Approach to outsourcing technical writing

Nowadays, “outsourcing” is considered as the best and quick solution to procure as a service. It’s seen as a plug-in service item taking place of a task item in the planning of big projects that are scoped in the business run. When it comes to the technical writing service, you have to be vigilant and know in advance what challenges are imposed if due attention is not rendered in the project proposals. Unfortunately, it is not a handy solution that would fit easily in your requirement at the last minute. A careful approach, therefore, is required when you as a business manager look at the technical Communication services for outsourcing.

Outsourcing tech writing –a real rescue?

Technical writer’s baggage is often taken for granted. Even in fast-moving organizations, technical writing is looked at as a profession in the back seat. Of course, you remain busy developing your product, even tied in getting clients and building the market. Prominent techies and product stakeholders scribble notes and write memos on the fly -mostly scattered packets of technical jargon, and some even remain in employees’ heads. The information refrains from taking proper shape in professional content unless it was intended to do so. The specialty of technical writers plays the pivoted role here who does it happen to bring the outcome of several forms of technical content. The eleventh hours push to bring it in as an expected ingredient accompanying your product eats up your piece. Additionally, the rush tends to defeat the quality of the deliverables as a whole. Any unprocessed content is likely to lose the meaning of the features in the eye of users, otherwise worth a million. The last-minute hurdle refrains discrete content from shaping into useful information.

The chaos for hunting technical writing resources may heat up across the floor. Several options of hiring: -on a regular recruit, full-time contracts, or outsourcing the work, are then worked on. The business side attributes hover in fitting the jigsaw by taking into account the cost, time, quality, and brand image.

Business Aspects – the money, effort, quality for Content

When you analyze the situation keeping the wallet tight, the best solution could be seen at a one-time service, by 3rd party. It is a flexible resolution to keep the high expenses in control and letting not disturbing the break-even cost. This approach lets you pay as much as you wish to bundle in the project scope. The outsourcing turns out a more cost-effective way and readily available service. The in-house technical writer, on the other hand, is a specialized recruit, needs to remain on the roll against the regular salary. However, it’s not guaranteed he is bound to fulfill the need all the time, taking his absentees and also the allowable off days into account. The preparation of such an army also needed considerable budget spent on hiring, sourcing, training, and benefits. There involves a typical hidden long-term risk in hiring new people, and morphed effort put into training the new force. It’s likely to demand more when you hire a fresh inter or a novice candidate. The approach at once way is to reduce the initial cost as writing technical content seemed a formal task of straight drafting –but it’s not). The technical content is unlike marketing content, having explored from reviewing the design data, key information of your product, besides internal company information, and your proprietary information. Thus as a norm, reputed brands and even small-scale and mid-sized companies adopt a policy of developing their own staff of technical authors. The requirement is to keep the writing specialists as close to the product as possible, so is the info sharing with the key stakeholders.

The outsourcing on the hand could free you from all hassles of content churning. The 3rd party takes the control of all technicalities and standards in formulating the desired deliverables, relieves you, by making you free to focus on the key elements of your business. The consulting firms acting as external writing resources to such clients are not to meddle with confidentiality of content and are bound to keep the work ethic to the subject. Of course, you need to trust the party by having formal MOUs and NDA agreed. This approach is proved to be more flexible as you are on the dais of a customer rather than an employer. This way you can scope what exactly to be worked on and may incense the scope or stop, as required. This is more logical in business, as it freed you from any ethical strings otherwise attached when you had to hire an intern and fire after some months.

Now, let’s talk about bringing a technical writer on board:

Recruiting technical writer resources

When it’s your first technical writer hiring, assuring getting an exact fit is difficult. This is because a new entrant will expect some existing platform to rely on. In lack of knowledge management system in place, the writer is likely to look at you for direction. A beginner will have grey voids in performing his technical writing job well. Designing a new departmental function from scratch with valid processes needs an expert who has already worked in such a framework. This is because the tools, standards, processes, and proven work practices can only make a new writer comfortable.

Then finding a well-experienced specialist in the given scope of your domain is time-consuming and may not guarantee cheap resolution, unless one takes it to the pride in working for his own business. There lay high-cost lure to seek the experienced hand, but you have to free your wallet to ascertain the upcoming setup and platform is productive enough to roll out the additional writers in the long run.

This leads us to discuss the next scenario:

Your expectation & company need

Your expectation from a tech Writer might be different from what the company needs.

Until here you have a focus on how important is caring technical information and knowledge transfer in your business. There come to the processes wherein they talk about how you will go ahead. The decision making is a process that expects the experience to foresee what and how the content goes into the final product. At this stage, identifying the business requirements, i.e. what solutions suit your company needs is a part of the job, not just outlook. You are sure what you want as technical content is put in the development process. However, by hiring a full-time technical writer or even outsourcing the job can provide you enough data that will help you verify your ideas. For instance, cleaning up your content or knowledge base may turn out quite difficult than it seems. Possibly, it may just turn out much easier, if you had chosen the right tools and handled by the right hand. This may take your though back to the scenario where a full-time technical writer looks redundant after a few months of smooth work.

In the field of technical publications, the decision of hiring in-house writer or outsourcing to a consultant is often looked at as hiring staff versus specialists. The benefits of working in groups are quite obvious and help overall performance. Various skills work together, more brains working combine different skill specialties, yet a combined group effort needs better organization to be effective, and the ability to deliver coherent outcome with a value-added solution. There are few industries that benefit from having outsourcing of a task packed in specific requirements. An outsource company tune in as professional by the way they service, merit clients such as in software development. This is because, after some grace period in employment the staff on the roll tends to lose this perspective. On this ground, the outsourced tech publishing agency by large does the stated goal of product documentation, as well as contributes to testing your product.

Will hiring exclude outsourcing?

This is not the case. The outsourcing of individual production stages offshore still allows you to let the in-house development and content production go in tandem. The two channels of indigenous and outsourced content development may complement each other. Say, if you wish to analyze the current situation and preparedness in the stage of product phase, and arrive at the right solution. Say, you are procuring a consulting tech communications agency service, for consulting. The service aims in planning and proposal on catching up on the business goals of your company. Then let's say you hired a tech writer, looking at future projects; you may attach this resource to coordinate further work between you and the outsourcing company, where the writer also gets tuned with the project coordination and able to contribute in the next phase. This arrangement merits you to benefit in both scenarios. Meaning, at the time, you will have access to the consultant’s specialty and build professional rapport, as well as your local worker remain constantly ‘in the flow’ of his domain.

You need to understand first the state of your business, and status in the context of technical writing. Based on the situation, you may apply the best approach stated above, and be prepared for product readiness with ALL deliverables. Of course, your choice is dependant on the size of your business, client needs, budget, and many more factors. Irrespective of the benefits of the resolution approach, it’s wise to do an intense initial analysis. The best approach need not always be at one of the trends; in-house or outsource, but it’s good to have a hybrid approach that suits them best for a solution to the content in hand.

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~ Ankush

AVHAD Writing Services, Pune