{"id":1,"date":"2018-03-26T21:37:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T21:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/\/?p=1"},"modified":"2018-05-01T20:19:16","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T20:19:16","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/26\/hello-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem With Outsourcing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marketing your outsource company to U.S. based clients<\/em><\/h2>\n

I realize it\u2019s difficult for offshore agencies to market to the U.S., yet there are so many that some must do well.<\/p>\n

So I think we must be doing something wrong, because there are so many mismatches in the responses.<\/p>\n

I’ve been through a few of these processes, recently hiring Adobe AEM developers and Architects (JavaEE), Machine Learning engineers (Python) and now looking for Shopify development experts(Ruby on Rails).<\/p>\n

I know there are some great bus dev\/sales people, but the bad ones make me not want to try any.<\/p>\n

Also, your competition, real developers who market themselves, are very accessible and easy to evaluate.<\/p>\n

It seems like such a wasted resource of so many great developers and architects in India and Ukraine and elsewhere that are under-earning because their marketing is so weak.<\/p>\n

Below are our critiques from the recent search for ShopifyPlus expertise.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 TOO GENERAL AND BROAD BASED<\/p>\n

Most outsource companies try to be all things to all clients, offering every kind of development. This is a turn-off to most potential clients. The responses are also very general vague, \u201cwe can do that\u201d vs. specific data on past successful projects. They list dozens of technologies – that scares many people away.<\/p>\n

SOLUTION: We look for specialization in the one area we are working in, deep specialization and experience. In some cases, certifications. For ShopifyPlus, I want a team that only does Shopify\/RoR and can show several sites they’ve built.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 MIDDLE MEN (WOMEN) \/ TOO MANY LAYERS<\/p>\n

Many respondents are bus dev or sales for an agency. I understand the reason for this but it causes friction, takes more time and obfuscates us from the actual engineers. Also, too many are not even real agencies.<\/p>\n

SOLUTION: We want to evaluate each actual engineer, look at some of the following: repos, urls of their work, YouTube training videos, code bases, blog entries, twitter feed.<\/p>\n

3. NO REAL CONNECTION TO THE DEVELOPER<\/p>\n

As above, trying to discuss the spec for a software project through an interpreter is cumbersome.<\/p>\n

SOLUTION: Connect client with real developers asap. When I talk directly with developers I can discern exactly where their strengths and weaknesses are and have an efficient conversation.<\/p>\n

4. REFERENCES \/ CASE STUDIES<\/p>\n

Most of these don\u2019t help much, unless they are about a very similar project and are recent.<\/p>\n

SOLUTION: Connect client with real developers asap. When I talk directly with developers I can discern exactly where their strengths and weaknesses are and have an efficient conversation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. NO PRIOR RELATIONSHIP<\/p>\n

When there is no prior relationship, trust must be built, especially if it’s a different country than your own.<\/p>\n

Do a free small project to show your skills. Build a working relationship.<\/p>\n

If packaged right most agencies could gain much more business and not get dismissed before they have a real chance.<\/p>\n

Please comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marketing your outsource company to U.S. based clients I realize it\u2019s difficult for offshore agencies to market to the U.S., yet there are so many that some must do well. So I think we must be doing something wrong, because there are so many mismatches in the responses. I’ve been through a few of these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[8,5,4],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-recruiting","tag-offshore","tag-software-architect","tag-software-engineer","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9oS35-1","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/relevantmachine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ishant-mishra-433614-unsplash.jpg?fit=2204%2C1701&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/48"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relevantmachine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}