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Outsource to an Indian Technology Company Without Meeting Them ??

Indian Internet IT service companies (software and web developers) are considered a viable outsourcing option today. What they offer is a strategic initiative to cut costs and access to intellectual capital not available in-house. Virtual Web companies are a natural outgrowth of the omnipresence of the Internet. But is the company just a web page or does it comprise a team of people who follow established processes and possess a solid infrastructure?

The Trend

Companies are beginning to look to the emerging Internet Information Technology Services firms for help with everything from strategy development to interactive marketing to application development and integration.

India has become the leader in offshore contracting services (India owns around 80 percent of this market) because of -

A highly trained work force

Low labor costs

Appreciation for software development disciplines

A widespread use of the English language

The Need to Evaluate

The content of the Internet is very diverse and it is necessary to evaluate what you find. Especially when it relates to appraising a "Virtual" company that one may never meet face to face. When outsourcing something as critical as IT operations and services it is important to form a "sourcing-alternatives" team to evaluate potential IT partners and determine what role each of the partners would play.

The job of translating the information to end products still takes place in a brick and mortar office where real people work. When the partners' roles and their scopes are defined ambiguously, network deadlines cannot be met and end products may not meet set quality standards.

It is vital to select the right and capable vendor to ensure the success of your project. This will ensure that you get the best services or output for your money (on hardware and software), effort and time spent on these are the most important information resources in an organization.

Enterprises evaluating virtual vendors for business projects are faced with difficult choices. The market is full of claims by many companies promising that they "do it all" and will deliver the enterprise into the E-business economy. Most do not have the breadth of skills necessary to develop and support the overall e-business needs of traditional enterprises.

The dotcom meltdown that happened a few years ago proved that most of the virtual companies though claiming to be up to any challenge, did not have the business model or the capability to deliver.The validating a company's claims can therefore not be overemphasized.

The How, Why and the Wherefore

Choosing the right company to outsource all your jobs to is not easy. It is very context sensitive and not any one single company will prove good for all your needs. It is important to identify the key technical and management issues in outsourcing. A few prime factors one has to focus on are:

The vision and mission of the company in evaluation

Balance sheets of the previous years

Client lists

Infrastructure

Clients seeking assistance from potential Virtual IT services providers should adopt a systematic approach to evaluating information on the Company. A few pointers include:

Examine the accounts that the company has handled. An Internet IT services firm that has worked with companies in similar industries with similar architecture will have firsthand knowledge of the issues with which a company like yours is dealing. If they have expertise in more advanced technology projects or have worked with startups, this information will be valuable indeed.

Scrutinize if the company has its own expertise and business strategy as against a "will do all" claim. It's important to ascertain if the company is willing to collaborate as a team with the Client Company to develop its strategy and facilitate knowledge transfer. Any company should have a distinct and easily recognizable strategy and it should be reinforced throughout the site.

Analyze the core technical competencies of the services firm. All companies will claim to support the development, integration, implementation and maintenance of your project, but this is rarely the case. A simple rule of thumb being no single company can have a presence in all possible areas. If any company claims so, it clearly shows a lack of focus. Ask for references. Finding a firm's strengths and weaknesses upfront will avoid costly mismatches later in the project lifecycle.

Review the resources of your vendor if it is not possible to physically visit the vendor's site and check the resources. Checking the hardware, software, network and communications will give an idea about the vendor's infrastructure. The vendor's experience and testimonials should be checked before proceeding further. Of course, there's nothing like actually visiting the place and checking out the infrastructure and their offerings.

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Offshore development – Does it work ?

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

E. W. Dijkstra