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How to Present Acrolinx toYour Colleagues

Version 1.2, 10 December 2013

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To the Acrolinx Advocate:

We prepared the Advocate’s Kit to guide you through the process of gaining internal support and approval for implementing Acrolinx.

If you would like help, please contact your Acrolinx account manager or info@acrolinx.com.

The Advocate’s Kit consists of:• These slides• Two spreadsheets• Video instructions

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Instructions

This slide deck is divided into sections:

1. Aligning with executive goals• Think about their concerns, not yours

2. Aligning with other departments• Which departments should be involved• How you should work with them

3. Slides for your presentation• You can copy into your own slide layout• And then adjust for your own business case

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Aligning with Executives

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What You Care About

• Improving compliance to style guide• Eliminating unattractive language (e.g., passive voice)• Ensuring consistency: “speak with one voice”• Using correct terminology

• Improving translatability: reduce time & costs• Reducing effort: for authors & editors• Improving findability: reduce support costs• Improving comprehension: simplify words & sentences• Supporting Content Strategy: align with your

organization’s overall goals for content

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What Your Executives Care About

• Increasing revenue• Improving customer experience

• Consistent high-quality interactions at every touchpoint

• Increasing customer satisfaction• Expanding to new markets• Accelerating time-to-market• Reducing exposure to liability• Faster integration of acquired companies• Cutting costs

Tip: look at your company’s annual report to learn what your executives are promising.

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Speak to Executives in Their Terms, Not Yours

You should offer:

• Better customer experience• Better customer support

• Greater customer satisfaction

• Geographical expansion• Accelerating time-to-market• Lower exposure to liability• Lower costs/higher

productivity

You can back it up with:

• More consistent touchpoints• Improved findability &

comprehension• Higher content quality: more

understandable & consistent• Lower translation costs• Faster editing & translation• Greater content accuracy• Less work for SMEs, editors,

reviewers & translators

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Cutting Costs is Not Enough

• Almost every internal request for investment promises to cut costs

• More important is your proposal’s contribution to your company’s high-level goals

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Business Cases Have Two Foundations

• Strategic Fit• How will your proposal support your company’s goals?

• Quantifiable Value• How will your proposal pay for itself?

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Deliver Relevant Metrics Driven by Facts, Interviews & Surveys

Not this:

• How many words we write• How many pages we

publish• How many rewrites we

endure• How many releases we

support• How much more work

we’re doing than before

This:

• Customer satisfaction• Customer surveys• Customer engagement

(e.g., page views, time on site)

• Comparisons to industry benchmarks

• How we could serve company’s goals even better

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How to Deliver Relevant Metrics

https://www-950.ibm.com/survey/oid/wsb.dll/s/ag2c1

You can easily follow IBM’s lead to capture relevant metrics (slide 42).

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Consider Your Identity

• Has “techdocs” / “techpubs” / “techcomm” become obsolete?

• Consider:• “Information Experience (iX)” – Juniper• “User Assistance” – Microsoft• “Knowledge Products” – Cisco

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What Works

• Connect with your audience (your executives)• Understand your company’s goals• Omit jargon & irrelevant details• Remember: less is more

• Offer innovation• Show maturity

• Come with solutions, not problems• Adhere to your budget

• Be prepared with metrics• Connect to your business

• Build relationships• Make sure stakeholders are aligned• You may even want to “dress the part” and dress like your execs

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Aligning with Other Departments

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Know Your Decision-Making Process

Objectives

Feasibility

Plan

Proposal

Approval

Implement

Maintenance

• Specific aspects of content & language you want to improve

• How Acrolinx helps you meet objectives (Support, Marketing, Finance, Development)

• How Acrolinx fits your IT infrastructure, authoring tools, workflows

• Schedule & milestones (analysis, installation, configuration, training, reporting)

• Human & technology resource requirements (project roles, servers)

• Work with Acrolinx Professional Services to develop statement of work (SOW)

