ResourcePad Blog

I recently read an interesting bit of news, here and it really just shows how far the Internet has come for the next generation. Basically, the link outlines the life of a 17 year old girl who started a multi-million dollar business (generated primarily through Google’s Adsense) by designing MySpace themes which became such a lucrative idea (the website gets 7 million hits/month and is ranked higher than websites like cbsnews.com, americanidol.com and even oprah.com) that former MySpace boss Brad Greenspan, offered to buy the site for a close to $2 billion…twice. Both times, he was turned down.

The website exists on the principle that it’s been created for teenagers by a teenager, and to this effect has been used as a marketing gimmick for promoting new music bands and vocal talent, via a video widget on the site.

This just shows how far we’ve come in a decade, from the failed dot-coms to the teenage entrepreneurs, from internet chat rooms to major social networking portals, from offshoring on a local and small scale to a worldwide phenomenon.

I’ve been reading up on a few forums, and have come across this question several times: why should I outsource? ResourcePad already has a set of articles written by no doubt, many professionals who have had experience in the field, negative or positive, but to sum it up: it saves you time and money. Of course, this isn’t always the case, but there’s a 70% chance that you’ll benefit. Before you decide to outsource, realizing just what you’re going to do is important, since there’s nothing more frustrating for vendors than a client who isn’t sure of his/her requirements.

AT Kearney sees the future of IT in outsourcing, and with politicians touting globalization the world over, it won’t be unsurprising. Especially taken into account the growing importance of social networking sites and virtual worlds — it makes managing projects with people in different countries that much simpler — something like an effective project management tool and alarm system all rolled up in one. With the introduction of Linked In, and other job networking sites, the chances of finding a reliable outsource provider is no longer the daunting task it was before. With websites like Elance, Guru, oDesk, etc., things are only going to get easier with time.

So if you’re asking why you should outsource, let me ask you why you shouldn’t?

AT Kearney, the independent research firm recently brought up a study conducted with 50 companies who outsource their business or IT processes offshore to get a better idea of what works for them. Needless to say, the study uncovered some interesting things including the fact that, to quote the report, ‘revenue performance improvement might be offshoring’s diamond in the rough’. Which means what, exactly? It means offshore outsourcing not only helps companies with their own workload and implementation of services they either don’t have the expertise to do themselves, or because of budgeting constraints; it also helps in profit margins. Outsourcing is actually pushing up revenues for corporations according to the study.

This may be the best news the offshore outsourcing industry has heard in months, especially with news of some companies stating that it’s over hyped and overused.

ResourcePad’s got it covered of course, under an excellent article written by new contributer Tom Kricheck. You can view it here.

Recently I came across a set of questions promoting cultural differences across the offshore platform, and though these issues are real and they do exist and they can cause quite a bit of problems for SMEs especially those who can’t waste important cash to start training programs; there’s a lot to be said for the basic rule: communication, and lots of it.

There have been a lot of new articles springing up on ResourcePad.com which I would advise you all to read, because not only are they informative and helpful, but they’re coming from people much like ourselves who’ve either started their own companies, have been working for other SMEs or who’ve been in the outsourcing development area for a couple of years.

We’re still working on our miniature Flash promo and hope to hear your comments on it once it’s been uploaded.

Cheers,

Alex

There’s been a lot of talk about Green Sourcing recently, and now it turns out, it’s all been a whitewash of sorts. Silicon.com has been reporting that green sourcing is considered a primary prerequisite for hiring outsourcing and off shore companies citing a report by Brown-Wilson. Most especially, data centers with their hordes of PCs sending poisonous vapors out there, have been a primary cause for concern.

However, more than one person from within the ‘go green’ camp has begun to join its naysayers. And though they have a point – after all, despite the solar powered electricity grid some companies are now sporting – the point remains: the more clients, the more resources, the more resources the more power consumed. So far it seems, no one has really been able to find an adequate workaround around the problem.

ZDNet’s reporting that companies seem to having withdrawal symptoms from using too much green and have begun to see the flaws with various firms trying to cash in. Looking back on it, a lot of it does seem to a marketing mess – especially since it’s become a consideration with larger companies when outsourcing to smaller ones – how much are you spending on the green stuff? The answer to it seems so significant, that one wrong step, could take you to the wrong side of town.

Some people seem to think that it might be over toppling the need for good service – after all, if Company A’s got the green sources so very important to the environment – they mayn’t be focusing as much attention on what counts, and going with the group might lead to corporate failure. Yours, that is.

But then, there’s the much talked about ‘global warming’ issue that seems to be spilling over into every conversation, IT related or not.

It seems however, despite Silicon.com’s very informative report, that software service providers are not high on the list of people who should go green. And if you think about it, that’s where the real problem lies, so to speak. I’m not an environmentalist or anything, but I do believe that shutting off PCs on a daily basis will be a reduction in…some capacity.

So what do you think of green sourcing? Do you think it will ever find as expansive a home as it seems to have found in the rest of the corporate world, where it’s almost a business?

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As long as owners are involved in the project everything goes well, as soon as the project is handed over to a project manager or a team lead, there are problems all over the place starting from communication to plain careless mistakes. A lot of bootstrap startups have this problem, especially in India and Paksitan. Why don’t employees take as much ownership as the owners? How can they be made to take ownership?

One of my friends, who has an offshore development center in Bangalore, was in England last month. For one of the projects he asked his project managers if everything is well and if things are done as per the client’s specifications. He was told that everything was fine and that the client is happy. So he scheduled a meeting with the client and also gave him an invoice for the work done. Not only this, he mentioned this client as a reference to his new clients in England. It turned out that the client was not happy at all, and that there were lots of bugs in the application and the programmers have been working for days but they haven’t been able to fix much. This was a total disaster primarily because he had already given the reference of this client to his other new customers. The reason for this mess up was not that programming was messed up, but rather the fact that he was kept in dark about the original situation of the project. This is because the team never took the ownership of the project.

One of the main reasons a team may not take ownership is because the team usually doesn’t know what depends on the project. They usually don’t have the big picture of a particular client and a particular project. A project may be a pilot project to be followed by a lot of other projects. Also it may be so that the client is very influential and it’s good to keep him happy. These things are quite difficult to explain to a team lead or a project manager. An easier approach would be to ensure that someone is ultimately responsible for a project no matter what happens. This is so that no blame can be shifted and someone knows who’s responsible for the entire project. For example, a project manager should be responsible for everything in the project: from specifications to quality assurance, maintaining scope and making sure that the project doesn’t exceed budget. In most cases, people need just one person to take owners, rest of the people will take ownership themselves. Also for any top level manager, the main idea is to ensure that projects are completed in timely manner with reasonable quality. To ensure this, someone has bear all responsibility for the success as well as the failure.