SMBs do not necessarily have trivial software needs; some have even very sophisticated and/or diverse ones. It is not uncommon for SMBs to have needs that encompass JAVA and .NET developments, together with technical support for enterprise applications like SAP or NAV, and requests on advanced technologies like Flex or Ruby on Rails.

In fact, chances are the talents are available somewhere someplace. It might be in Bangalore, Shanghai, Sao Paulo or Cape Town.

The difficulty is to get them together. While industry leaders like IBM, TCS or Infosys have access to a wide pool of talents, they are just not interested in SMBs, leaving most of them with little alternative other than looking for the partners themselves, a time-consuming task that generally yields to mixed results at best.

The truth is that the vast majority of SMBs are not equipped to spend time and energy selecting their offshore outsourcing vendors. In addition offshore companies have different business practices, which in most cases are not really up to par with our business standards here in the USA.

My observation is that SMBs should not be the ones looking around for the various outsourcing providers. It should be the task of US outsourcing companies to establish a network of qualified and reliable offshore partners.

A few (not enough!) US outsourcing companies have already engaged into this avenue. SMBs should absolutely work with them; a US-based outsourcing company that provides with:

• Services agreements, ruled by US laws, which cover their various needs

• A local presence, at both business and technical levels, which enables to deal locally, removing cultural differences, language barriers and significant time difference.

And last, all the relations between the US outsourcing vendor and its offshore partners should be totally transparent to the customer.

Remi
www.outsourcing-vsc.com

Business | 4 Comments »

As you might know, I run a company that focuses on providing outsourcing services to SMBs. A significant portion of our customers are WEB 2.0 startups located in the Silicon Valley who decided to outsource part or all of their engineering.

As a result, a substantial part of our corporate communication is geared toward these companies.

Hence the decision we made last year to sponsor HyveUp, a company that produces video clips where WEB 2.0 startups’ founders or executives share their stories and vision.

The companies interviewed are not necessarily our clients (actually only a very few are, bummer!), but I found interesting to share on my blog the vision and experience of these entrepreneurs who are living the dream of becoming the next Facebook. In fact, some of the interviewees are already well on their way, like Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder.

Let’s start today with Swivel, a company that was created in December 2005 by Dmitry Dimov and Brian Mulloy who wanted to create a place for SMBs to manage their data spreadsheets, share them internally or externally, and find great public data on the spot. A Youtube for spreadsheets!

I love the idea. I have been looking a million times around for templates of sales forecasts, cash flow projections, etc. Swivel is the place to go to find this information.

Go to HyveUp to read more about this story, and many more.

I will post regularly more Hyveup interviews.

Remi
www.outsourcing-vsc.com

Business | 13 Comments »

An Indian newspaper (the India Times) recently reported on Obama’s position on job outsourcing.

More generally, what do the Presidential candidates say regarding employment in the USA?

There is a little to say about McCain’s position, for it does not differ from the traditional position of the Republican party: the best stimulus to a wealthy economy is a reduction in corporate income taxes; job creation will follow as a side effect of a wealthy economy. The basic assumption is that corporations are likely to reinvest a large percentage of the money saved in the US economy, thus creating jobs. Even if a part of these new jobs are created abroad, the vast majority is likely to happen in the USA.

Barack Obama has a different approach. First, I found his acknowledgment of the situation very realistic. During a speech in Raleigh, he said, “We live in a competitive world, and that is a fact that cannot be reversed.” […] Revolutions in communications and technology have sent jobs wherever there is an Internet connection, that has forced children in Raleigh or Boston to compete for those jobs with children in Bangalore or Beijing.”

It might sound like stating the obvious, but based on the comments I receive on this blog, not all people yet realize that we cannot reverse a process we have created.

And the Democratic candidate to elaborate on his ideas to help job creation: “We need to invest in the research and innovation necessary to create jobs and industries of the future right here in the US.” […] “And one place where that investment would make an enormous difference is in a renewable energy policy that ends our addiction on foreign oil, provides real, long-term relief from high gas prices and high fuel costs, and builds a green economy that could create up to five million well-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced.”

Obama believes that the US “can also create millions of new jobs by rebuilding our schools, roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure that needs repair.”

While I understand McCain’s reasoning, I believe it is going to take more than another tax cut to stimulate job creation here in the USA. In the IT industry, for instance, the shortage of talents is a more important reason to go offshore, certainly more than the cost savings, and I assume there are many industries facing the same challenge.

The USA need to recreate the conditions for creating jobs inshore. It includes a renovated infrastructure, more graduate engineers, and a focus on renewable energies, as Obama rightly pointed out.

“This nation has faced such fundamental change before. And each time, we’ve kept our economy strong and competitive by making the decision to expand opportunity outward, to grow our middle class, to invest in innovation, and most importantly, to invest in the education and well-being of our workers.”

A beautiful conclusion for this post.

The full article from the India Times is accessible online.

Remi
www.outsourcing-vsc.com

Business | 9 Comments »