• Overview• Alignment with business

strategy• Implementation plan• Costs• Risks

• Presentation & signoff

• Establish communication plan

• Prepare content for analysis

• Development & testing• Manage scope creep• Training• Acceptance

• Training of new hires• Applying software updates

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Get Help with the Process

Objectives

Feasibility

Plan

Proposal

Approval

Implement

Maintenance

• Ask Finance for help with ROI

• Ask IT for guidance on technical resources, project scheduling, and project management

• Find a good project manager

• Work with Acrolinx Professional Services

• Get your users on board

• Keep in touch with IT• Work with an Acrolinx

account manager on pricing

• Get an executive sponsor

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Know Who Can Affect Your Chances

• Who influences? (Who can stop you?)• IT• Finance

• Who pays?• VP Marketing• VP Customer Support• VP Engineering• VP Legal/Compliance• VP Operations

• Who approves?• Capital expenses committee• Cross-functional budget

committee• Finance committee

• Who’s affected?• Writers• Editors• Translators• Trainers

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Research & Evangelize Before Proposing

• Gather metrics in advance• Consider developing the metrics listed on right side of slide 10

• Evangelize your metrics• Let influencers, payers & approvers know what you’ve learned• Warm them up for your proposal

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Adjust Your Slides for Your AudienceFollowing slides contain suggestions for specific audiences

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Influencer: IT

• Stick to the facts, focus on technology, but explain the strategy

• Suggested messages:• Acrolinx architecture

• Modern: Java, SOAP, REST• Secure• Client-Server-based• Server may be externally or internally hosted

• Readily deployed across one or more servers

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Influencer: Finance

• Wants to see quantitative analysis, but needs to understand big picture too

• Suggested messages:• Designed to pay for itself in:

• Localization savings• Productivity improvements for authors, editors & reviewers

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Payer: Marketing

• Lead with big picture, focus on customer impact

• Suggested messages:• Ensure consistency in tone of voice and terminology across all

customer experience touchpoints

• Content Marketing success depends on high-quality content – and high-quality content depends on high-quality language• Language that gets attention, keeps attention, and drives action

• Control product names and other important branding terms• Even details like capitalization and hyphenation

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Payer: Support

• Focus on customer impact, especially after they purchase

• Suggested messages:• Consider how often customers contact support because they

cannot find the answer through search – or because the answer is written in a way that’s too complicated or technical

• One Acrolinx customer tested impact of improving findability; the articles they optimized for search doubled in number of hits, and support calls related to those topics dropped by one-third

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Payer: Engineering

• Focus on facts & figures; explain process

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Payer: Legal/Compliance

• Focus on improvements in accuracy (especially terminology and translated text) and reductions in confusing sentence construction

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Payer: Operations

• Focus on improvements in efficiency and effectiveness through automation of low-value copy editing tasks

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Who’s Affected: Users

• Encourage them to try before judging• Using Acrolinx challenges every writer’s pride of authorship – but

even the best authors can’t remember the entire style guide and all terminology all the time

• Help them see that automation frees them to add more value to the organization

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Slides for Presentation

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Instructions

• Slides in this “decorated” format contain instructions• You should copy undecorated slides to your own template• These slides are 4:3 format; please let us know if you need 16:9

• Adapt for your situation• Remove irrelevant slides• Modify remaining slides as needed• Replace square brackets with your own content• Decorate with appropriate graphics & use animation

• Adapt for different audiences• Executives / Approvers• Payers (Marketing, Support, Engineering, Legal/Compliance, Operations)• Influencers (IT, Finance)• Users

Introduction to [Project Name]

[Don’t name your project “Acrolinx”; choose a name from mythology or

create an acronym]

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Overview

• We have an opportunity to reinforce our [strategy] through automated optimization of our product documentation

• This presentation describes:– Why we need to change– Alternatives available– Our recommendation– Next steps

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Our Technical Documentation Today

• In last 5 years, documentation cost (as percentage of development cost) has dropped from x% to y%

• During same period, expectations have gone up:– Faster development cycles– Shorter delivery times– Greater personalization– Availability on multiple types of media

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How else is your world changing?

