Recently, someone from a language translation services provider posted a good question in LinkedIn’s Documentation Managers group. As a language services provider, this person’s company is considering the addition of technical writing to their service offerings. The questions were “why do companies outsource technical writing, how frequently and to what extent?”

These are great questions, and I thought I’d re-post my thoughts here:

-The reasons why our clients choose to outsource technical writing are as varied as the companies themselves. In better economic times, it was often because thier internal resources simply did not have the capacity to meet the requirements. More recently, as internal staff levels have tapered off, we are seeing requests for assistance because the in-house resources that once were simply do not exist any longer.

Also, as [another commentor] pointed out, “technical writer” is a catch-all job title. All of our staff here would be more appropriately described as “content developers” as they have experience not only developing content for, say, product documentation but training curriculum and content for web applications as well. So there sometimes exists a disparity between what a potential customer thinks they need versus what they should be looking for. This subtle issue is one you should be aware of and one we deal with everyday. You may advertise that you are offering “technical writing” services, but your target customer may not equate their particular content development needs with technical writing necessarily because their subject matter happens to be training currciculum.

Some clients simply need an existing document edited to reflect some recent updates. Sometimes a file format conversion is required. Sometimes a person is needed on site to work with product teams to develop and deliver content. Sometimes clients hand over entire product documentation projects to be managed either on-site or remotely start to finish. Again, the reasons for and extent of outsourcing varies greatly.

-It has been our experience that larger companies having strong internal technical writing departments or resources, are often resistant to outsourcing, which makes sense and is to no one’s surprise. However, even these groups will often be receptive to learning more about how to manage their content more effectively. They may not want any help developing the content, but chances are they are drowning in a sea of it and may even be feeling pressure from the KM/ECM folks in their organization to do something about it. In this case, outsourcing the writing of their content probably isn’t going to be very attractive, but the services of a company or experienced technical writer may in fact be. Technical writers experienced with extensible content structure and delivery can still be a viable outsource option.

-A question that comes up frequently when discussing the outsourcing of technical writing is validation and verification of quality. This is especially relevant since the rise of lost-cost outsourcing across the globe. A low per-piece or per-hour rate can sound incredibly attractive to those considering outsourcing, but it must be evaluated to include the additional expenses of the contracting company’s project management and validation/verification time. The reality is that it is just not that simple as outsourcing to take advantage of a favorable exchange rate, there are real additional costs that have to be considered.

-More and more, and back to [another commentor's] point, it is simply not enough to offer pure content development work. While a valuable skill in and of itself, technical writers have found themselves having to respond to the needs of organizations that are shifting the focus to the management of their content. We have seen, over the last few years, more and more clients looking to us for assistance with the structure and management of their content, not just the development of the content. It seems it’s simply not enough to be able to develop content, it pays to know a thing or two about content management as well.

-Your position as a language services provider is probably a good one. We currently partner with a couple of similar service providers and those relationships have proven to be worthwhile.

For the complete discussion, here’s the link. (Though you may have to register for the group if you have not already.)