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Beyond Pricing Battles to Powerful Relationships

When the average person considers outsourcing a technology project, the main motivation is usually price. Outsourcing is loved by those managing budgets and criticized by those who fear loosing jobs to work that is shipped out of their country. But the benefits and concerns are always oversimplified and miss the point of a relationship with a technology partner – no matter where they are located.

While the issue of price should always be a concern to a responsible manager, I would like to propose that other factors are also key in defining which partner to select for a technology partner.

Ethics/Values – Since the Indian IT giant Satyam Computers fiasco, I see a stark change of focus shifting to ethics and values. Technology service customers want to understand and check the ultimate motivating factor for the vendor to be in the business. It’s difficult to measure this but as IT services companies, we must emphasize this in order to build trust with potential partners.

Quality – Time and again I have had the “Quality Conversation” with peers, colleagues, counterparts in competing businesses, and, more importantly, our customers. Many of our partners have begun to make the case that quality more than pricing has become the redefining factor for outsourcing companies. Now the customers are prepared to increase their budgets to see to it that the best Quality Assurance personnel are on the project and the best of automated and/or manual procedures are employed to make their applications meet the best of industry standards.

Infrastructure – Even though many outsourcing companies don’t talk about infrastructure needs during the sales process, the impact of a healthy infrastructure or a poor infrastructure become glaringly obvious once the project is underway. Everything from the VoIP connections, sufficient bandwidth, power backups, back up & recovery plans, location, and proper IT support become critical to the project’s success. I believe that an outsourcing company must emphasize infrastructure and show how this foundation will create efficiencies and result in a stronger solution for the client.

Best practices – It is said that a factor which goes into the valuation of an IT company widely depends upon their code base and the best practices it employs and implements in the projects. Our partners are watching our best practices and this means that the developers need to follow these without any deviations and/or hiccups. I have found that sharing a presentation on best practices will help potential partners understand how their project would be implemented.

Referrals from past/current clients – One of the great barriers to outsourcing is distance. However, if current clients and partners will refer you to other organizations with which they work, this makes a big difference. The unbiased feedback gives a potential partner some comfort level with selecting a partner on the other side of the world. It also is a testimony to the performance and skill  that you as an outsourcing company employ.

These five factors show how the outsourcing industry and technology clients overall are maturing in their decision making process. Our hope at Olive Technology is that every client will feel that we are presenting solutions that reflect these five key areas as well as offer a competitive price. 

Mobile App for Small to Midsized Organizations

A research study by Morgan Stanley indicates that by 2014 the number of mobile Internet users would cross desktop Internet users.  There could be as many as 1.6 billion mobile Internet users by 2014.  By 2015 the number of users could touch the 2 billion mark.  How does an organization leverage the opportunity and plan ahead to develop a Mobile and Social Media strategy ?

1. The first step is to Develop mobile compatible sites that will give a seamless presence across all smartphones or PDAs, regardless of operating system.

2. The next step is to Focus on seeing how the organization’s presence is on the social media networks. The focus should be on building communities of mobile users who are utilizing the various social media networks.

3. The third step is to Empower your staff and partners in training them on how they can start using mobile based social media sites. This is one of the key elements for the success of mobile app usage within a known group.

4. Last, but not the least, the organization should focus on Enhancing other specific business features viz., web apps, CRM, ERP, etc., that are relevant to their products or services.