A Case for outsourcing your web development

• There are certain fields that lend themselves more efficiently to outsourcing than others and the internet is one of the best. You can see results from the contractee location as easily as from your own.
  
• You, or your project manager, can monitor daily or moment to moment from your location.
  
• When I used to work on site we were discouraged from leaving our cubicle to converse with the project manager.  Even though we were in the same office we communicated by email and our work was viewed on the manager's monitor.  We might as well have been off-site, saving the employer thousands.
  

• EXAMPLE_Farming : A tractor sits idle in your barn (not consuming) until needed to plow a field or pull a harvester. A mule must be fed and maintained year round - need him or not.
  

• It also reduces the work day for the contractees by eliminating travel time. There's more - read "Employee's Overhead" below.
• Outsourcing (virtual office) provides your company with a full staff of part time employees, each highly trained in their 'niche' to produce superior results.
• Outsourcing reduces the costs your company must incur for equipment, software, office floor space, etc
• See "Benefits for Your Company" below.

A little known fact: In most cases, when you pull around to the drive up window at a large chain fast food restaurant the person taking your order is not there! They are at an outsource order center. The headphone mic on the person at the window goes to the kitchen area for adjusting existing orders. Local outsourcing is happening right now - all around you.

Click on the headings below to see the details - click again to close.

Who Should Outsource Their Web Design and Maintenance?

Who should and who shouldn't

Nowadays when every service from repairing a lawn mower to business consulting is at a record high cost we are compelled to attempt to build or fix everything ourselves. Depending on the task, it can cost more to do it yourself if you are not fully competent at that particular operation.

You could lose money in your own lost hours as well as (analogously) material waste in failed attempts that destroy film, wood paneling sheets or poorly finished concrete slabs that must be destroyed and re-done, etc.

You need an in house staff : If you are an actual internet tech business selling software for download or your web site IS your business - this would warrant a full time staff.

You should consider outsourcing: If you are a business that uses the internet as a tool, you may likely not need an in house staff. You could find yourself thinking up make-work tasks to keep idle staff busy.

Some Examples

A company like UPS relies on a fleet of trucks to do business, and has a huge staff of mechanics to keep the trucks on the road. For them it is a necessity to keep delivery date promises. A bakery that delivers products locally with two or three vans would be insane to have a full time mechanic on staff.

On the other hand some large corporations are total outsource. Carnival Cruise Lines is a good example. Taking their name from land based carnivals where every ride, attraction and game is an independent contractor, Carnival Cruise Lines minimizes their staffing problems by uniting an army of outsources. The food is handled by one company, the photography by another, the music by a booking agency and so on.

This system effectively lowers the number of people management has to deal with. You would need to deal only with the "captain" of whatever function, and he is responsible for his people. Each outsource would be expert in that field only. The ship's Captain and crew are among their few true employees.

In this environment the outsource company must perform to standards or be replaced. This insures quality as there is no government protections for a contractee that does not fulfill his contract satisfactorily. Try that with an employee and see what happens!

Consider these benefits of off-site outsourcing of your internet presence

Benefits for Your Company

• Many companies do not have a need for a full time web designer / webmaster but still need the services of someone totally familiar with their business, their goals and their particular web site.
  
  
• An on-call outsource webmaster who also may have built or re-designed your web site, is familiar with your company's web site. He also is familiar your company's hierarchy (who to call for what) and retains collateral for re-use (from the design process) and can eliminate delays and many billable hours.
  
  
  • The outsource is able to sub contract specialty programmers, etc., for only the hours needed to do a specific task - and do so competitively.
    
  • Internet Outsource Tampabay has a retinue of specialists for various tasks.
    
    
• You do not have to equip the developer with software, hardware or provide a workspace when you outsource.
  
  
• You do not have to carry liability insurance or workman's comp for on site worker accidents.
  
  
• You will be unconcerned with OSHA. Follow the link for OSHA's 724 page publication on compliance. Even if some of the horror stories are exaggerated, there's a lot of room for error in 724 pages of rules!



• No epidemics! Every worker that is off site is one less chance of a flu epidemic at your office. An off site worker can still work when they have a cold without impacting your staff.
  
  
• Even though you pay less the worker nets more, is happier and more loyal to you.

To keep employees on-site, there are more expenses absorbed by the hiring company than you might imagine.

