Clear, trusted and AI-ready
Good technical writing creates clear information about complex products, machinery, software and processes. It delivers significant value because it adds to the customer experience, reduces risks, and supports digital transformation. At 3di, our technical writing services focus on four key pillars of good technical writing:
Useful
Easy to find
Easy to understand
Easy to maintain
What you need
Our customers tell us that 3di technical writing services help them:
- free-up engineering, product and support team time
- align the manuals or content with product and project lifecycles
- publish smarter manuals that better reflect their brands
- provide manuals that are clear, consistent and useful
- ensure the manuals are compliant with industry regulations
- ensure the manuals are efficient to author, review, publish, translate and maintain
- reflect the modularity of their products in the way the manuals are designed and built
- make the manuals a more flexible, integrated part of the product
- build a trusted source of truth about their products, that’s AI-ready
Our technical writing services
Find out more about our technical writing services
Award-winning technical writing services
At 3di, we’ve been providing award-winning technical writing services since 2002. So, as an award-winning technical writing company, we can help you clearly communicate with your customers, employees and partner organisations about your complex product and how your organisation works. Our in-house team of professional technical writers has experience in many industries and has received numerous accolades at the UK Technical Communication awards (run by the ISTC) for creating information portals, writing API documentation, creating technical illustration, and providing fully outsourced technical writing services.
Find out more about our services and who we work with below:
“A very impressive entry; clear and logical; well thought out and implemented. Road maps and detailed plans show how much care and consistent work have been applied.”
UKTC judges panel
“A good quality entry. Various types of software have been used to produce this entry yet the final result is seamless. It is a good quality product.”
UKTC judging panel
“(3di) are always there to provide help and advice, ironing out the inevitable beginner’s mistakes and streamlining our output to the advantage of both parties.”
Martin Wells, Technical Author at Timberwolf
““3di has the know-how, the relevant experience and the project managers to deliver our projects and adhere to our high standards.”
Josef Nosbuesch, Head of Documentation Management, Roche Diagnostics
“I was very happy with the result. The work was done quickly and professionally, and it was delivered in a format that allowed us to easily edit it when it required updating.”
Steve Moran, Financial Director, RPS
Expertise in many industries
We have experience in your industry
The individual 3di authors and translators who work on your content will understand your world, your audience and your priorities. Our customers are typically in one of the following industries:
- High-tech equipment
- Software development
- Medical devices
- Telecoms
- Fintech
- Robotics & automation
- Consumer electronics
- Industrial machinery
How we work with you
With our 20+ years of expertise, we have honed our technical authoring processes. We make it as simple as possible for you – no matter how complex your product or how tight your deadline is. Here’s an overview of our process:
Initial request
We understand what you want to achieve, recommend the way forward and provide an outline budget to get started.
Scoping
You share more details about your priority product and what you need to communicate. Our team creates a plan and detailed budget for you to review.
Authoring
We begin authoring the content and building your technical content, automating when we can. You provide some input and feedback on early prototypes, alongside our own QA processes.
Delivery
We complete your content and fine-tune the final formats for publishing. You confirm you are happy with your technical content, and then we make it ready to use.
Six reasons to work with us
1. We focus, so you can focus
Outsourcing to us allows your best people to remain focused on your core business, where their time is much better spent working on your products and with your customers. Technical writing is what we do every day, so we have lots of experience. We have the people, tools and processes ready to adapt and deploy for you. We already know how to turn your technical product content into a clear, trusted source of truth that’s AI-ready.
2. We’re quick, and accountable
Whether you need to meet a product launch or compliance deadline, or simply want to make it easier to deliver the right content with velocity, 3di has honed our services to support your goals. We typically start projects within 1-2 weeks of your decision, and commit to milestones, deadlines and a fixed budget. We have the flexibility to add and reduce resources to reflect your business needs, and we only invoice for services delivered to your satisfaction.
3. We deliver compliance, when it matters
If product compliance matters to you, then it matters to us. We have tools, templates and workflows that enable the quality assurance you’ll need, and we know how to adapt them to reflect your priorities. We’ll combine our experience across highly regulated industries with your detailed knowledge of your products to create documents and content that help, and protect both you and your customers.
Find out more about our technical writing services
4. Confidence that your information will work
Information design has underpinned the 3di approach to technical writing for over 20 years. Within our niche field, best practices have emerged over the years and 3di has become an expert at knowing how to combine and deploy these for our customers. We know, and have ready to adapt and deploy, the combinations of modular text, graphics, ilustrations, video, structures, navigation, metadata and layouts that will meet specific information needs, no matter what the context.
5. Documents that drive revenue
Your technical product documentation can be a powerful contributor to your content marketing and customer experience strategies. 3di turns documents you’re publishing because you have to, into documents that drive revenue, loyalty, brand reinforcement, and customer experience reputation. As a bonus, those same documents will reduce your own wasted time and effort, reduce your onboarding and support costs, and ensure you’re more AI-ready.
