Posts Tagged ‘outsourcing’
Outsourcing: Why web development companies do it (think big bucks)
The Outsourcing Sales Pitch – Money, Money, Money
I want to share with you an email typical of many received by LA Wolfe Web Marketing. The email is a solicitation to entice our company to outsource our work:
Hi There
Hope you are well. I am Shivani from Innomax Solutions. We are an online marketing company with specialization in Search Engine optimization and web design and development. We follow a B2B model where in a lot of digital firms from US, UK, Canada, UAE etc outsource their campaigns for us to execute. We customize these services as per the requirement of the end user.
Please find attached a list of our services and packages and how it will benefit you if you outsource your SEO and Web Design campaigns to us.
We offer specialist services in Search Engine Optimization-Both on Page and off page, Social media Optimization,Dynamic SEO.
Web Development- We have an extensive in house team of experts in php/MYSQL, Drupal, Joomla, OS Commerce, table less HTML.
Content writing – We write SEO friendly content for live website as well as articles and blogs for submission,
PPC – We have a team of Google Certified Adwords Executives to run your ppc to the best results.
We work with 100% quality and 50% of your in house cost!
If you have any queries or concerns or want to know how you can expand your business through outsourcing please revert back and I will be more than happy to assist you.Please let us know your views on outsourcing your SEO Services to us.
I Look forward to your reply.
The company that sent me the above email is offering to do our client’s work for us at 50% of our rates. Great for us (sort of, outsourcing to the wrong places can ruin a company’s reputation) but bad for clients (why pay double when you can just hire a company from India yourself?) Their pitch is all about money: We collect our full fee from clients, pay them half and pocket the other half – for doing absolutely nothing. Not once does the company mention how our clients would benefit from such an arrangement.
Hello?
We do not outsource and here’s why: Aside from the obvious language barrier in the company’s marketing material (something likely to also convey in their content, SEO, and SEM work) outsourcing overseas can result in delays in exchanging information and miscommunication. Who are we supposed to hold accountable when deadlines are not met, work is not done properly, or the outsourcing company cannot be reached? If we want instant direct access to team members without time barriers, the ability to handpick the best person for the job, we have to keep client services in house.
We are control freaks when it comes to our work. Our company has its own approach, philosophy, methodology, mission, vision, and well, you get the point. If we want things done the way we want things done, we have to do them ourselves.
Think about this for a moment: If outsourcing work is so great for the client why are web development companies not advertising they do it for you?
I do not know of a single web development company — not one — that boasts on their website “we outsource our work and charge you double!” If you know of one, please email us, and we will publicly thank them for their honesty. But I can tell you the top 4 attorney marketing companies all outsource work – press them for an answer and you often get song and dance answers like “our department is not outsourced” (but the work the department does is outsourced.)
Many web development companies do outsource work. Done properly, this can help businesses’ grow faster, but there are really only two reasons why web development companies outsource work: it is cheaper than hiring their own people (a lot cheaper) and because they want take take on a large number of clients but do not have their own staff to handle the volume of work they take on. (Think puppy mills and sweat shops.)
But isn’t outsourcing equivalent to hiring a general contractor?
No.
If you were building a home or undergoing a major renovation it would make sense to use a general contractor to hire and oversee the worker bees for you. You would pay the general contractor for their services even though other people would actually be doing most of the work. This makes sense for a lot of reasons. But web development is not building a house and web development companies are not in the general contractor business.
You’d probably not hire a general contractor who collected the total costs from plumbers, electricians, dry wallers, etc. and then charged you double. And, there is complete transparency: if you hire a general contractor it is with the understanding other people will be doing the work and the contractor will charge you something additional on top of those costs.
My objection is not in companies who choose to outsource. My objection is with companies that do not disclose this upfront to their clients.
Before you sign with a web development company ask them if they outsource any work whatsoever. If so, ask who and where they outsource to. If they are buying wholesale work and selling it at full retail prices back to you, ask for a discount of 50% what their markup price.
The Bottom Line
When a company outsources work, they also outsource their reputation and integrity. Frankly, we are just not comfortable doing that.
If we chose to work with an outsourcing company, our clients would not be their clients. An outsourcing company would want to make us happy but they would not care about making our clients happy.
The bottom line is that a company 5,000 miles away who has never even spoken to our clients or spent long hours analyzing a clients’ website and industry, will not care about our clients they way we do because they will not take them time to get to know them like we do.
