that is cost-efficient, user-friendly and future-proof

We research, structure and compose all types of information and are your partner for all your documentation – from individual products to complete outsourcing of the specialist area.

The primary goal is to support users so that they can perform their tasks more competently and efficiently. This ensures higher customer satisfaction, lower support and service costs and low response rates, among other things. Of course, we also fulfil all formal requirements and thus ensure conformity with laws, standards and guidelines.

We support you in the preparation of Risk Assessments, Operating Manuals, Operating Instructions, Service Information, and all other forms of user information.

Hire a partner you can rely on:

  • More than 90 full-time Technical Editors and 10 Product Safety Experts ensure sufficient capacity to meet your demanding deadlines.
  • 13 locations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Czechia and Cameroon ensure first-class service in your area.
  • Our Project Manager is your central contact person, who will ensure that your projects are successfully completed.
  • You will receive all user information services from a single source, which allows for maximum efficiency and minimal interface-based losses.
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Our Services in Detail

Select a service and receive detailed descriptions in our smart space information portal.


6 Reasons for kothes

Projekterfolg garantiert

Your project success is guaranteed

Our tried-and-tested process model ensures the success of the project and leaves sufficient freedom for your individual requirements. More than 30,000 successfully completed projects since our founding in 2003 underscore this point.

Aufwand minimiert

Your effort is minimised

You have practically nothing to worry about. Our Project Manager assumes control of the project and can inform you about its current status at any time. You will be surprised at how quickly our employees understand your product and how little effort you have to put into the functional testing.

Top-Performer eingesetzt

Our Top Performers are deployed

Our employees are our greatest asset. We support them through extensive training, targeted development and long-term loyalty. This is also reflected in our fluctuation rate of less than 3%. How do you benefit from this? Motivated employees provide the highest quality of work, and this leads to fewer complaints from your customers.

Zukunftssicher aufgestellt

Your positioning is future-proof

The most important thing for us is to solve your current challenges. In addition, we will equip you with our smart information ideas for the future of your technical documentation: whether it’s Augmented Reality, E-Learning, Virtual Reality, Content Delivery, or Chatbots – we will meet your future needs.

Informationswertschöpfung gesichert

Documentation thought through

Technical documentation costs money – even for us. But we make sure that your investment pays off. How do you do that? With lowering costs over the long term through more efficient processes or with new services and monetisation opportunities.

Wir übernehmen Verantwortung

We will take responsibility

You don't just want to complete a project with us, but rather, aren’t you looking for a long-term partner who will take responsibility for your technical editorial processes?


Your situation, our solution

Do you want to launch a sophisticated technical product on the market and need a user-oriented manual?

We research the content, create texts and images, carry out quality assurance activities and deliver the finished manual in your desired format. Naturally, we ensure that legal and normative requirements are met. In doing so, we focus on modularisation and reuse, thus reducing costs for both follow-up projects and translations.

Are you building or operating complex production facilities and looking for a way to structure supplier documentation and make it more accessible for employees?

In large plant projects or when setting up production sites, enormous quantities of technical documentation are generated by suppliers. We structure this information, check its quality and ensure that suppliers meet deadlines and quality requirements. Upon request, we can provide the documents with metadata and make them available to you via digital portals. 

Are you designing a plant or machine and would like to obtain CE conformity for it, in order to place it on the European market?

Our Product Safety Experts will support you right from the development stage and advise you on safety-related design. In doing so, they will prepare the risk assessment as an important verification document for CE conformity. If required, we can also take care of the correct design of the safety control system within the framework of functional safety, or carry out an assessment of ignition hazards for devices in accordance with ATEX.

Do you develop complex software and want your users to be able to use it as quickly as possible and efficiently with the aid of a good Help function?

Our Technical Editors analyse your software and its various target audiences, and then develop a concept for knowledge transfer. In doing so, they distinguish between conceptual knowledge, which the users need in order to understand the basic relationships, and action-knowledge, which helps to solve specific tasks. They then create the content in a form that can be embedded as elegantly as possible into your software.

Could your product be better used if users who do not want to (or cannot) read had specific information available as graphics-based instructions?

If a manual with minimal text is the most appropriate option for your users, our Technical Illustrators can create a graphical concept, perform comprehensibility tests and create the complete print-ready graphics-intensive manual. They pay close attention to aesthetics and adhere to your Corporate Design specifications.


