Documentation has transformed from a static afterthought into a living, breathing organism that requires constant attention throughout the digital economy. Software products evolve at breakneck speeds, and users span every time zone, making the traditional model of housing technical writers in a single office, working standard business hours, quietly obsolete like the printed manual.
BruntWork, a talent outsourcing company specializing in connecting businesses with overseas professionals, has set itself at the forefront of this shift by creating distributed technical writing teams that operate across multiple continents, providing clients with documentation support that never sleeps.
The Documentation Revolution
Technical documentation has undergone changes in recent years. What was once a department tucked away in a corner of corporate headquarters has changed into a distributed network of specialists working in concert across time zones.
This transformation is not merely about cost savings, though that remains a compelling benefit, but about fundamentally reimagining how documentation gets created, updated, and maintained in a global economy.
Winston Ong, CEO at BruntWork, emphasizes, “Outsourcing technical writing allows businesses to use specialized skills to their advantage, ensuring their documentation is accurate, compelling, and user-friendly.”
Companies with distributed documentation teams often report faster update times for critical documentation and higher user satisfaction scores compared to those using traditional in-house models.
For software companies in particular, where documentation quality directly impacts adoption rates, these figures represent a competitive advantage that cannot be ignored.
The Follow-the-Sun Workflow
BruntWork’s global technical writing teams implement the follow-the-sun workflow, creating an immediate advantage. Rather than confining documentation updates to business hours in a single time zone, work passes seamlessly between team members in the Philippines, Colombia, and Eastern Europe as each region begins its workday.
This continuous workflow creates several distinct advantages. First, critical documentation updates can be implemented overnight from the client’s perspective, ensuring that users never encounter outdated information for extended periods.
Second, the model allows for specialized expertise to be applied at each stage of the documentation process, where research and interviews might happen during American business hours, drafting in Asia-Pacific time zones, and final editing in Europe.
For companies releasing software updates on tight schedules, this approach has proven transformative, significantly reducing documentation lag, or the time between feature release and updated documentation.
Cultural Diversity as a Documentation Strength
The geographic distribution of technical writing teams is a strength when it comes to documentation quality, perhaps counterintuitively. Technical writers from different cultural backgrounds bring varied perspectives on how information should be presented, helping companies create documentation that resonates with global audiences.
This diversity extends beyond cultural considerations to include varied technical backgrounds. BruntWork’s distributed teams often include writers with specialized expertise in different areas, API documentation specialists in one region, UX writing experts in another, and compliance documentation specialists in a third.
This specialization allows access to a range of expertise that would not typically be available in a single location.
The Economic Equation
The financial case for distributed technical documentation teams remains compelling, though the value proposition has evolved beyond simple labor arbitrage. While cost savings compared to US-based technical writing teams are typical (BruntWork offers rates of $4-8/hour for Filipino virtual assistants), companies cite other economic benefits as equally important.
One such advantage is the ability to scale documentation efforts rapidly in response to business needs. When a company needs to document a major new feature or product, BruntWork can quickly expand the dedicated technical writing team without the delays associated with traditional hiring processes. Conversely, during quieter periods, resources can be reallocated to other projects, creating a level of flexibility impossible with full-time, in-house staff.
This elasticity proves particularly valuable for businesses with seasonal or cyclical documentation needs. Companies with variable documentation requirements may find maintaining a full-time technical writing team inefficient, while outsourcing offers the flexibility to handle fluctuating workloads effectively.
Technical writing outsourcing has changed from a cost-cutting measure to a strategic advantage that allows companies to maintain higher-quality documentation across more products than would be feasible with traditional teams.