Employer Overhead Details

• The Basic Wage
  • This is the easy part.
• Employer SSN Contribution
  • The home office worker pays this himself as self employment tax .
• Health Care
  • The more valuable the worker is ( greater experience in the field, and people peak intellectually at middle age) the more expensive the premium - and small business pays far more than big business per employee.
• Computers, Maintenance, Software and Updates
  • Designers, especially, need high-end computers and thousands of dollars worth of software.
• Floor space in an office facility
• Benefits Packages
  • "Without the large numbers of employees required to negotiate favorable insurance deals and affordable financial services, small firms can't compete head-to-head with large companies for benefits."
• Liability Insurance and Workman's Comp
• Paid Leave
  • "Most sick leave policies foster a 'use it or lose it' mind-set, and employees feel entitled to a certain number of sick days."
• Absenteeism
  • This costs employers millions per year and can often be caused by unfavorable conditions in the office environment.

REGULATIONS: Employment is highly regulated by the government — the items above are either required for the employee to operate, human pitfalls or government mandates. Nonetheless, all are guaranteed outcomes and all constitute company expense.

Employers tend to overlook that there is an overhead factor for the employee as well. These are the expenses the worker absorbs to be on-site and company "image compliant".

These crucial factors directly impact what the prospective employee will demand as salary.

• Suitable Wardrobe
• Automobile
  • Initial cost of vehicle
  • Maintenance and repair
  • Gasoline
  • Highway tolls
    • These don't even address the lengthening of the work day and stress due to travel time and traffic.
• Lunches Out
• Child Care (children playing outside after school are no more distracting than typical office chatter)
  • Child care constitutes a major weekly expense for young families.
• Cell Phones for Personal Communication
  • Absolutely necessary for working mothers

There are many non-monetary home office worker benefits that increase personal well being as well as productivity.

The many benefits to the off site designers and programmers:

• None of the Employee's Overhead outlined earlier.
  • Gross means nothing - net means everything.
    
    
• People who work in their own office space are generally happier because they :
  • Start the day free of the stress of rushing out the door and dealing with rush hour.
    • This can reduce the work day dramatically
    • Even with time - gross means nothing - net means everything
  • Are unaffected by gossip, personal conflicts and inter-office intrigue.
  • Can play their favorite background music.
  • Can adjust, to their comfort level, their...
    • temperature
    • air quality (people with allergies can use an air filter)
    • brightness of lighting
      
      
• Dress comfortably and have the company of a beloved cat or dog curled up beside them. Don't laugh - this would be great benefit for the morale of many.
  
  
• Work at home mothers can take children to school and pick them up when needed without reciprocal arrangements or paid helpers.
  • Slightly ill people needn't lose hours to protect others at the office.
  • They also are not hit with the conflict of calling in a sick day because their child has a cold.

Accountability of paid man-hours VS. value received - an all important consideration for you!

There are certain fields that lend themselves more efficiently to outsourcing than others and the internet is one very good one.

• Everything accomplished by a remote worker shows up, that day, as collateral. Either visible on the surface as design work or, at the code level, by looking at the source view.
  
  
• You or your project coordinator, at your location, could supervise a half dozen people working off-site, as easy as cubicle to cubicle.

With a daily online report that includes hours, area worked on and on which project the work was done - a company can monitor multiple outsource workstations with ease. Please see " Track Billing".

Are you considering using a staffing agency?  Read this first!

Why should I use an Independent, local, off site outsource Vs. a Staffing Agency or "head hunter."

IT COSTS MORE: If you outsource through a staffing agency you are not only incurring the cost of the design and programming work but also :

• Salarying the agency staff via commissions or locator fees



• Paying for their plush downtown office.



• Agencies pay employee benefits to the contractees, which they pass on to you.



• If the person is on-site you still have all the government regulations.



• Many people furiously submitting resumes are out of work for a reason!
  • Agencies can rarely know the true skill level behind the resumes they send you. How could they if they have never actually worked WITH them? Those of you who have reviewed resumes know that they can be more inflated than the Goodyear Blimp.



• OnlinedesignFLA is seeking companies that don't have large, impersonal human resources staffs. OnlinedesignFLA makes it possible for you to have a great web site by stripping away all unproductive overhead!
  

Agencies routinely pass job descriptions to designers and programmers that are totally unrealistic to anyone actually in the field. Some people applying for positions even alter their resumes to appear more qualified. Also, in the impersonal interplay between the hiring company, the staffing agency and the job candidates there is an inherent loss of focus. There are too many people in the mix to know one another, and the potential employee or contractee becomes no more than an unknown commodity brokered by strangers.

