Finding a contractor for technical documentation: Who is right for you?

The quality of technical documentation plays a role in customer satisfaction with a product that should not be underestimated. It is therefore important to find a partner for the creation of technical documentation who has the necessary expertise and commitment to convey the required content clearly and comprehensibly. But the processes and the human touch must also match for successful cooperation.

Your service provider should:

have a great deal of specialist knowledge and experience in creating technical documentation
have the ability to familiarize themselves with your domain and understand your customers (however, they do not need to have mastered the subject matter yet; in fact, it is an advantage to go through a similar learning curve as the users of the product when creating the documentation)
respond flexibly to your wishes, but without talking down to you
not want to sell you a solution that is too big, but the solution that comes closest to the economic optimum
not deliberately underestimate the expected costs and also keep an eye on the later costs of maintaining and possibly translating the documentation, because in the long run these costs are almost always larger than the costs of the initial creation

By the way: You can trust a service provider for technical documentation to do a lot. They are specialists in their field and are used to familiarizing themselves quickly and accurately with even very specific topics. See also: Outsourcing technical documentation: Does it work?.

Agency or freelancer: Who is right for your documentation project?

In the technical documentation service provider sector, there are a few providers with a company size of over 100 employees, various smaller agencies, and numerous freelance technical writers.

The largest service providers for technical documentation are almost all also providers of engineering services or software development in general. The creation of technical documentation is only part of their portfolio. These providers often primarily take on the documentation of products and projects in whose development they are also involved. Such providers are particularly interesting when precisely this combination of engineering and documentation is required.
Various smaller agencies have specialized exclusively in the creation of technical documentation or combine the fields of risk analysis, CE marking, and technical documentation. Many concentrate on mechanical and plant engineering, while some also focus on special sectors such as the aviation industry, the military sector, or medical technology. Such an agency offers the advantage of being able to work with several writers on a documentation at the same time for larger projects. However, due to the changing distribution of tasks and possible fluctuation, there is no guarantee that the same individual employees will be able to maintain the documentation for your product in the long term. You are generally well advised to use such an agency if you want to have an internal documentation department flexibly supported by several external people.
Some agencies also offer technical writers as temporary staff. This can be an option worth considering, especially if you want to integrate the people on site into your internal work processes as firmly as possible or if the work is primarily to be done on call.
In addition, there are various project agencies that look for freelancers for you, but charge a considerable proportion of the fee. Formally, the technical writers placed in this way work independently for the project agency, but often only have this one client for long periods of time and are therefore sometimes on the verge of bogus self-employment. Editors placed in this way are often de facto expected to work on site or according to a certain schedule, similar to a temporary worker. Similar to temporary employment agencies, this model is therefore primarily suitable if you want to retain extensive control over the individual work steps and do not really want to delegate them completely. A weakness of many of these project agencies is that they are primarily specialized in the placement of software developers and have little experience with technical documentation. This makes it difficult for them to assess the requirements of a documentation project and the technical expertise of a technical writer.
Finally, there are also freelance technical writers who you can commission directly. This is often the most flexible and cost-effective option and creates a direct, unbureaucratic and personal contact. This model is equally suitable for short projects (such as single consulting days or training courses) and if you are looking for a long-term partnership with the same person over many years.

Where can you find a service provider to create technical documentation?

As the technical documentation sector is rather small, there are not many ways to find a suitable service provider for the creation of technical documentation apart from a personal recommendation or a general search on the Internet.

A good way to start your search also is via one of the relevant professional organizations. In the German-speaking world, this is tekom, the Association for Technical Communication. On the tekom website you will find, among other things, a database of technical documentation service providers. In addition, tekom organizes a large annual conference every year with several thousand visitors, numerous specialist presentations and an associated trade fair. Many of the speakers work for service providers or are self-employed in the field of technical documentation. In any case, you will find very competent contacts here, as the presentations are always subject to strict quality control. Some larger service providers also have their own booth at the trade fair as exhibitors. However, almost all of these providers also sell authoring systems and other software in the field of technical documentation, so they are not completely unbiased when it comes to providing advice.

There are similar associations in other countries, such as the STC (mainly US and countries without their own association), the ISTC (United Kingdom), the JTCA (Japan), and various others. You can find a list under Organizations with a clear focus on technical communication.

How do you identify a good service provider for technical documentation?

If you are not active in the field of technical documentation yourself, it is not easy to correctly assess the competence of a documentation services provider or technical writer. Even though technical documentation is a form of communication, not all capable technical writers are communicatively skilled self-promoters.

Today, technical documentation is a separate course of study in the German-speaking world, which is taught at various universities. The highest formal qualification is therefore a degree in one of these courses. In addition, there are some in-service training courses. However, most of the relevant courses have not existed for very long, so there are many experienced technical writers who previously had to grow into the profession in other ways. Most of these writers have a technical professional background (engineers, programmers) or come from the linguistic domain (linguists, translators).

Indications of a good aptitude and special commitment can be, for example professional experience (past projects, tasks, industries), publications in specialist media as well as presentations at conferences, involvement in specialist committees of associations, recommendations from colleagues, and – not to be underestimated – your own personal, subjective impression.

