Leading documentation system improvements for Saas organizations
I define and lead documentation systems, governance models, and content strategy for complex SaaS products—
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Aligning content across teams and products
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Standardizing content structure
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Maintaining consistency as organizations evolve
My strategy
I approach documentation as a system—content that works across teams, products, and constant change.
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Systems
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I build documentation systems that support multiple products and teams by defining structure, ownership, and the processes for creating, updating, and maintaining content.
Governance
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I put clear standards and workflows in place so that documentation stays consistent and doesn’t drift. This process includes defining ownership, establishing review processes, and ensuring cross-functional partners can contribute without creating chaos.
Strategy
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I look at documentation at the organizational level—how it supports the product, the user experience, and the business. This strategy often includes stepping back, identifying what’s not working, and redefining how content is structured and delivered across teams.
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Impact
My impact on documentation systems
Most documentation systems don’t fail because of tools—they fail in how content is structured, written, and maintained. My work focuses on fixing those gaps—making content easier for audiences to locate and understand.
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Making documentation usable—not just available
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Transformed long, chapter-style help topics into shorter, task-based and conceptual content that users could scan and act on.
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Eliminated unnecessary wordiness and “throw-away” language to improve clarity and searchability.
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Reduced the need for users to scroll through or expand large sections of content to find answers.
Applying structured content principles
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Shifted teams from print-oriented writing to user-centered, online-first content design.
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Introduced guidelines for content "chunking," content types (concept, task, reference), and plain language usage.
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Reinforced user-centered best practices through training and ongoing editing reviews.
Reducing friction in content creation and publishing
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Standardized tools and processes across teams following an acquisition, improving coordination and
reducing duplication. -
Reduced documentation publishing cycles from one week to two days by streamlining workflows.
Scaling content across complex product environments
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Supported documentation for 30+ cloud applications across multiple product areas.
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Migrated 17,000+ help topics into a unified repository and publishing model.
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Helped teams manage large content projects consistently and efficiently.
Improving access to information
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Identified that users could not effectively search or navigate help content due to topic length
and structure. -
Reorganized content to make search results more relevant and usable.
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Shifted users away from static PDFs toward searchable, in-product help.
Strengthening quality and consistency
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Developed and maintained style guidelines that supported clarity, consistency, and localization.
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Edited customer-facing content to ensure accuracy and usability at scale.
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Embedded user-centered writing practices into everyday workflows.
Applying AI in practical ways
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Introduced AI-assisted drafting and editing to accelerate first drafts while maintaining quality.
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Used AI to reinforce style and consistency, not replace writer judgment.
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I’m comfortable working hands-on with content as well as improving documentation systems, and am open to full-time, contract, or project-based work.
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Case Studies
My system design in action
These case studies show how I designed and implemented documentation systems—combining structure, governance, and user experience to support scale, consistency, and usability.​​​​​​​
Centralized content management and publishing workflows
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The challenge: Combining two legacy documentation teams revealed different content management and publishing workflows across two product platforms and 30+ solutions with varied release cadences.
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Strategy
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​​​​Analyzed how each model supported multi-product documentation.
- Identified tradeoffs betweem writer autonomy and centralized control.
- Evaluated impact on publishing speed, consistency, and quality.
- Researched effort required to standarize processes across team.
Implementation and leadership​
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Selected MadCap Central (now MadCap Flare Online) as the unified CMS and publishing solution.
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Directed evaluation and testing of new publishing workflows, partnering with team members to refine processes and ensure scalability.
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Secured additional software licenses and built consensus with Engineering and leadership on tooling and publishing strategy.
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Planned and coordinated transition timelines to minimize disruption to release schedules
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Led rollout and adoption, including writer training, revised workflows, and communication across the organization.
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Outcomes​
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Fully eliminated dependency on Engineering for release publishing tasks.
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Reduced publishing cycle time from one week to two days.
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Improved consistency and predictability of documentation delivery across teams.
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Increased team efficiency through streamlined workflows and clearer ownership.
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Enabled the successful migration of more than 17,000 topics into a single repository.
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Enabled single-sourcing and content reuse across products and platforms.
Standardized release notes and Help Center portals
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The challenge: Following an acquisition, users navigated to very different content experiences.
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Strategy​​
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Analyzed differences in audience, content structure, navigation, and user experience across both platforms.
- Prioritized findability, scannability, and direct access to product-specific information.
