If you have considered outsourcing or offshoring recently, you may have thought about the key success factors to ‘make it work’. In the past years, I have gained substantial experience in how to (and how not to) manage an offshore cooperation. Trying to summarize this knowledge in a simple format brought me to ‘the 5 P’s of offshoring’.
1. People
It all starts with the people in your offshore team. No matter how well you define your requirements, how solid the process of your supplier look: you need to have the right person doing the right things in your projects. In order to build a strong dedicated team that will produce results on the long term for you, it is crucial to have an influence on the selection of your team members. Ideally, you co-develop a recruitment process together with your supplier, where you can hold interviews, tests or any other screening method. Read more »
2010-07-30 10:09:50 | HugoMesser | Offshoring | No Comments »
I found an article about outsourcing, which gives us a very clear overview of where we were and where we are going in outsourcing. I work on my international outsourcing vision every day and I often wonder ‘where will we be in 10 years?’. From below figure (to see the big size, click the image) I see a few key points for our future:
- Timeline. Outsourcing brought $12 billion to India in 2004. India has grown even bigger on this number since 2004 and many other countries have followed India’s example in the IT outsourcing field. These numbers will keep on growing for the decades to come.
- Timeline. In 2010 companies still choose price over quality (the below document is about the US, I believe in Europe this might be different) and companies are frustrated about the quality of work. In my opinion, there are 2 important things here. First, price is important at the moment because of the worldwide recession. In times of rapid economic growth, companies need people and outsourcing is a requirement for companies to grow as shortages in IT staff make it hard to find talent. Second, companies report frustration because global sourcing is still in its infancy. People need to gain experience in order to know how it works. As more companies outsource, more frustration is reported. As people gain more experience in the next years, outsourcing will become more normal, eventually making it normal practice in any company. Read more »
2010-07-21 16:18:31 | HugoMesser | Offshoring, Outsourcing | 1 Comment »
So the latest version of WordPress, 3.0 is here . This is not much of a surprise since we get new versions almost every month. But this release stands out as a much awaited release, since it has some major fresh features for a great user interface.
I will list out a few new features here:
1. The Installation registration page
The previous versions of WordPress had a major security hole as the admin username for the backend was automatically generated as “admin”. Users had to create a new username for the admin and delete the “admin” from the database.
Read more »
2010-07-08 19:14:17 | Lekha | Open Source | No Comments »
There used to be a time when everybody on the golf course was talking about R/3 or Navision or other cool key words. CRM is not exactly a new key word on the golf arena or in the sailing club, but what has changed is that this is now a hot buzz factor for any small to medium sized company.
Anyone attending a sales training course will be told to get equipped with a CRM system. So should we fill up our bar with Coffee, Rum and Milk?
No, we are talking here about the system which should help you shift your leads and sales potentials away from thunderbird or Outlook. Even Excel or a simple paper sheet will not help increase revenue and profitability.
You need to know with whom you are dealing. For this you can use a CRM system and implement a workflow to help you speed up your work. Read more »
2010-07-06 11:36:06 | Christian Bartsch | Open Source, Others | No Comments »
In my previous article, I wrote about personal values in the offshoring context. In this article I want to discuss the role of people in making offshoring work. Some questions related to this subject:
- Who are the people in my offshore team?
- How do I create support for offshoring among my people?
- Does the culture of my company match with the supplier’s culture?
Based on my experience with offshoring success and failure, I would say that companies that place an accent on the people, increase their chances. Let’s take a look at the three above questions. Read more »
2010-07-02 12:16:38 | HugoMesser | Offshoring, Outsourcing | 4 Comments »
Informal club – very popular with entrepreneurs who want to work offline
Zwaag, May 2010 – Open Coffee Holland, the open networking club by and for local entrepreneurs, will hold its 100th meeting on June 16 2010. This special jubilee is to be celebrated in Marnemoede restaurant in Ijsselstein. Open Coffee was organized for the first time three years ago in Amsterdam and was an immediate success. The meetings are open to everyone and the main objective is to bring local entrepreneurs and small businessmen together. Currently, Open Coffees are held every month in over 80 cities in The Netherlands all of which are organized by entrepreneurs who are involved in regional activities. This time the 100th Open Coffee in Ijsselstein is organized by Manuele Koelemij, franchiser of Employment Office Flexibility. Read more »
2010-06-29 15:14:35 | press | Bridge in the press | No Comments »
In recent months we have been reading a lot about social network sites like facebook, XING and other portals making profitable use of the user data they are storing.
Politics usually react by designing legal structures which are not going to help the development of the internet. Where borders seam to evaporate, national laws are reduced to barking dogs. With the current situation Ministers have learned their lesson and are using the social media as a tool to force social media to rethink their policies. Read more »
2010-06-23 10:13:37 | Christian Bartsch | Others, Social Networking | No Comments »
“The Scandinavian market is open to specialized offshore outsourcing providers”
Zwaag, May 17 2010 – Bridge, specialist with regard to software development and offshore outsourcing, has opened a new auxiliary branch in Linkoping, Sweden. From this location Bridge offers its services with regard to offshore outsourcing projects to IT departments of middle and large organizations. Sweden is one of the leading countries with regard to IT innovation and automation to realize company growth. The Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010 by the World Economic Forum states that compared to the rest of the world Sweden uses IT in the best way to realize durable economic growth in the long run. Bridge subscribes to this view and also signals that the need for fast, economical software development is there. Read more »
2010-06-18 13:33:59 | press | Bridge in the press | No Comments »