• Is content creation moving upstream to engineers, support people, or your help desk?

• Is content creation increasingly performed by non-native speakers (perhaps created offshore or outsourced)?

• Is content required in more languages?• Is content increasingly consumed by non-native speakers?• Are you on tighter schedules?• Have you adopted lean/agile development processes?• Do you (or should you) participate in social media?

How recent are these changes? How much impact is felt today? How much more impact is still to come? How can you get ready now?

Your answers should affect the previous slide (and you should delete this slide from your final presentation).

We Have Responded

• We have already accomplished:– [Accomplishment #1]– [Accomplishment #2]– [Accomplishment #3]

• But we can do more

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Documentation is Vital to Our Products

• Revenue– We cannot ship products without documentation– Customers increasingly refer to documentation

before they buy• Customer retention

– Customers need to find accurate answers quickly• Operational efficiency

– Dissatisfied customers contact support & return products at higher rates

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Revenue

• 32% typically look at product instructions before they buy

• But it’s likely higher for:– Expensive products– Technical products– Risky purchases

Sharon Burton’s 2013 survey: link to eBook on Amazon 37

Revenue

“70% of the buying process in a complex sale is already complete before prospects are willing to engage with a live salesperson.”*

“Documentation, once siloed in the realm of how-to guides, is actually feeding top-of-the-funnel activity…

“Some companies are reporting that documentation is bringing in over 50% of their qualified leads.”†

* Sirius Decisions† Aaron Fulkerson, “The Evolution of User Manuals,” Forbes, August 9, 2010 38

Customer Retention

• 94% use product instructions• But 66% said product instructions only

“sometimes” make sense• Only 22% think techdoc quality is unrelated to

price they paid; over half worry bad documentation = bad product

• Only 11% feel confident about product if techdocs are “incomplete” – and only 5% would “probably” or “certainly” buy from company again

Sharon Burton’s 2013 survey: link to eBook on Amazon 39

Operational Efficiency

• 78% of people first go to company’s website when they run into problems

• 8% give up entirely• 29% return it, buy from another company

Sharon Burton’s 2013 survey: link to eBook on Amazon 40

How Customers Value Techdocs

Customers at Cisco & Microsoft said product documentation is worth 10% to 20% of product cost*

* 2012 Best Practices Conference, Ben Jackson & Paul Perotta, Juniper Networks 41

How Customers Value Techdocs

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How Customers Value Techdocs

SDL’s August 2012 survey revealed high-quality product information:

– Is essential to good customer service (82%)– Makes it easier to solve service problems on their own

(87%)– Improves their impression of a product and brand (79%)– Makes it more likely that they’ll recommend a product

and brand to others (72%)– Makes it more likely they’ll purchase additional products

from the same manufacturer (79%)

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Winning Customers Relies on High-Quality Content

• Findable• Readable• Understandable• Engaging• Spurs action

“Consumers no longer respond to anything but the most compelling content.”

– Gartner

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Let’s Avoid Language Afterthought Syndrome (LAS)

• LAS is “a pattern of treating language requirements as secondary considerations within content strategies and solutions.”

• “Companies leak money and opportunity by failing to address language issues as integral to end-to-end solutions rather than ancillary post-processes.”

http://gilbane.com/globalization/2009/09/suffering_from_language_afterthought_syndrome.html 45

LAS Symptoms• “Painful time-to-market delays”• “Pesky inefficiencies due to redundant translations”• “Content that should be reusable, but isn’t”• “High customer support costs due to mediocre quality of

translated content”• “Time and money to retrofit translated content to meet

compliance requirements”• “Maxed-out language capacity, constrained by unscalable

globalization infrastructures”• “Multichannel customer communications that are inconsistent

and out of synch”• “Mysterious localization and translation costs”

http://gilbane.com/globalization/2009/09/suffering_from_language_afterthought_syndrome.html 46

We Can Make Our Product Information Even Better

• Warmer, simpler, more engaging language

• “One voice”: more consistent

• More translatable

• More accurate terminology & branding

• More findable

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What’s Your Business Strategy?

