Best Outsourcing Companies
Now that I have some experience outsourcing, I figure I may as well share my knowledge with others.
I’m both shocked and impressed at how simple it is to outsource IT work completely online nowadays. I’m very curious to see what affect this trend is going to have on the IT industry in 1st world countries. Instead of finding a graphics designer in your local city for $100, you can now hire one who does comparable work from the Philippines for $5. It’s a no-brainer!
Although there are many outsourcing sites, services, and companies, here’s a few that I’ve used myself or heard good things about:
oDesk
- One of the more popular sites, thousands of potential employees (called “providers”) to choose from
- You only hire someone if you feel there’s a suitable candidate for your job posting, you’re not forced into making a decision or anything
- You can arrange to only pay after the job is complete, so there’s no risk!
- There’s online tests that providers take, such as English proficiency, PHP, etc. so you can have an idea of their skill sets
- You can arrange interviews with prospective candidates before hiring
- There’s a “Work Diary” section of the site where you can see screenshots of what your “employees” were working on, very cool!
- All in all, I’ve had a positive experience with nearly everyone I’ve hired. There’s been a couple people that didn’t work out, but that happens in a normal office environment anyways.
Elance
- Another popular outsourcing service
- I haven’t used it myself, but I have friends that have had good success with Elance
- Has a great “Water Cooler” community forum where buyers (employers) and providers (employees) can share ideas and network
- “Elance University” training program to get both buyers and providers up-to-speed with how to use outsourcing effectively
- Like oDesk. there’s skill tests to verify that the candidates are up-to-par in specific areas
- Con – a tad on the expensive side
GetAFreelancer
- Apparently they have over 500,000 service providers…wow!
- People have complained about email spam; it sounds like once you register your inbox gets flooded with offers and whatnot
- Site has an easy-to-understand layout
- It takes 15 days after your first request for payment (this is for providers) to receive money, “for security reasons”. If you need cash quickly you probably want to look elsewhere.
- All in all a decent service that has tons of prospects to choose from. Really seems like an employers paradise.
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Cool, good solid list ya got there. I’m a fan of oDesk as well. They definitely seem to have the upper hand over the other sites, mostly because they don’t charge a regular fee for members, just take a commission on work done.
Also I like being able to see the history of what the outsourcers were working on. That’s a really impressive feature.
I’ve been using Elance for the last few months and while the site is easy to use I haven’t been super impressed by the quality of the applicants for the jobs I post.
I agree with 1337 above that oDesk is the best I’ve used so far.
I do freelance on a part time basis and I will agree with Jenny that oDesk is the best. The screening process is more rigorous and the applicants are more serious. Come to think of it, I haven’t taken a job for a month now. Busy with creating my baby.
Suffice to say that I learned from my past masters.
The best resource for outsourcing companies if you have the right network would be Linkedin, you do actually find good processes there. I’ve actually acquired some of our processes from linkedin. I’ll name a few companies below might be helpful;
Arrowsol8 (www.arrowsoleight.com)
Have a number of complaints posted but we’ve been working with them for quite some time and have not had any issues with them whatsoever. Prompt with payments, as long as you are doing what they are telling. Mostly have a paid by the hour formula.
Cyberonium: http://www.cyberonium.com
Good for outbound campaigns.
Dynamic Impact;
Good for US outbound campaigns, we’ve worked with them off and on, if you make the sales as guided there will be no issues.
Have you tried DeskElf.com? While you don’t get to (or have to) sort through dozens of freelancers, they have a strictly manages team, very accessible and very affordable. Check it out.
Nope but their rates are CRAZYYYYY high for the services they’re offering. The owners must be making a killing. $10 for hour for a VA? You can get damn good ones for 1/3 of that.
I would rather have more control over the whole process of software outsourcing and I also prefer to have an enterprise type of support to an application. This is why I generally prefer outsourcing companies over freelancers, companies which give you the best transparency. I chose this option and I am outsourcing Java development to a Java Outsourcing company that has one of it’s development offices in Poznan, Poland. Polish developers are very smart and communicative.
Poor communication is the biggest challenge in outsourced software development – European IT Outsourcing Intelligence Report 2011
This just aggravates when culturally different teams work togather and are geographically distributed.
One of the biggest thing to address here is the requirement communication. Software business requirements typically include user interface and underlying business processes. User interface is visualized as screen prototypes and business processes as flow diagrams.
You can use http://www.10screens.com to define user interface and underlying business processes in a single space leading to robust business requirements.