The Lost Weekend
Did you ever try spending an entire weekend trying to get something done? And then given up – unfinished, alone and in frustration?
That is the prospect many of you face as you look for an offshore vendor.
One new, soon-to-be Accelerance client called me this week and complained, “I spent all weekend – over 15 hours, looking for an offshore vendor. And I am no smarter than when I started!”
For him it was a lost weekend of time spent looking online without much to show for his efforts.
In the 1945 movie The Lost Weekend, Ray Milland plays a man gripped by alcoholism. He loses much more than time over his lost weekend. Happily, searching for an offshore vendor is not nearly as debilitating.
After all, it seems like an easy thing to do. Get on Google, do some searches, find some vendor websites and make contact.
But then you learn that there are thousands of websites. And even when a vendor is good technically, they are usually bad at convincing you of their skill through their website content.
You absolutely can find a vendor on your own. Some of you may have done it, either through luck, perseverance or with a referral from a friend. It is just takes time.
Successful VPs and CEOs have reported to me that it has taken them a whopping 3 to 5 months of effort to find, evaluate and finally select an offshore vendor on their own. Even then they run the risk of choosing a vendor that is not the right fit.
It can be hard to admit you need help getting started with outsourcing if you are an educated engineer or business person.
But spend a weekend or two trying on your own and you may be convinced like this new Accelerance client was. His offshore vendor selection will now be completed in a couple of weeks, maybe a little longer if he is busy with other duties and priorities.
This dramatic time reduction is achieved by choosing from a short list of several pre-screened and pre-qualified vendors. Accelerance will then work with him to determine the most important criteria for making a final vendor selection.
Like dating or finding a spouse, I wish there was an even easier way!
Many of you voted in my survey on the help you need for outsourcing. The most interesting response is that the majority of you (57%) voted for wanting information about outsourcing only and no consulting.
Here are all the votes:
| 26% | I need help finding an offshore partner for software development. |
| 16% | I need help to create my own offshore operation or subsidiary. |
| 4% | I can develop my own software – I want help testing it offshore. |
| 26% | I need help describing my software so it gets developed correctly offshore. |
| 23% | I need help with managing the entire offshore software development process including vendor selection, specifications, day-to-day management and quality assurance. |
| 24% | Software is only one thing I outsource – I want help with outsourcing other business processes too, like accounting, customer support, data entry, etc. |
| 57% | I don’t want consulting services - I just want information about offshore outsourcing and the software development process so I can explore outsourcing myself or with my own internal team. |
Of the 57% who voted for information only with no consulting, 28% also voted for wanting help in describing software for outsourcing and 28% voted for information about other kinds of outsourcing besides software development.
My conclusion from these votes is that many of you need a relatively small number of engineers (or other outsourcing professionals) and therefore you cannot afford expensive consultants to help get you started.
And if you need a large number of engineers then you already know the large name-brand outsourcing vendors from India you can talk to. If you need 50 or more engineers then these large vendors will jump though hoops trying to win your business.
But what if you need 3 engineers or even 13? That's too small for the big boys. And you you'd need some pretty big hoops to handle all the smaller vendors out there.
So people are hungry for useful information to help get started with outsourcing in a smaller, more measured way. Therefore, I will direct the efforts at Accelerance to create this kind of information over the next few weeks. Thanks to all of you who voted!
In the meantime, an existing source of information is the book Software without Borders, available on Amazon. This book is a rich source of the objective outsourcing information you can use to start your software outsourcing yourself and make it a success. See http://www.SoftwareWithoutBordersBook.com to learn more about the book.
And remember that new Accelerance client with the lost weekend? As an owner and reader of Software without Borders, he received a discount off the Accelerance service he selected after deciding to accelerate the start of his outsourcing.
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The Runtime Bottom Line: Where do you stand compared to others in the voting for outsourcing help? Do you want help getting started or just information to do it yourself? You can certainly find an offshore vendor on your own but you run the risk of spending a great deal of time doing it. Accelerance delivers the information and services you can use to dramatically save your time and improve your results.
Until next time,
Steve Mezak
Accelerance, Inc.
Risk-Free Outsourcing