• Choose one (or more) of the following “Great Information Will Help Our [Strategy]” slides

• Adjust text to fit your specific situation and expectations

• Consider expanding a single slide to multiple slides

You should delete this slide from your final presentation.

Great Information Will Help our Revenue Growth Strategy

• Prospects more likely to buy if they can:– More easily find out product information– More easily read & understand it– Even enjoy it

• Impact on multi-product sales– Great information can create a “halo effect” on

our other products– Greater consistency will reinforce our branding

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Great Information Will Help Our Customer Experience Strategy

• Greater consistency across touch points• Better experience when:

– Preparing– Installing– Operating– Maintaining– Servicing

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Great Information Will Help Our Customer Support Strategy

• Better experience when:– Preparing– Installing– Operating– Maintaining– Servicing

• Translates to:– Fewer requests for support– Fewer callbacks to support– Higher first-time fix rates

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Great Information Will Help Our Customer Satisfaction Strategy

• Greater consistency across touch points• Improves our ability to keep the promise of our products• Better experience when:

– Preparing– Installing– Operating– Maintaining– Servicing

• Translates to:– Fewer requests for support– Fewer callbacks to support– Higher first-time fix rates

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Great Information Will Help Our Geographical Expansion Strategy

• Higher-quality source content means:– Lower translation costs– Faster translation cycles– Enables increased use of machine translation

• And where we cannot translate ourselves:– Helps customers get higher-quality translations

from Google Translate

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Great Information Will Help Our Faster Time-to-Market Strategy

• Eliminating “copy editing” from review cycles means editors & reviewers can focus on accuracy & completeness

• Review cycles will happen faster, with higher quality

• Building language checking into our development process will reduce last-minute rework & errors

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Great Information Will Help Our Liability Reduction Strategy

• Automated checking of terminology & language errors will reduce instances of inaccurate content slipping through

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Automation of Language Optimization Will Help Our Cost Reduction Strategy

• Reduces costly editorial and technical review processes• Helps authors find more of their own errors; cheaper than

catching errors anywhere downstream• Reduces content rework late in the development cycle• Eases burden on subject matter expert who review content• Reduces translation costs• Reduces back-and-forth between authors and editors• Reduces back-and-forth between authors and translators

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Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 40%

500%

1000%

1500%

2000%

2500%

ROI Projection - Total Savings

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4

-60%

-40%

-20%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

120%

140%

ROI Projection - Cost Savings Only

Sample Data Sample Data

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Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4$0

$1,000,000

$2,000,000

$3,000,000

$4,000,000

$5,000,000

$6,000,000

$7,000,000

$708,417

$2,385,451

$4,062,485

$5,739,519

Cumulative Cash Impact

Sample Data

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WHICH APPROACHES DID WE CONSIDER?

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Increase Editing Team

Advantages• Expanding editing & review

capacity will help us improve our language

Disadvantages• Higher costs• Difficult positions to fill• Under-utilizes skills (when

they focus on copy editing)• Subject to individual

variation

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Automate Language Checking(with Content Optimization Software)

Advantages• Consistently & uniformly

applies style rules• Never gets tired of low-level

copy editing work• Helps reduce other costs in

process (authoring, editing, reviewing, translating)

• Helps align content produced in various silos

Disadvantages• Requires investment in

purchase & implementation• May require agreement on

standards when used across multiple silos

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Acrolinx ??? ???Company experience 3 1 1Customer references 3 1 1Product features:

Spelling 3 1 1Grammar 3 1 1Terminology 3 1 1Style 3 1 1Tone of voice 3 1 1Findability (SEO) 3 1 1Large number of standard rules 3 1 1Centralized control of rules 3 1 1Centralized control of terminology 3 1 1Centralized control of users 3 1 1Browser-based terminology contribution 3 1 1Batch checking 3 1 1Reporting & analytics 3 1 1Breadth of languages supported 3 1 1

SDK 3 1 1Architecture 3 1 1Cost 2 1 1

Weighted Score 141 48 48

(Score: 1 = low, 2 = medium, 3 = high)

Content Optimization Software Analysis

Double-click on table to open in Excel.62

OUR RECOMMENDATION

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We Recommend Acrolinx

• Most capable software• Largest provider• Biggest customer list• Strong references• Broadest language support• Longest experience• Greatest depth of expertise

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Other Departments Support Our Recommendation

• Marketing• Localization• Engineering• Support• Legal/Compliance• IT

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Acrolinx Overview

• Developed by Acrolinx team at German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence

• Spun off in 2002 to develop software that helps write better content

• U.S. headquarters in Silicon Valley; European headquarters in Berlin

Top 100 Companies inDigital Content Industry 2013

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How Does Acrolinx Work?

Acrolinx Sends Text to Server

Server sends results back to author to view & make corrections

Acrolinx linguistic engine analyzes text against dictionary, terminology, rules

Server

Acrolinx plugs into our authoring tools:

Author Presses “Check” Button

Check

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Acrolinx Analytics

View aggregate results & recommendations

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Acrolinx Checks Content For:

• Terminology & branding

• Tone of voice

• Spelling & grammar

• Translatability

• SEO

Interactively guides authors to improve their language

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Some Acrolinx CustomersAerospace High Tech Industrial Med. Devices Software

Boeing Agilent ABB Dräger Adobe

British Aerospace Blackberry Bosch Eppendorf Autodesk

Embraer Cisco Claas GE Healthcare CA

Goodrich Cisco Danfoss Illumina DateV

Jeppesen Dell Grohe Medtronic EMC

Liebherr Dell Leica Philips Fiducia

Saab Ericsson MAN Siemens Google

Huawei Scania IBM

IBM Schneider Electric Microsoft

Intel SEW Eurodrive Oracle

Konica Minolta Siemens PayPal

Lenovo Stiebel Eltron SAP

Netgear Terex SAS Institute

Philips Viessmann Symantec

Xerox Yokogawa

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Acrolinx Reference: Dell

“Acrolinx is about helping companies improve the consistency and quality of their content and strengthen their brand. We are using it to drive accountability for Dell.com and ensure our customers get the best user experience.”

Wayne BourlandDirector, Global Localization Team

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Acrolinx Reference: Adobe

“Acrolinx software has helped Adobe to dramatically increase the productivity of our editing operations, provide better control of our terminology, and improve the overall quality of our documentation. These changes have had a significant effect on trimming translation costs and reducing our time-to-market. We see intelligent re-use and pre-editing for a global audience as essential aspects of our localization strategy.”

Francis TsangDirector of Localization

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Acrolinx Reference: PayPal

“Our time to market with new product launches was often slow and behind schedule, primarily because the content constantly had to be reviewed and amended for each market. Acrolinx has ensured our content is grammatically correct, at the same time it checks that key messages and preferred terms are incorporated too. The icing on the cake is the time and cost of translation for our overseas markets have been considerably reduced. ”

David HershfieldSr. Director, Global Product and Experience

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NEXT STEPS

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Steps After Your Approval

• Issue paperwork to Acrolinx• Establish acceptance criteria & communication

plan• Prepare content for analysis• Work with Acrolinx on development & testing• Migrate terminology to Acrolinx• Train authors, reviewers, editors• Establish usage & performance goals• Sign off when acceptance criteria met

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Thank You!PG.Bartlett@acrolinx.com

Advocate’s Kit will be posted to acrolinx.com soon.