- Assessed how content structure and navigation affected usability and access to product information.
- Defined a unified experience that balanced centralized access with product-level clarity.
Implementation and leadership​
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Redesigned release notes templates to provide one-click access to the latest updates and direct links to product-specific content.
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Introduced user-centered strategies to improve scanning and reduce reliance on scrolling.
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Redesigned/rebranded Help Center portals to centralize access while improving navigation, organization, cross-platform access, and usability.
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Established shared standards to establish a consistent experience for users transitioning
between legacy platforms. -
Built consensus across teams and stakeholders to implement a unified content experience.
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Outcomes​
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Reduced bounce rate by ~20% across Help Center portals.
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Improved findability of product-specific release information.
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IIncreased user engagement through structured, more scannable content design.
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Delivered a consistent, unified experience across previously fragmented platforms.
Designed a structured, user-centered content model
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The challenge: Legacy help content appeared as long, print-style topics that required excessive scrolling and expanding to locate task information. The limited task visibility created the perception that help documentation was incomplete and drove continued reliance on redudant PDF deliverables.
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Strategy​
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Introduced structured authoring standards and guidelines, including examples of properly “chunked” content.
- Developed and delivered a two-day User-Centered Documentation training program for writers.
- Collaborated with Support to prioritize high-visibility products and maximize impact and adoption.
Implementation and leadership​​​
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Introduced structured content (concepts, tasks, and reference topics) and user-centered strategies to improve scanning and reduce reliance on scrolling.
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Led editorial reviews to reinforce standards and content transformation.
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Worked across teams and leadership to phase out redundant PDF deliverables and support transition to HTML-based help.
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Outcomes​
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Improved findability and usability through shorter, task-focused content.
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Increased visibility of Help topics within navigation structures.
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Eliminated reliance on PDF documentation as primary navigation aid.
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Established a scalable content model to support long-term consistency and reuse.
Professional Experience
My experience shaping documentation at scale
I’ve led and contributed to documentation programs across ERP, healthcare, and financial enterprise SaaS organizations—improving how complex products are explained, delivered, and maintained at scale.
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Senior Documentation Manager
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Strata Decision Technology | 2022 – 2025​​
​At Strata, I led documentation strategy for a large portfolio of healthcare, financial, and educational institution SaaS applications while managing a distributed team of writers.​
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​Following an acquisition, I unified two documentation ecosystems into a single, centralized model—leading the migration of more than 17,000 topics into a single repository and redefining how content was written, reviewed, and published.
What had once been a week-long publishing cycle became a two-day process. ​​​​
I introduced governance where it hadn’t previously existed—establishing and aligning style guidelines, creating editorial workflows, and conducting content reviews that strengthened corporate voice across products and teams. I also worked closely with writers to reshape legacy content into structured, task-based topics that aligned to real user workflows.​​
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I actively incorporated AI-assisted workflows and structured prompts to accelerate first draft content from Jira epics, stories, and tasks—balancing speed with editorial quality and compliance.
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Senior Technical Writer
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Swisslog Healthcare | 2021 – 2022 ​​
​At Swisslog, I helped design and launch a centralized Knowledge Hub—bringing together customer-facing documentation, knowledge base articles, style guidelines, and internal operational guidance into a single, cohesive system. The Knowledge Hub was nominated for a Swisslog Company Innovation Award, reflecting its usability and cross-functional impact. ​
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I partnered closely with product owners to align documentation across a complex set of pharmacy automation and medication managment solutions. I also identified inconsistencies in product language and introduced updated writing and terminology guidelines to support translation and localization.​​​
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Senior Technical Writer
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Rally Health (UnitedHealthcare) | 2020 – 2021​​
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At Rally, I supported a broad portfolio of healthcare engagement products, creating documentation that served payers, employers, and providers. I worked closely with product owners and cross-functional teams
to develop strategic roadmaps and deliver accurate, engaging web content.
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I helped align Rally's documentation by developing a comprehensive style guide for writing conventions and terminology use and served as the team's primary editor for customer-facing content. ​
Managing Editor​
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Allscripts | 2009 - 2020
​​My time at Allscripts shaped my foundation in editorial leadership for large-scale documentation systems and reinforced my "player-coach" leadership style.
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I led editorial quality for the Documentation Center of Excellence, supporting more than 50 writers and managers— refining style guidelines and review processes that brought consistency to a complex, distributed content environment. ​I also created monthly activities, workshops, and training programs to reinforce best practices and support new writer onboarding.
