Efficiency, Content, and Style Software Tool 

Our experience shows that the use of ECoS improves the success of proposal submissions by 40%, with a 60% increase in writing efficiency without any loss of quality (in fact, with improved quality, as indicated by a greater success of proposal acceptance).

ECoS tool is powerful not only because it supports collaborative efforts among multiple team members, but because it also supports remote editorial writing for teams whose members may not be able to physically meet in the same. 

The ECoS tool ensures that both the team members, as well as their managers/leaders, are drafting and editing their technical documents both in-person and remotely, while providing a way for team members to transfer information among one another efficiently. 

Such streamlined, comprehensive tools targeting technical writing procedures are not currently available on the market, making ECoS a truly innovative platform that will benefit multiple industries. 

There are hundreds of line-by-line commercial syntax solvers that use computer algorithms to fix minor grammatical problems automatically, such as Microsoft Word’s Spell-Check algorithm. These tools are limited in the types of errors that they can solve and are not designed to teach writers how to improve; these syntax solvers also do not check for descriptive requirements in technical writing. 

Ask yourself, how often does a misspelled word become the real and only reason that a manuscript fails? Very rarely are grammatical errors the crux of why a technical document failed on the fundamental level—spelling mistakes are instead indicative of the larger problems that a collaborative writing team may face. 

By focusing on the bigger picture and harder-to-quantify mistakes that newer writers often overlook, ECoS uniquely targets the content, organization, and style of the manuscript, which are the aspects of the writing process that have a high impact on the success rate (e.g., acceptance into a journal or approval for funding) of the manuscript. 

The ECoS tool helps teach and train writers to think critically about the content and organization of the document while they write and edit. 

For example, there are checkpoints in the tool which prompt the writers to check for content consistency and strong logical writing. Another example is that the tool gives descriptions on how to improve or format images and data graphics (e.g., tables, charts, graphs) and their captions. 

Effective visual data display is a critical component of engineering and research applications. 

The ECoS tool provides descriptive examples on the correct and incorrect way to format content in a document, so that team members can not only understand how to improve, but immediately see what is expected of them. No other writing tool on the market informs senior writers and editors of the big picture failure points of a manuscript in an easily digestible format. 

Several levels of software complexity lay on the path to market, from minimum viable product to multi-user, cloud-based suite solutions. The continuing path to improvement is to apply machine-learning algorithms for gradual replacement of the high-level analysis human tasks. 

This tool was born out of the needs of our own technical writing team in an academic environment, which produces technical documentation daily. 

The customer segmentation for ECoS is:

• Big business/corporations, 

• Academia, 

• Government agencies, 

• Individuals, 

• Small businesses. 

Our clients are team and department management, as well as leaders who desire a streamlined interactive tool to efficiently organize technical writing in groups. 

ECoS provides many benefits to writers and is easy to install, especially since it is an accessible Add-On tool for Microsoft Word (a software package well-established as the industry standard for many writing projects). 

ECoS can be used in-person during team meetings or remotely; it automatically updates to transfer team member input throughout the technical writing process. 

The knowledge management framework behind ECoS is also applicable to different end-goal results of the users, for example:

• an artificial intelligence grading assistant for teachers, university instructors, and teaching assistants

• a patent development feedback tool for industrial intellectual property council

• a job description analysis application for HR specialists. 

The anticipated value proposition is:

• increasing the volume of manuscripts that a writing team can produce per year, 

• increasing the overall strength (e.g., funding chances, acceptance rates) of each manuscript produced, and

• increasing the overall capabilities and depth of competency of individual writers (especially newer personnel) through time-optimized instructional resources. 

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