Documentation Check

Konstantin Yuganow
© Konstantin Yuganov / fotolia

You design, compose, and publish a wide variety of documents. These can be operating manuals, instruction manuals, maintenance manuals, or risk assessments, but also completely different technical documents within your environment. You would like to have these documents checked externally. This review may relate to compliance with current standards and guidelines, but can also address issues relating to structure, completeness, or even usability. 

We would be happy to review your documents, in accordance with your wishes and ideas, and give you valuable practical tips for their optimisation during a consultation meeting. We would like to help you to identify both "hard" (i.e. legal and content-related) and "soft" factors, such as Usability, readability or comprehensibility and improve them. 


UX Writing

Experience

Establishing brands, conveying information, promoting trust – these are high demands on the written word, which has less and less room in the world of digital products. But those who speak the language of their customers don't need many words. Our UX Writers recognise how your products can be linguistically optimised and establish the text as an integral part of the user journey – for both a positive and uninterrupted customer experience.

Our competent experts will find the right words that appeal to your users and take the experience of your products to the next level. The area of application ranges from websites and apps to chatbots and voice assistants. With the cooperation of UI Designers, Marketing and Researchers, we identify your users' pain points, as well as the KPIs of your product and help you establish a long-term communication strategy that supports your iterative design.

We use our know-how across many different industries, in order to create terminology concepts, create intuitive GUI texts and break new ground in customer communication. This is how we continuously highlight the factors of your product that are important for your users.


What our customers say about us

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"kothes took over this responsibility many years ago, not only for the creation of technical documentation for SIG, but also for the processing of daily business, translations, reprography and even hosting the Content Management System. This gives us more freedom to concentrate on our main task: the further development of carton packaging systems. Over the years we've come to know kothes, not only as a trustworthy and competent partner, but also as a company that's always available to advise us on the appropriate steps to take for the future of our technical documentation. Of course, this only works if you move, yourself! We're looking forward to continued successful cooperation."

Dirk Noske, Head of Legal Compliance & Documentation

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"It is very helpful that at kothes, we have a permanent contact person who manages even complex projects (with several participants from different companies) reliably and transparently."

Dr. Stephanie Thoennissen, Head of Business Development & Regulatory Affairs

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"We at Hauser GmbH are pleased to have found a competent partner in kothes, a partner we can rely on for the long-term. The interlinking of various services such as technical editing and illustration produces high-quality documents. The consulting competence on various problems leads to the success we've anticipated. The friendly and personal contact, in combination with the close proximity of the location, leads to rapid process implementation.

Samuel Haider, Teamleader Productmanagement

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"kothes has proven itself to be a reliable partner, after even only a short time. Both in consulting and in the short-term assumption of project-related work."

Berit Clausen, Head of Technical Documentation EMEA

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"In kothes we've found an uncomplicated – and above all – a very professional partner, who's led us to our goal in both a focused and successful manner. The result of the new operating manuals is impressive and brings us to a new level."

Oliver Giaffreda, Team Leader of Marketing Services

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"kothes is a very competent partner for the structured development of technical documentation for complex products. A jointly-developed documentation set has even been awarded a prize."

René Freudrich, Head Product Management

KHD Köln

"Without any exaggeration, the service was ten out of ten. The team consistently spared no effort in explaining things and asking follow-up questions. This goes above and beyond normal service, which is truly excellent. kothes could be cheaper – but then again everything has its price."

Klaus Spielvogel, Technical Editor

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"For us, technical documentation and training go hand-in-hand. For this reason, we're glad to have a reliable partner in kothes. Our vision of creating a modern, digital documentation and training offerings for our customers is supported by kothes with creative approaches to solutions, and their practical implementation."

Christian Hitzler, Head of Training and Documentation

kothes. Excellent.

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Blog Articles on this Subject

Translations of Technical Documentation – Getting There Better, Together

The Story of an Information Bridge.

New white paper on the digital operating manual

Requirements and perspectives within the framework of the EU Machinery Regulation.

Is there such a thing as legally watertight technical documentation?

A realistic assessment from the working life of a Project Leader.

Machinery Regulation FAQs

All important questions and answers at a glance.


Do you have questions related to our services? Please feel free to call me!

Georg Beckers

Head of Production | Authorised Officer

Phone: +49 2152 8942-22