6. We can prove it
Our design expertise will ensure that we focus on creating the information you really need. After we publish your content, we use a range of techniques to check how it is being used. The more we understand about the impact of the content, the easier it will be to deliver the returns on investment you expect. As a result, our technical writers will be able to focus on the content that matters, and recommend what’s worth writing, translating and publishing.
FAQ’s
Who will work on my projects?
The individual 3di authors and translators who work on your content will understand your world, your audience and your priorities. Our diverse projects have more in common than they do differences. No matter what industry we work in, or what language we speak, as writers and readers, we all behave in very similar ways. For example, designing an award-winning knowledge base for our Saas customer has to consider very similar issues to designing award-winning API documentation for Unzer. As part of starting to work together, we’ll recommend a combination of specific individuals from our own in-house team, or our network of freelancers. The range of roles we have includes:
- Technical writers – each with a technical background, and trained to work consistently but flexibly as part of 3di services.
- Localization Engineers – for when your content will need translating, ensuring your multilingual content is managed efficiently.
- Technical Illustrators – our technical illustrators have the expertise to create all the illustrations, graphics, and screen grabs your project needs
- Content tool developers – our tool developers make sure our team get the most from leading content creation tools, as well as our own in-house tools.
- Service Managers – our team of service managers are experienced at managing our multi-disciplined teams, and will keep your project on track.
- Freelancers – we have an extensive network of freelancers that we use to supplement our in-house teams and provide specific industry expertise when needed.
Visit the about us page to find out more about our staff and what they do at 3di.
What tools do you use to create my documentation?
We’ll use the tools that are best to deliver the technical content that you need. We also combine industry-leading content tools with our own in-house AI-powered tools to help our team deliver work more efficiently. The tools we use include, but are not limited to:
- MadCap Flare
- Framemaker
- Markdown
- VS Code
- XTM Cloud
- Git
- DITA
- Jira
- Confluence
- Azure
- Sharepoint
- WordPress
- Snagit
- Illustrator
- Inkscape
- Acrobat
- Excel
- Word
Visit our technology page to find out more about the tools we use and how we combine them with our bespoke in-house technology.
Can you work with my in-house technical writing staff?
We are quite happy to work as an extension of your internal writing team. We can provide consultancy on overhauling your tools and processes, manage one-off projects that require outside expertise, or simply add some extra authoring capacity if you are particularly busy. We can seamlessly integrate with your existing team and flex our services as you have peaks and troughs in demand.
We’ve been working with companies around the world for over two decades, and can easily adapt to your organisation’s style, preferences and preferred tools. We also have experience in a variety of industries, and no subject matter is too niche or complex for our team. We can bring our tools, knowledge, industry expertise, and multi-disciplinary team to act as your external writing team, and give you access to extra resources and expertise when you need them.
Visit our project delivery page to find out more about how we work with your in-house teams.
Do you have the expertise to handle industry-specific technical writing projects?
In short, yes. The slightly longer answer is, our in-house technical writing team have experience in a variety of industries – we’ve handled all manner of projects, including documentation for autonomous robots and automated warehouses, product guides for marine electronic manufacturers, information portals for multi-national telecoms companies, API and developer documentation for software developers – we’ve even made documentation for very expensive and bespoke pens.
Any gaps in our knowledge can be filled by our extensive network of freelancers, who supplement our in-house technical writing team. We typically have long-standing relationships with our freelancers, some of whom have become members of our in-house team, and some of whom have been working with us since we started back in 2002.
Visit our industries page to find out more about our expertise and the industries we operate in.
Where is 3di’s technical writing team located?
Our in-house team of authors are split between our four offices, located in Woking and Edinburgh in the UK, Krakow in Poland, and Guadalajara in Mexico. The location of our offices means we can align with our customers’ time zones in the UK, the US and Europe. We’re normally delivering our services remotely, but we can work on-site with you if need be.
How do you ensure the quality of your services?
3di is BSI audited to ISO9001:2015 standards and a member of the ISTC (the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators). 3di has also won numerous awards for a variety of projects, which you can read about on our awards and accreditations page.
So delivering quality to meet customer expectations has been a habit for over 20 years. We combine industry best practices with our own expertise, tools and workflows to make sure that what you receive from us meets your expectations.
Each customer’s idea of quality can be quite different, but we take it as a good sign that nearly every customer works with us on multiple projects or over many years.
How much does an outsourced service cost?
Every project has different requirements, tooling, and authoring time. After discussing your project with you, we can provide you with accurate pricing figures. However, we are on average 20% cheaper than hiring an in-house technical writer. We also have the added advantage that we can flex to peaks and troughs in your demand. By using our services, you have access to our in-house expertise in the form of technical writers, content tools developers, project managers, and localization engineers, rather than a single technical writer.
Case studies
Kannegiesser – end-to-end content operations consultancy and implementation
Find out how 3di created modular content, including localized versions, for a groundbreaking laundry system.
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