Tip: Ask service providers what they value in a project and which projects they have already worked on in the past. You will then quickly realize whether the person in question is competent and a good fit for you. It is always a very good sign if the service provider asks you a lot of questions themselves before submitting an initial solution proposal. Then there is a good chance that – just as they try to understand you and your concerns precisely – they will also try to understand your customers' knowledge requirements precisely. They will then also find a solution for your documentation that suits you and your customers rather than themselves.

What information does a technical documentation service provider need from you?

If you ask a service provider to create or revise technical documentation, they will generally need the following information in order to make a sound assessment of your project and suggest the best possible approach:

Brief info on the product to be described. Ideally with a few photos/drawings/screenshots.
Brief information about the target group of the product in general and the target group of the documents to be created in particular.
If available, an existing previous version of the documentation (at least a few excerpts or screenshots, even if things are to be very different in the future).
Which documents should be newly created or revised?
When should the documentation to be created be ready?
Should the documentation be created using a specific authoring system?
Should the documentation be created according to a specific structure (for example, DocBook, DITA, S1000D)?
Does the documentation to be created also need to be translated? If so, into which languages?
What is the approximate size of the documentation to be created? (A spontaneous estimate of pages will do. It is just to get an idea.)

Which points are important in the offer of a service provider for technical documentation?

The most obvious points in a quote for creating technical documentation are certainly

Description of the goal: Is it clearly defined what is to be created and to which target group are the documents are to be aimed?
Scope of services: What do you have to provide yourself and what tasks will the service provider take on?
Costs and payment terms: Hourly rate or fixed price (a fixed price is only recommended in exceptional cases). Is the work involved realistically estimated or is it a "whitewash"? Will interim invoices be issued (payments on account)?
Schedule: Is the schedule realistic and does it match your own schedule? Can you also keep to the schedule? Can you provide the necessary information and the product status required to create the documentation, including any data, at the scheduled times?

Please also note the following less obvious points that a good offer should answer:

Especially for larger service providers: Which employees will specifically be working for you? What qualifications do these people have? Will the same people be available to you in the long term for subsequent updates to the documentation? Or will other employees have to familiarize themselves with the subject matter again?
Which authoring system does the documentation service provider work with? Who bears the license costs for this authoring system? In the case of online documentation, are there any additional hosting fees for you? Can you and do you want to use the same authoring system in case you want to update the documentation yourself in the future?
Can the documentation be translated into foreign languages if required? What is the translation process like? Can the source data be translated or only the documents generated from the source data (which can mean considerably higher translation costs)? If necessary, are "exotic" languages with different scripts and a different direction of writing also supported? Or are translations not an issue for you? Really not? Not even in 5 years? Are you sure?
After the project is completed or ends prematurely: Do you receive not only the documents created, but also their entire source data, as it is available in the authoring system? Note that this source data often contains very valuable metadata in addition to the visible content such as text, images, videos, etc. An evasive statement that "everything can be exported to Word and then re-imported into another system" almost certainly indicates that precisely this metadata will be lost when the system is changed.
What rights do you acquire to the content and data created? Are you allowed to publish the content in any form, in any media and in any number of copies? Are you allowed to sell it on if required? May you edit it and also publish and resell it in a modified form? May you translate it and also publish and resell translated versions? Do you have to give credit to the original author and if so, where, in what form, and for how long? Are there any hidden additional license fees?

Ultimately, your personal “gut feeling” is also important when choosing the right service provider for the creation of technical documentation. After all, you need to work together in a trusting, enjoyable and, ideally, long-term relationship.

Tip: Start small

In practice, you don't have to take full risk immediately with a large order. It is best to start your collaboration with the documentation service provider gradually and with an exit option as a "plan B" in case things do not turn out as you had hoped. The following options are particularly suitable for this, and you can even combine them:

Workshop to assess the current situation and first proposal for a solution: Typically one day (6 to 8 hours) is the right time frame for this step. If, contrary to expectations, you are not convinced by the provider's expertise or the service provider realizes that their skills do not sufficiently match your requirements, you can end the collaboration painlessly just by not continuing. After all, you will then have at least an external assessment of your project and some initial approaches to solutions.
Concept: In the vast majority of cases, it saves a lot of work and leads to significantly better results if you do not simply start a documentation project "in the blue", but instead begin with a series of systematic preliminary considerations. The result is then a concept for the solution (kept as concise as possible), maybe already with an initial draft structure. The time required for this step varies from a few hours to several weeks, depending on the scope and complexity of the project. If, contrary to expectations, you are not satisfied with the collaboration, at the end of this step you will at least have a solid basis on which you or another documentation service provider can build further.
Prototype: Technical documentation often consists of several components. In such a case, you can first only commission the creation of a single document. A shorter document is ideal for this, as it also requires comparatively little technical training for the author. If, contrary to expectations, you are not satisfied with the result, you can terminate the collaboration once this document has been completed.

If you also combine these options with hourly billing of services (service contract instead of contract for work), your risk as the client is minimal.