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.