People outside the field don't understand who does what on the internet.  Designers make lousy programmers and programmers make lousy designers - period. When I see the Monster.Com responses to my resume I am amazed at how little the hiring personnel know of internet related skill sets. Never assume competence - especially if you do not personally know all the players in the game.

Below is a real job description for a web designer position. I have annotated it so you might understand the confusion that is going on in the internet / web design job market. The less people involved in an operation the more efficient it is. Just like engineering a machine - the more moving parts there are, the more that can go wrong.

A real job description posted on Monster.com for a "web design" position

Information architecture background

It has some degree of origin in the library sciences. Many library schools teach information architecture. What they must mean is ability to organize information logically. Or do they want a librarian as well?

Great design skills

That's all a "web designer" really is, though there is no limit to the current popular re-specification.

Someone who has worked in a portal environment.

Portal sites are dynamic structures that pull their content from outside sources.  Aside from a header, logo and some accent graphics it's all programming - the designer plays a miniscule role here.

Programmers make lousy designers and vice versa - it's the nature of the beast.  Designers have an art background and programmers have a computer science background. They reside in two separate sides of the brain.

Must be very experienced in W3C standards for HTML and DHTML

This falls into the web design venue.

Although W3C standards can be overrated at times - usually by programmers with no design skills - multiple technical errors can hurt your search performance. The big search engines ar just not going to weed through a ton of corrupt code.

Must be knowledgeable in Javascript and Flash.

Just knowledgeable - or able to actually do it? Flash has become a niche specialty because the majority of clients request it so infrequently. Flash also has a proprietary scripting language. You'll find a dozen reasons not to use Flash in the resources section of this site.

People posting resumes would always claim yes to both, though few designers are truly proficient in either programming or dazzling Flash work.

Web site usability

Very general, but it hints at a designer having an organized approach to site navigation, which is all important. A popular catch phrase now is "GUI" or Graphical User Interface.

Javascript.

They are seeking a programmer here, not a designer.

Strong web front-end developer

Here, they are seeking a designer and not a programmer.

Someone who has experience in designing how pages work together and how applications work.

This is very reasonable - a designer needs to be able to produce the needed elements for the programmers.

Someone who can be told "here's a process, now design a site to support that process."

This is very reasonable - on a large project that would be the team leader.  He would dole out the tasks to the specialists for all of the above

HERE IS THE PROBLEM WITH THIS JOB DESCRIPTION

They are not looking for an employee, they are looking for a team - and all in one person!

One axiom that hiring personnel need to become aware of - " programmers make lousy designers and designers make lousy programmers." In all my years in the web business this has been proven to be nearly 100% accurate.

A claim of too many specialties in one person almost always creates mediocre results in most efforts.

But - if  you do find such an Über Mensch:

• Prepare to pay very big bucks$$
• Ah, but here's the rub:
  • He can only perform one his specialties at any given time!!

HERE IS THE SOLUTION: (arrived at from 12 years in this profession)

• On a simple, non dynamic site project (sometimes called a "brochure site") an average outsource designer could do it all himself.
  
  
• But the job description here implies a larger project needing excellent design skills, heavy programming and organizational training - an outsource would partner the designer with whomever he needs to provide all elements professionally.
  
  
  • Let's say this hypothetical project took two months total man hours to complete.
  • And hypothetically the designer and programmer needed equal amounts of time to produce their results.
  • Each specialist would put in his required percentage of the total hours
  • Paying two separate minds to function at optimum rather than one person to speed ahead at his specialty and struggle with the other requirements.
  • The client would receive his results in a single month - for less money.

What about employing"cheap labor"?
There is no savings in hiring ten people to dig a ditch over contracting a back hoe. It will take a whole day's worth of salaries for ten, liability insurance coverage, and all the complications and regulations of being an employer - which means hiring a pro to organize all the "day labor". The back hoe costs more per hour than unskilled labor but completes the job in a single hour. Also the quality of the ditch is superior.

What is my point? An experienced professional works much faster, with superior results over the struggling beginner. Remember, this is a tech business. The pro is the backhoe and the beginner is the ditch digger. You need ten beginners to produce what one pro can do inless time - think Mike Tyson. You may think you are getting a deal but it ends up costing you more for less. If you want it done right, the first time, on time and for less - hire a pro.