How to have a relaxing office environment

May 18, 2012 by 123outsource
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How to have a relaxing office environment

There are people with PhD’s who study this topic, and it is an interesting one. How to run your office, to get maximum worker output. The traditional approach is to be an austere slave driver — but, does this really get optimal results, or are you just being narrow minded and mean? Maybe it depends on who your workers are.

Enthusiasm is a catalyst
A work environment that is too much into cubicles, deadlines, stress, all work and no play, etc., can be no fun, and workers might lose their enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a wonderful catalyst that can transform a work environment, so you should treat it as a commodity worthy of being researched. If it were me, I would take notes on how people respond to various things in the work environment, and how strangers who walk in react.

The square office
The typical office has desks, windows (many of which you can not open), phones, secretaries, people who are serious who wear suits, etc. It seems so awful to me. I work at home and wear what I like. A typical office is a place where people do not think outside the box — or the cubicle. But, what if you did? There have been many companies like Cliffbar, and Google where workers are encouraged to be creative and be themselves!

Dogs and cats?
What if you had a workplace where you can have cats, dogs, plants, etc. There are offices in Hollywood where they allow this and people are very happy there. Of course they are in the film industry, but that is the most competitive industry there is, and if they can survive in that industry bringing their dogs to work, then anything goes! Some companies have casual day, or have casual dress every day. Others have plants in the office. You could personalize your desk with personal artifacts too. But, nothing brings happiness more than having animals around!

Let’s get wild here
What about having a sauna, or a place to take a walk outside? If I could design offices, I would have a virtual jungle right outside the building where people could go for a relaxing walk, and hear all types of bird noises. They could have a picnic, and then return to work all refreshed. If you work in a city, and are in a cubicle all day, and then have a rushed lunch in some restaurant that is also shaped like a larger cubicle, your level of stress will not come down.

Summary
The key here is to have worker satisfaction, and build enthusiasm. However, if you go to far, people might get a little too relaxed, or will the opposite happen — they might get too refreshed and perform better than you imagined!

Feng Shui / Vaastu: A busy market

May 16, 2012 by 123outsource
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Feng Shui – a busy market

For those of you who believe in Vaastu Shastra or its Chinese equivalent, Feng Shui, I have good news. Feng Shui experts always tell you that where you live effects your destiny. This is very true information. I am a world traveler, and every different place I stay influences the performance of my business and effects how I feel too. In some places I feel like working twelve hours a day. In other places I feel more friendly, and in some places I feel like doing nothing. Where you live determines your life even more than your personality, believe it or not! If you are a hard worker, but you live in a place where laziness abounds, your hard work will be seriously effected by this lazy vibration.

Some places I visited even contribute to mental instability. There were two places I visited in Northern Arizona, where my generally even-minded brain was effected. In one place, I became agitated, sleepless, nervous, afraid, and had nightmares. I had nightmares in another place in Northern Arizona too. A third place in Northern Arizona left me having very watery thoughts during meditation. How odd, this never happens anywhere else. It was very disturbing. Los Angeles leaves me balanced for the most part, with an urge to work all the time, and enjoy myself too (after work is done, of course).

But, what can we do to enhance our business if we are stuck in a house that we bought? Most of us buy our houses without purchasing the wisdom of a feng-shui consultant or vaastu expert. We go for help after its too late asking, “What can we do?”. The answer is generally, “MOVE!”. We can not move easily, but good news is here. I studied feng-shui at a reputed local school in California on the weekends for two years. They taught some very good theory. But, what they didn’t teach was first hand experience. Nobody knew how much a given environment would effect you, they only knew that it “might” effect you in one particular way. My task was to go out into the world and really see how environments effected me and my work.

I learned that some places were so powerful, that if I stayed there for an hour or two in a day, my business would be effected for twenty-four hours. Some places were better for the outsourcing site, while some were good for the acupuncture or notary sites that I run.
The places that had the best effect on my business were banks, supermarkets, and bustling restaurants. These are places where money keeps circulating fast, like a waterfall. Waterfalls are renouned in feng-shui as having the best effect on money making. The nearest amazing waterfall to where I am is in Yosemite and only is full with water in the Spring. That is seven hours away!

But, not all supermarkets are bustling. Many markets are losing money, or have few clients. The trick is to find businesses where there is an endless flow of traffic and where the business makes money. But, how do you track this? Are you a business owner? See if your business does well for 24 hours after you are in what I call a feng shui hot spot.

How do I find my lucky spot? Spend an hour and forty-five minutes in a hot spot. Thats all you need. A slow meal, or just hanging around. Then see how your business does the next day. This should be done on more than one day. Some days are slow days, and other days your personal astrology might be bad. Try each spot for two or three days, and not on days when your business is typically slow like on the weekend for example.

Feng shui is fun, and can help your outsourcing business. Just find the right spot and dont’ be afraid to experinment and believe in the metaphysical and mystical forces that control your life even more than your will power!

Are your callers annoying?

May 14, 2012 by 123outsource
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Are Your Callers Annoying?

Sales is a difficult field, and so is marketing. Many try to succeed, but most fail. So, what is the secret? Understanding a few basic principles is the secret.  If you are calling prospects or existing clients, you are dead in the water if you are pushy or annoying.  There are exceptions to this rule, and I will elaborate on this.

