Mach 9 Consulting, Inc.

June 21st, 2008

To Outsource or Not To Outsource!

Is it really a question? Not for us, it's simple, we just do not do it. Have we done it? Sure, we have. We have experienced the trials and tribulations around outsourcing. There were too many issues around outsourcing and product development so we sat down and really analyzed what we were getting for what we were paying, and what we could do better. So here is what we found out.

What is outsourcing and what do I mean when I say outsourcing. To us, outsourcing simply means hiring a contractor to do work for you in order to get a job done. Whether you outsource a portion of a project or the entire thing, there can be some real pains around it. The other thing is outsourcing is even done locally vs. overseas. A common misconception with outsourcing is that many people think of India or China immediately when you say outsourcing. Yes, there are a ton of companies that use these countries and their developing economies. However, there are web design and development companies that outsource their work locally as well and are really just a middle man. While that can work for some, many of us want to have the comfort level to know that whoever we are doing business with, produces a product or service in house, not farm it out.

In this business, price is a factor for many people and companies. Sometimes I begin to wonder if people are willing to sacrifice quality for price. I talk to people every day that are so concerned with price and don't really care about the quality. Imagine building a product and because of price, you had to take short cuts. Or because of price you hired a much less experienced firm overseas which saved you a lot of money. You are happy right? Are you really happy? Here is what I have seen and experienced.

At first everything is going along well, the design is ok and you are satisfied with it, but it doesn't knock your socks off, because you couldn't talk directly to the designer because the designer doesn't speak English or is not capable of speaking to customers, or whatever the case may be. That should not happy. Every time you tell a story, if its retold, it loses some element of how it was told. If you can't talk directly to the designer of your project, can you be sure whoever you are telling will convey the design concepts properly? Check out Robert our world class designer. Not only can you see him, you can call him directly and talk to him too. Cool huh?

So, now you get to the application or development piece of your project. You have to stay up late to get updates and communicate with your developers. If that's your style, great, that will work out good for you. If you are like most of us, you need your beauty sleep. It's tough to stay up night after night trying to communicate with someone over email or IM to view your project. A lot of times also scope and what you want to happen in your application are not translated properly, so you wind up spending much more time trying to get things right. This has to be one of the most frustrating pieces with outsourcing there is. So now your project is behind schedule and milestones are getting missed. You are starting to wonder if you made the right choice to go with a less expensive, less experienced company. The design is just ok, and things see to work, just not quite right.

So now lets take this and multiply your testing efforts by millions of users. Do you think these design firms that outsource their developers understand what the balance is between code and server requirements. Do you think they take into consideration when they are writing code, at what point its going to break when you get a ton of traffic to your application because everyone loves it? If you do not take the time to plan properly for mass market testing, chances are you are going to see a big problem once your application becomes mainstream.

The last major problem that I see is the cleanliness of code and the ability to make changes. Outsourcing is usually cheaper because the people that are working on the projects are inexperienced. When it comes time to make changes, that should take only minutes wind up taking hours because the code is not properly documented, another developer is working on it, or its built incorrectly and you wind up having to update 100 files instead of just one. And guess who pays for that? You do.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. That's the bottom line. Sometimes it makes sense to outsource, in web design and development, in our opinion it doesn't. You can see all of our staff and and/or even talk to them as well. We have over 100 clients. Why do you think they came to us versus going to an outsourcing company or using someone that does this "on the side". If you want a professional website or a professional web application then hire a professional company. Call us anytime to discuss your business. We would be glad to help. 919-341-2957.