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What Does A Customer Expect To See In A Data Book?

by | Jul 2, 2021 | Document Control

Some customers have a strict set of data book requirements. Other customers do not seem to mind what the data book looks like as long as it contains all approved documentation.

In our experience there are a series of items that customers generally expect to see provided at the end of a project.

Here are the top 7 things you should provide in your data books to ensure customer satisfaction.

  1. Include all specified documents – Ensure all required (see VDR provided by Customer to identify required documents) and the most recent approved revisions of documents/drawings are included in the book.
  2. Cover page – Ensure the cover page(s) meets customer specifications. This typically means identifying the project, PO # and Applicable Tags that the data book applies to.
  3. Table of Contents – A clean, easy to follow Table of Contents (TOC) includes listing data book sections, Document Codes, Document Numbers, Title/Description, Revision, and applicable tags for each document you are including.
  4. Not Applicable documents – Identify Not Applicable (N/A) documents. It is best to identify any N/A docs on the TOC, but also helpful if you put a placeholder sheet where N/A documents would be, letting the reader know the document was not missed but is in fact not applicable.
  5. Sections – Whether the customer has this as a requirement or not, for the end users’ ease of navigating through the book, it helps to break the documentation up into sections for better readability.
  6. Bookmarks! – Bookmarks are not only nice to have, but often they are a requirement. Bookmarking each section as well as the individual documents throughout the book allows for end users to navigate to specific pages without having to go page by page to find what they are looking for.
  7. Title pages – Section title pages also help the reader to navigate through the book with ease. Making the data books easier to read and more helpful to your customers always makes sense.

Even if your customer does not have these preferences outlined, it is always nice to over deliver. With DocBoss, it is easy to provide a professional, easy to navigate data book that will impress your customer with just a few clicks of the mouse.