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The Outsourcing Solution

Outsourcing solutions are a popular and highly valued fact of business life. Last year more businesses than ever turned to outsourced solutions and the trend in this country to more outsourcing is growing exponentially.

The reason is simple: for many kinds of production it's more cost-effective to outsource than maintain a staff. It's simply about the bottom line.

Outsourcing is independent of location

Scenario can operate as a seamless extension of your company's resources no matter where your company is physically located. Scenario works anywhere. From our home base we have provided successfull outsource solutions for clients in California, including Los Angeles, Ventura, and Orange Counties, numerous Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay clients, as well as clients in Florida, New Mexico, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, and Georgia, as well as international clients in England, France, Germany, and Switzerland.

Outsourcing on-site or off?

When working as an extension of your company's resources, we work hard to make that extension as seamless as possible. We place writers on site for as long as is necessary to ensure knowledge transfer takes place in an orderly fashion. We interview your developers and subject matter experts on site. We participate in meetings and conduct reviews on site. And so on.

In other words, we are there when you need us and we don't leave until you are comfortable with the arrangement.

We've found that many of our clients at first considered only on site to be workable. But, after agreeing to try off site contracting, they have come very quickly to appreciate it. The reasons for this are several, but chief among them is the cost benefit.

How economical is outsourcing?

The numbers say it all. It may come as a surprise, but an in-house documentation department can cost you more than an outsource solution. At first glance, the in-house approach appears to be the more economical alternative—that is, until you take into account:

  1. Fully burdened costs
  2. Department staff utilization.

Fully burdened costs, which include salary, benefits and overhead, are at least two times, and can be as much as four times staff salary. They include the following expenses:

 • Salary • Unemployment insurance
 • Overtime • Health and dental insurance
 • Office space • Disability and life insurance
 • Equipment • Workmen's Comp
 • Heat and light • FICA
 • Vacations and holidays • Sick leave
 • Training • Stock options
 • Pension plans  

Outsourcing is a compelling alternative

For the sake of argument, let's look at some numbers:

With all things considered, a three-person documentation department could cost, on average, over $500,000 a year. Year in, year out, regardless of the amount of work accomplished.

If your documentation requirements vary from month to month, an in-house department can be in full frenzy one month and twiddling their thumbs the next. It can get prohibitively expensive.

By contrast, the outsourcing solution is a compelling alternative. You not only get an experienced, professional team delivering quality results, on-schedule and on-budget, you get it only when you need it.

Hidden benefits of outsourcing

There are other unseen but valuable benefits to a client who outsources to Scenario.

  1. When a writer or designer is working in his or her own environment, free from interruptions, on equipment and software that is completely familiar, production speed goes up.
  2. Working off site alongside experienced colleagues ready to help at any time means the quality of work improves. This is significant added value that is difficult, if not impossible to achieve when the writer or designer is always on site.
  3. Client personnel are not subjected to frequent interruptions by the worker simply because they're "just down the hall." Knowledge transfer takes place in an orderly, predictable fashion. For example, the writer comes in at predetermined times according to an agreed-upon schedule. If a developer isn't ready for a meeting, he can call and reschedule. Clients come to love this almost more than the obvious cost savings.

Telecommuting is a fact of business life

Telecommuting is a fact of business life, and as budgets shrink and the pressure to compete increases, its popularity is growing. The telephone, fax, and, above all, high-speed internet connections, secure private networking and online productivity and communication tools put Scenario elbow-to-elbow with your key stakeholders.

We can help

Contact us and let's talk more about how we can make outsourcing work for your project. You can also give us a heads-up by filling out and submitting the client project information form.