In our experience outsourcing any part of the process degrades the quality of the product to the client.

I can be cheaper but when you do everything in house you can provide a much faster and richer service.

Depends on the segment of the market you are going for really.

Matt
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Matthew Adams
____________________
Affordable Web Design

http://www.webfactore.co.uk




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We have outsourced our web stuff to abroad. The vast impression I was left with was:
1) Deadlines mean nothing - it will always be late
2) Shortcuts are fine as long as the client doesn't notice (we'd specifically requested no tables in our site, and found tons of them coz it was easier than fiddling with the CSS - they had hoped we wouldn't notice)

I'm sure there are people who would use this service and be happy with the result. But I think you'll be left with the major headache of either recoding everything to make it right or covering up their shoddy workmanship. Unless you coded a template and they were simply populating it?
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Caroline Wylie

www.virtuallysorted.com

www.SocietyOfVirtualAssistants.co.uk

Outsourcing anything can have its issues unless the project is managed properly - I am bound to say that given what we do as a company - providing business owners with the opportunity to outsource their administration, sales and finance functions to our in-house teams.

However, outsourcing is not a case of simply identifying a company who can take care of it and then hand it over. You wouldn't do that with a member of staff - they get job specs, reporting deadlines, training (job and company ethos) and answer to a manager. Before you even get to this stage you have interviewed a few people. Outsourcing requires work from the company looking to outsource!

Is this a agency good idea? Possibly!

We know of cases where it has worked very well using Indian companies - similarly we also know of problem cases. The good ones were well managed and researched projects, with continual reporting so problems could be spotted and resolved. The bad ones had not been planned at all.

There is a case and this agency could work - by the time you start adding in the management time to keep the project well and truly on track, the cost savings will not be great. Outsourcing is cheaper, but not that much cheaper if it is to be done to the highest standards!

Good luck.
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Paul

Paul Smalley

Paper Mountain Solutions Limited

Scaling new heights for your business through effective outsourcing

www.papermountainsolutions.co.uk

I dont see how you can do it for 40% less and use a project manager when its for small business websites. To get a return on outsourcing offshore the volume of work sent offshore has to be large enough to cover the cost of the project manager. Given That a good PM will cost £350 to £550 a day an the average small business will have a website that cost less than £500 I can see how it adds up?

even a cheap PM at £300 a day and an offshore cost of around £50 a day means that 1 day of PM time and 4 days off offshore time and your £500 has gone.

I'd be interested to know what you think a small business spends on its website because I cant see this working unless the business is thinking of spending a few thousand pounds on its website which would be more of a medium business than a small one
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Richard How FIAP MAPM
How Associates - Programme Management Consultants
Quality Web Hosting
Photography Forum
Tourist Guide to Newport Pagnell

hi, i would use your service as i run my business the same way and i have no trouble delivering good websites as i know what to deliver as im a webdesigner too and the IT people in the east are very highly skilled and speak very good english, the trick is to find the good ones and stick with them and treat them good :-)

all the best :-)
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I have good experience outsourcing webdesign to the subcontinent but manage the projects myself remotely without your kind of middle-man, face-to-face contact approach. However I know a lot of business people would like someone in front of them to take responsibility, directions, questions etc The question is - is there enough of a cost advantage between local and remote design to allow for paying the manager guy on the ground? It depends how competitive the local market is. I've a start-up client who was quoted 2000€ for logo design and 4000€ for a 10 page static website (without CMS) recently. If the local designers are taking the p**** like this then there is plenty of room for your business model to work.
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James Baker ACA
Business and Tax Advice (Spain)
http://www.advoco.es

I always think outsourcing can be a bit iffy really. You never know what you'll be getting. However, if you can build up a successful relationship with just one Indian based firm, then that would make things a bit easier and more likely to be successful.

But then again, it could be disasterous - outsourcing has a bit of a bad reputation, and a lot of people like to give UK based companies the work - especially given the current economic climate. So there could be some backlash if your clients found out - would you be planning on telling them that you outsource?
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SMEketing is a marketing agency based in Southampton, Hampshire. We work with small and medium sized companies, helping them to grow and achieve their business goals.
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