Reimagining Avalara’s Help and Learning Ecosystem
Project type: Content platform and operating-model transformation
Role: Director, Learning Platform & Tools
Focus: Content strategy, structured authoring, docs as code, publishing architecture, customer learning, sprint operations, automation, and digital experience
OPPORTUNITY
Avalara’s customer-content ecosystem was fragmented across Avalara.com, the Avalara Help Center, Avalara University, support FAQs, product assistance, and several specialized subsites. These experiences used different platforms, ownership models, authoring workflows, and content structures.
The Help Center alone contained nearly 25,000 pieces of content, including thousands of support FAQs and product-help articles. The existing platform had an outdated user experience, confusing information architecture, weak governance, limited localization support, and an authoring model that was difficult to reuse or automate. It also lacked a clear path for integration with Avalara.com, identity, search, status, and the company’s broader international strategy.
The challenge was to improve the current experience while creating a scalable foundation for the future.
Role
As Director of Learning Platform & Tools, I led the platform and tools strategy supporting Avalara’s Help Center and Avalara University.
I developed the Help 3.0 vision and Project FIRO, a proposed foundation for structured authoring, reusable content, source control, automated publishing, and integration with Avalara.com.
My role included defining the product vision, creating the future-state architecture, building prototypes and proofs of concept, leading tool evaluations, aligning stakeholders across Customer Learning, Marketing, Engineering, Support, and Operations, and establishing the roadmap for migration, governance, localization, analytics, and author enablement.
I also designed and implemented a new sprint framework for Customer Learning, giving teams a more consistent operating rhythm for planning, prioritization, demos, and retrospection.
APPROACH
The strategy had three connected parts.
First, we needed a global unified content strategy that connected product documentation, help, training, support, marketing, and in-product assistance around the customer lifecycle.
Second, we needed a scalable content model that separated content from presentation and supported structured authoring, localization, reuse, automation, search, and multiple publishing destinations.
Third, we needed a modern customer experience that aligned the Help Center with Avalara.com and created clearer journeys for discovering, learning, using, and troubleshooting Avalara products.
Project FIRO
FIRO stood for Federated Information and Reusable Objects.
It was designed as a docs-as-code publishing architecture built around structured content, Git-based source control, automated transformations, and integration with Adobe Experience Manager.
The model connected writers, engineers, editors, UX teams, and product managers through a shared repository and publishing pipeline. Content could be authored in DITA, stored and versioned in GitLab, transformed through a CI/CD process, and published into Avalara.com or reused in other destinations.
The architecture also supported future scenarios involving UI text, error strings, localization, automation, Salesforce integration, in-product assistance, and content reuse across channels.
What We Built
During the first phase, the team:
-
Configured GitLab and defined an initial branching strategy
-
Completed licensing and setup for Oxygen XML authoring
-
Created workflows connecting GitLab, Adobe Experience Manager, and SharePoint for media assets
-
Designed the initial repository information architecture
-
Built a basic DITA-to-HTML transformation pipeline using Oxygen, Git, and AWS
-
Completed early evaluations of Acrolinx, Salesforce CMS Connect, and robotic-process automation
-
Developed initial Help 3.0 wireframes and user-experience concepts
-
Created author training, troubleshooting guidance, and program documentation
The larger roadmap included migration planning, metadata and search strategy, localization, governance, analytics, contributor onboarding, author training, content reuse, accessibility, and the eventual retirement of the legacy MindTouch platform.
Operating-Model Change
The technology work was only part of the transformation.
I introduced a four-week sprint framework for Customer Learning with clearer planning periods, meeting purposes, Jira and Confluence practices, sprint demonstrations, and regular pulse surveys.
The survey feedback showed improving satisfaction and clarity while also identifying issues with meeting load, mid-sprint priority changes, terminology, capacity planning, and emergency work. We used the feedback to refine the process rather than treating the initial model as fixed.
This was important because FIRO required collaboration across writers, engineers, product managers, designers, support teams, and marketing. The organization needed a stronger operating rhythm to manage that complexity.
RESULTS
The work established a clear future-state vision for Avalara’s customer-content ecosystem and created the first technical foundation for a structured, reusable, and automated publishing model.
It also shifted the conversation from replacing a Help Center tool to designing a broader content platform that could support documentation, learning, in-product assistance, localization, automation, and multiple customer experiences.
The proposed architecture was expected to reduce annual platform costs significantly while giving Avalara greater control over authoring, publishing, and integration. Early prototypes and proofs of concept helped build support across engineering, product management, marketing, operations, and customer learning.
The full transformation was not completed during my tenure.
LESSONS LEARNED
This project reinforced the value of “build and show” rather than “propose and hope.”
Prototypes made an abstract content-platform strategy tangible. Stakeholders could see how structured authoring, source control, automation, and a shared publishing pipeline might change both the customer experience and the way teams worked.
It also showed that content modernization requires coordinated change across technology, workflow, governance, skills, and organizational behavior. Selecting a new authoring tool was the easy part. The harder work involved redefining ownership, training authors, building new engineering partnerships, planning migration, and creating confidence in an unfamiliar model.
Finally, the experience demonstrated that a Help Center, learning platform, and in-product guidance should not be treated as isolated destinations. They are parts of the same customer-learning ecosystem.