Monday, August 13, 2007. Global Services MediaOutsourcing Technical Documents
In an article published in Global Services Media – a concern of CyberMedia on the outsourcing industry – Nishat Paiker writes on how ‘Outsourcing Technical Documentation’ has picked up as a trend, but with its share of issues like success rates and on-time delivery. The article extensively quotes Rakesh Shukla, Founder CEO of TWB, for his industry perspetive. This perspective comes from TWB’s experience in deliveries for customers across the world and in diverse areas such as computer hardware and software, finance, biotechnology, and life sciences.
Outsourcing technical documentation has picked up as a trend, but with its share of issues like success rates and on-time delivery
Nishat Paiker
With technology is born a technical document that is expected to be the blueprint of that technology — a document that would tell you the nitty-gritties of using and implementing the technology. These documents range from user manuals, quick start guides, case studies and white papers to online help files, and contain specialized information on diverse areas such as computer hardware and software, finance, biotechnology, and life sciences.
Writing such documents calls for engaging experts who can understand the technology and translate it in steps without missing the necessary elements. This also calls for a number of companies to outsource development of technical documents to technical writers who excel in this area. This not only gives the customer more time to work on their core competencies, but also allows for more comprehensive documentation by experts. In India alone, the number of technical writers is estimated to be around 4,000 who generate total documentation worth about $100 million. The market is slated to grow rapidly with technology being the backbone of almost every industry today.
But this booming practice is not free from its share of issues like success rates, quality, on-time delivery and rising costs. Customers often report problems with providers for not meeting their requirements, either in terms of quality or on-time delivery.
Benefits
A good documentation can help reduce product development cost to a customer company. Post-sales costs in the form of count complaints and returns, support calls, training and litigation are also reduced. According to a recently released White Paper by The Writers Block (TWB), depending on the product and company, these call costs can become quite impressive. In 1997, Microsoft put the cost of a single phone call to a help desk at $20 (TechScribe, 2003)!
A service provider spends nearly 20 percent of its costs in creating, storing and managing information while a good documentation minimizes the spend by almost 7 percent to 10 percent and aids in creating better information management systems, says TWB report.
A good documentation means fewer client support calls and lower support costs. This is one primary benefits one can derive from outsourcing technical document writing.
Hurdles
All said and done, outsourcing technical documentation does not free a customer from all hurdles. Consider this scenario. A customer hires a service provider and a contract is signed between the two. There is a certain quality assured as also on-time delivery, and of course with other formalities like cost and charges which are agreed upon at the time a deal is signed. But at the time of delivery, what if the documents are not ready to go to the market or lack on certain parameters?
Not only too little detail, but also too much or wrong details are also harmful to the health of a technical documents. “We outsource for error-free documentation of international standards and quality, which requires experienced professionals to write. But we have had experiences where vendors, contrary to what they promise, got the work done by freshers in the field. This obviously resulted in bad documentation that lacked quality that we look for,” complains Sampath Kumar, Senior Manager, Technical Infrastructure, Accenture, while not revealing the name of the vendor.
Customers often complain about providers not sticking to the promises made at the time of contract. Tata Powers, which outsourced writing a technical document on quality management system, complains that the provider couldn’t completely meet their expectations. “We had an experience where the final technical document prepared by the vendor could only meet 65 percent of the expectations. Since, we could not extend the time period any further, we decided to rework on the document ourselves internally to get the desired results,” shares Sameer Walimbe, Head, Quality Systems-Strategic Electronics Division, Tata Powers.
“Also, at the time of final payments we found that the vendor had charged us for the quality check of the article saying they had to hire staff for the same. This we felt was not required because as a customer we are not concerned what the vendor does internally for quality check of the technical document prepared by them. These are a few problems that come up while outsourcing,” he adds.
Avoiding Pitfalls
Finding the right partner to outsource creating technical documents is critical in order to avoid any problems that might arise later. “The vendor should be experienced and seasoned to deliver on time,” says Y.K. Nagaraju, Project Manager, Genisys, a U.K.-based company that outsourced creating technical documents for a process-automation product to Texas Instruments.
But in spite of thorough research before selecting a service provider, the presence of so many vendors who claim to be competent in technical documentation services makes it difficult to pick the right provider.
According to TWB, service providers’ experience, their clientele, number of projects and the subjects taken care of by them should be considered while zeroing in on the right provider. The profile of the companies under consideration and that of its board of directors along with financial stability of the company is also required. Customer should also have a clear view of the documentation procedures and polices followed by the provider.
The customer must itself have a clear understanding of the expected results, and not have false expectations. The benchmarks, customer requirements and expectations should always be discussed at the time of negotiation of the contract.
The technical documentation landscape has seen India emerge as an important destination for outsourcing in the past half a decade. A lot of providers have mushroomed across India that claim to deliver consistent and uniform quality at firm delivery dates.
“The $100 million to $150 million Indian technical documentation outsourcing industry is continuously growing and has an edge over countries like China because of its English speaking population and technically skilled manpower,” says Rakesh Shukla, Founder and CEO, TWB. “But problems do occur, which can be avoided if there is a proper methodology for the process and an understanding of the technology that exists behind it.”
