Product Manuals - Who's Making Yours?

Does this scenario sound familiar? Marketing has customers lined up to take the first shipments, engineering says they’re almost finished tweaking the final design and manufacturing is now starting to run prototypes through its process.

Business as usual: customers are waiting and everyone is scrambling to get a working, reliable product out the door. There are hurdles galore to overcome, including electromagnetic compatibility testing, regulatory approvals, development of in-house test programs and export clearances.

Through this organized chaos, some key activities get pushed to the bottom of the heap. Chances are, one of these is the production of manuals. In most cases, this function should largely fall upon the shoulders of the product designers. After all, they, better than anyone, should be able to describe how to install it, use it, maintain it and fix it. But wait! These are the people who are under the gun to get the product on the shipping dock. How are they going to find the time to write, illustrate and format a set of manuals?

There are three approaches that can be taken to get the technical documentation delivered with the product:

1.       Designate an employee or hire someone to be an in-house technical writer. For this to work, the individual has to be dedicated to the task, and be able to talk to and understand engineers. Usually, they have a technical background themselves as well as prior technical writing experience.

2.       Bring in an experienced contract technical writer either directly or through an agency.  This individual works on-site, and for all intents and purposes is a temporary employee. There is an understanding that the individual is being hired for a defined period of time and works from a company-supplied space using company equipment. Agencies typically pay the individual an hourly rate plus benefits, then invoice the company at marked-up hourly rates.

3.       Subcontract a technical writing firm that will work on-site as needed to gather information, but will typically work off-site to produce the finished manuals. They may have several people, such as writers and illustrators that they can parse work out to as needed to ensure it is completed on time.  Hourly rates with a ceiling on total cost or fixed project milestone costs are negotiated before work commences.

Which works best? It all depends on your company’s circumstances.  Larger organizations can afford to hire full-time writers, knowing that if circumstances change, severance costs can be covered. Similarly, they may not be deterred by high hourly rates that agencies charge, given the convenience of having someone else take care of administering benefits and payroll deductions. For medium and small companies, using a technical writing firm may be a better solution, because there is no commitment to continue using them if circumstances change. Nor is there a requirement to provide them with on-site office space or equipment, or pay benefits.

Delivery of technical manuals is often written into purchase contracts, or is a legal requirement due to safety information that they contain. As much as they seem to be a roadblock to getting a product to market, they must be addressed seriously. Don’t leave the planning or implementation of manual writing tasks until the design is complete. That’s too late! Even if the design is fluid, manuals can be “revved up” as needed and re-issued.

Plan to have resources available to work with the writer throughout the process. Bolster your resources if necessary to make that happen. People have a way of getting too busy when the crunch hits, forcing the writer to stop work. The last thing you want to have is product that can’t ship because the manuals aren’t ready.