Tuesday, May 22, 2007. The Financial Express A billion dollar baby on paper: Technical documentation is a huge business opportunity waiting to be grabbed.
Making a travel reservation was never any fun till the Internet entered the act. Even first-timers soon discover that it is safe, simple and convenient. The software holds you by your hand and takes you through the screens. It answers your questions, and in case you forget to key in something, it gently pops a reminder. Your appreciative nod for the ticket that emerges from your printer is a tribute to the nameless tech writer who designed the help menu. It is his exacting proficiency at technical documentation and stringent usability tests that made it all possible.
Technical documentation connects the use of complex technologies, products and processes with the people who use them. With increased use of hi-tech products and services, demand is raging for user guides, technical reports, maintenance procedures, assembly instructions, project proposals and manuals that are accurate, intelligible and easy to use. It is one of the differentiators in service quality. As marketing guru Philip Kotler emphasises, “Ease of installation becomes a true selling point, especially when the target market is technology novices who are notoriously intolerant of on-screen messages such as ‘Disk Error 23’” Which is why he says companies like Compaq, instead of providing an instruction book filled with gobbledygook, used to offer a poster that clearly illustrates the 10 installation steps.
Nor is it just about software. There is demand in areas as diverse as chemistry, aerospace, robotics, finance, consumer electronics and biotechnology. Technical documentation is thus an emerging knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) sub-sector that offers immense business potential. And India is perfectly placed to tap it.
The country, however, needs to overcome two basic constraints. The first hiccup is lack of awareness. In many ways, the technical documentation industry today is like what sub-sectors like software testing went through in the late 1990s. Apart from low awareness, there is lack of scale and challenges of delivery. Most of the large documentation teams are captive, and most work is handled in-house. The fact that a substantial part of the technical documentation gets embedded in the software revenue figures has also contributed to the lack of visibility for this sector. But a few crunched numbers put the issue in perspective. Estimates place the number of technical authors across India in the range of 3,500-4,500. This would mean that the total value of technical documentation developed in India at around $70-$100 million. The market potential is estimated to be up to 2.5% of the software developed in India. Over a five-year window, the demand potential would be in excess of $1 billion. For this, there should be at least a few large players grossing turnover of $70-100 million. There are no such players in sight at present
The trouble is, technical documentation suffers the Cinderella Syndrome. It continues to be taken lightly. That good documentation can bring down support costs is not always recognised. Marketing literature lists three typical worries of new customers—failure frequency, downtime duration and costs of maintenance and repair. All can be addressed by good documentation.
That brings us to the second basic constraint—supply of well-trained documentation specialists. In most developed countries, the education system delivers technical writers. Here, the scene is yet to wake up to the promise.
The challenge is to replicate the perception shift that the Indian IT industry has seen in the last decade—from a fragmented, low-cost, body-shopping destination to an acknowledged IT power-house known for its technical expertise. India has almost everything it takes. All it needs is the effort. The rest will be history—-documented history, too.
—The author is the founder and managing director of Amatra Consulting, and director, business development, of The Writers Block. These are his personal views