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Expertise & Tools
My expertise in systems and tools
I combine documentation strategy, content design, and hands-on execution to create systems that are clear, usable, and built to scale. My expertise spans the full documentation lifecycle—from writing, editing,and content structure to governance, publishing, and continuous improvement.
Expertise
Documentation strategy​
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Content lifecycle (creation, maintenance, and governance)
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Documentation roadmaps
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Release cycles and versioning
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Multi-product documentation systems
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Large-scale documentation repositories
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Content design (structure)
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Information architecture
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Content structure and readability optimization
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Accessibility best practices (WCAG 2.1)
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Structured content and topic chunking
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Single-sourcing and reuse
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User experience (interaction)
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User-centered documentation
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Outcome-based writing
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In-product guidance (contextual help, tooltips, announcements)
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Real-world workflows
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Multiple-audience considerations (end-users, admins,
stakeholders)​
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Editorial quality (clarity)
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Branding standards and style guide development
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Cross-functional workflows (Engineering, UX, Product, Support)
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Editorial review processes (developmental, substantive, copyediting, peer)
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Content validation and quality assurance testing
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Governance
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Roles and responsibilities
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Access and permissions
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Standardized tools, templates, and formats
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Storage and retention policies
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Change management
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Leadership
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Leading and mentoring distributed technical writing teams
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Modeling player-coach leadership style
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Collaborating with Product, Engineering, UX, and Support
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Aligning stakeholders and prioritizing documentation
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Driving adoption of tools, standards, and workflows
Technologies and tools
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Authoring & CMS
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MadCap Flare (MadCap Online)
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Adobe FrameMaker
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DITA XML​
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Oxygen​​​​​​
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Collaboration
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Git, GitHub, GitKraken
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Confluence
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Wikipedia​
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Jira, Azure DevOps
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Google Docs
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SharePoint (Administrator)
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Product & UX tools
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Pendo
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WalkMe
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Figma​
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Visio
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SnagIt
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Analytics
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Google Analytics
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Flare
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AI-assisted documentation
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Integrating generative AI into documentation processes to improve speed and consistency
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AI-assisted drafting from engineering tickets and requirements
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AI-assisted editing and validation workflows​
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Prompts aligned with editorial standards and terminology
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Portfolio
Documentation system redesign
Redesigned Help Centers and release notes and aligned content strategy across product platforms to reflect current user behavior and improve content accessibility.
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The following examples highlight key improvements to structure, navigation, and content strategy:
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Help Center redesign (before and after)
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Release notes redesign (scannable format)
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Content strategy shift (structured content)
To read more recommendations, access my LinkedIn page and scroll to Recommendations.
Recommendations
TREMENDOUS ASSET
It is not every day that you encounter someone in your career who excels in everything that she does. The exception is Katy Campion.
Katy has excellent communication skills, is extremely detail-oriented and organized, and has top-notch writing and editing experience. She is adept at writing clear, easy-to-understand, user-centric documentation. She is also flexible and willing to take on seemingly impossible tasks and succeed at them.
Katy would be a tremendous asset to any company and has my highest recommendation.
Sincerely,
Troy Holmes
COLLABORATIVE/PRODUCTIVE
It has been my great pleasure to work for and with Katy Campion for over 20 years.
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As a manager, Katy is hands-on, a strong advocate for her team, and approachable, yet drives her team to achieve high volume and quality.
As an employee, Katy is responsible, conscientious, collaborative, self-managing, and productive. She continued to demonstrate leadership by setting up an editing function on my team. Katy’s editing efforts greatly improved the quality of the content we produced.
Having been Katy’s employee, manager, and peer, I enthusiastically recommend her. Katy is a great asset in whatever role she serves and for whatever company is lucky enough to hire her.
Sincerely,
Juliet Wells
CREATIVE/ANALYTICAL
Even early in her career, it was apparent from the get-go that Katy stood out among all her peers. She has a sharp mind, a love of excellence, and an immense flair for language.
Complementary to being an absolutely exquisite writer and editor, she excels in all project management categories: budgeting, time management, work effort analysis and quality measurements. She is the rare combination of a 'creative' and a business analyst.
If you want to hand over a complex, multi-faceted project to a person you know is going to deliver on time and on budget, hire or promote Katy immediately!
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Sincerley,
Susan L. Middleton