Technical documentation refers to a variety of documentation types utilized by businesses for the benefit of employees, owners, and customers. It isn’t only for highly technical industries like pharmaceutical, financial, or IT companies but is also highly useful and even necessary for such businesses as real estate brokerages, restaurants, construction companies, and so on. This type of documentation includes training materials, standard operating procedures, user manuals, procedural documentation, and a myriad of other documents typically used to help optimize a business’s operation and to help the customer. If you want the documentation done right, it is best to hire business documentation writers!
For instance, say you run a business and have had issues with onboarding new employees. This would evidently lead to poorly trained staff, low productivity, and complaints from customers. However, with adequate written training materials, you can make it easier for new employees to learn the ropes and catch on with the rhythm of your business more effectively. Taking the effort to ensure that your employees have the right training materials boosts employee knowledge and productivity, leading to overall customer satisfaction.
Business documentation writers are a common resource used to create a company’s technical documentation because of their experience in producing a wide range of documentation. For one, their experience means that they work faster than say an in-house employee. Additionally, it can be time-consuming to have an in-house employee take time away from their normal tasks to produce this documentation, so it usually makes more sense to have an outside writer do this work.
What are the Benefits of Technical Documentation?
Technical documentation has a long list of benefits from improving workplace safety to streamlining business operations. As mentioned above, written training materials help improve productivity and customer satisfaction. Then there’s procedural documentation which outlines the roles and responsibilities expected of employees. When dealing with any business, it is highly important that all employees know what their specific roles are and how to execute them, especially where employee safety is concerned. Product documentation helps customers know exactly how to use your products and when it comes to such products as medical devices, it can help customers avoid any dangerous use of a product.
When it comes to companies in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, medical, or scientific industries, there is the added concern of assuring that these companies are following government regulations that apply to their businesses. Technical documentation helps these companies follow regulations by outlining them in safety procedure documentation, regulatory compliance documentation, SOPs, etc. In manufacturing companies, employees are often in contact with heavy and dangerous machinery. They must be given the materials necessary to ensure that they are following the correct safety procedures as required by such governmental bodies as OSHA. If employees do not have the proper technical documentation that helps them understand how to safely carry out their tasks, then they could potentially harm themselves and bring Osha’s attention to the company.
Evidently, technical documentation can help businesses in a range of different aspects of their business, everything from building the plans for creating a product to the use of the said product by the customer.
Getting Documentation Done by Business Documentation Writers vs In-House Employees
It’s not always beneficial to have an in-house employee produce technical documentation depending on your documentation needs. For instance, if your company is developing an app and you need a product requirements document, you might think it’s best for the app developer to write up this documentation. However, while they are highly technically knowledgeable, they might have some trouble producing writing that is accessible to everyone on the team. While they know technical jargon, someone on the marketing team might not, creating unnecessary confusion when marketing comes into play.
Business technical writers are hired for the sole purpose of creating documentation for a company and so they will devote their time solely to producing this documentation. Having an in-house employee take time to write the technical documentation may not be the best choice considering that they may have other tasks to complete as well. They won’t be able to dedicate as much time or attention to a documentation project as a technical documentation writer can.
Hiring business documentation writers provides the added benefit of bringing in fresh perspectives. In a situation in which a company is bringing a new product to market, a developer may know the ins and outs of the product but in producing technical documentation geared towards the customer they might get a bit too in-depth and lose the interest of the customer. In this regard, an outsider, like a technical documentation writer, can help provide the customer’s perspective and produce documentation that takes into account what the user wants to know and in language that is easily digestible.
When it comes to expenses, it is actually more cost effective to hire a technical documentation writer. For one, an in-house employee is being paid to do a certain task, usually not involving technical documentation. So, in using an in-house employee to write up documentation, they are not focusing on what they are actually being paid to do. Additionally, technical documentation writers produce technical documentation for a living and so it goes without saying that they are quite efficient and know how to complete a wide variety of documentation types. It would take a documentation writer a fraction of the time it would take an in-house employee who may never have written up technical documentation before.
How EDC Can Help with Business Documentation
EDC’s business documentation writers have decades of experience producing documentation for software companies, e-learning companies, manufacturing companies, and a number of other industries. With their years of experience, our writers have produced training materials, procedural documentation, product documentation, and end-user documentation. Their experience makes them adept at producing quality documentation and can do so efficiently. Our documentation writers also have experience in producing both technical and non-technical documentation that is easy to understand by any audience.
Whether you need a team of consultants to produce a complete line of documentation or a single technical writer for a brief project, Essential Data’s Engagement Manager will lead the project from start to finish. At Essential Data Corporation, the quality of our work is guaranteed. Contact us today to get started. (800) 221-0093 or sales@edc.us
Written by Diana Guerra