Beginning a sales relationship
Imagine that you are enjoying a Monday afternoon at work and the phone rings.  Let’s say a very pushy salesman who you have never met before tries to push a sale on you while talking in a nasal mono-tone. Are you going to buy his product? No way! It doesn’t matter how good his product is, or how good his deal is, you will be offended by him and avoid his company’s future contacts as well.  So, when you begin a sales call, being gentle and charismatic is the key.

Remember — a cold sale is a hard thing to do, but a warm sale is much easier.  If you don’t know a prospect, either get introduced to them, or get to know them.  The act of getting to know a prospect is the biggest part of the sale and is much more important than your sales pitch.  Learning how to develop rapport is key here. Becoming liked and trusted is life or death in your profession!

During the call – try to feel out the prospect, and find out what they need, or what they like.  Try to gently appeal to their wants and needs, plus their comfort level.  A smooth salesperson can do all of this without a hard sell or any arm twisting.

Schmoozing? What does that mean?
Jewish business people love this Yiddish word.  They love to schmooze, and they love schmaltz, or anything with a “sch” at the beginning for that matter.  Nothing works better in business than schmoozing and adding a little schmaltz (grease normally from a chicken) to a business deal.  The schmaltz makes everything much smoother. Arabs are the only ones who like schmoozing more than Jews although Arabs have a different word for it.  Many people think that sales is about being pushy and meeting quotas, looking at graphs, and identifying salient features of your product verses the competition’s.  In some cases that could be the case. However, if you pay attention (and I always do), and look at the low paid sales people, you will notice that they look at the clock more, are very anal about quotas and numbers and annoying factors that cause stress.  These novices are poorly paid and under a lot of stress.

 
The gentlemen of the business
If you meet the gentlemen of the business — seasoned older professionals who are making $150,000 or more per year, you will see that they have a very different style.   Although some might be really cool, while others might be really busy, they will know how to make good conversation and are often masters of interpersonal skills.  The trick here with Schmoozing is to create a connection with others and to get comfortable with each other before talking about any deal.  Talking about the deal comes LATER.  In Arabia, they will talk for hours about Schmoozing type topics long before even beginning to talk about business — and this is after arriving three hours late to begin with.  The business talk doesn’t begin until 7pm if everyone is running early (7pm solar time — Arabs look at the sun to figure out when to go to their meetings). I know a man who speaks five different languages and can talk about any topic known to mankind.  He is very personable, interesting, and fun.  He makes millions of dollars in sales per year as well.

 
Study from the professionals
If you hire call center staff members, realize that they can make you or ruin your name altogether.  Training and proper selection is life and death. Your workers have to master the art of interaction before you even begin to think about sales.

 

Once you are done with small talk
Once everyone has gotten to know each other, and identified the other person’s needs, it is time to talk business.  Now that you have been gentle and personable, it is time to introduce the deal.  The key is NOT to explain why the deal is good. The key is to explain HOW the deal is perfect for solving the prospects particular problems and meeting their particular needs.  If you are not tuned in to their needs, and just ramble on using a script speaking in a nasal monotone, and don’t listen to the prospect, you are dead in the water.  Once the prospect is sold on how good the deal is for them, then you can put a little time pressure on them if your pricing offer has an expiration date, or if your availability might decrease later on.  High pressure techniques have their time and place, and if you use them in the wrong time or place, then you not only blow a deal, but you blow your whole company’s reputation with a prospect forever!

Untraditional solutions to unemployment

April 30, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: General Articles | Tagged | Leave a comment

A radical solution – hour control
In America, there is a 40 hour work week.  It is ironic, that those who are not paid by the hour are forced to work over 50 hours a week in many professions.  The 40 hour work week was created to protect workers from the oppression of having to overwork. But, since only some industries follow the time parameters, it only protects hourly wage slaves some of the time.  Here is a radical idea.  What if certain industries have fewer jobs, and many are out of work.  Rather than let some of the people be unemployed and have nothing, crippling their family’s finances, and depressing them emotionally, here is another better solution.
 
Let’s say that there are 1000 jobs making widgets.  Let’s say that suddenly, 10% of those jobs disappeared.  If the government took the liberty to have different work week standards for different industries and job-types, they could reduce the work week for widget makers to 36 hours which is a decrease of 10%.  That way everyone would have a job.  Another solution would be to have a government agency ask which workers would be interested in being retrained, since the widget industry was drying up. That way people could voluntarily change industries instead of ending up on the sidewalk on their rear end!
 
There are many different industries, and creating different length work weeks, and adjusting the length of the work week every quarter would be a cumbersome task.  But, would it be worth it?  
 
Hour reduction?
When workers make too many mistakes, they might lose their bonus, or even get fired.  But, this creates a sociological problem of unemployment.  Why not just reduce their hours for six months instead of firing them. In a flexible system of hour control, that would be a viable option.  The worker would still be able to pay their rent and basic expenses.  The worker would be in financial stress, but would not suffer the disaster of unemployment.
 
Government work programs
During the American Depression, the government created jobs for people to build trails in the mountains, build bridges, and do many other types of work.  I say that governments worldwide should create jobs for unemployed people.  Maybe these jobs might not be glamorous, but we always need more jobs done in society. Cleaning up the streets, fixing up older homes, building solar power infrastructure, and the list goes on. These jobs always need to be done. It doesn’t make sense for someone to be at home twiddling their thumbs when there are jobs that desperately need to be done.
 
Conclusion
There are many ways to reduce unemployment, but maybe it’s time to investigate some innovative plans.

Outbound Call Center: A New Category

April 27, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: Call Center | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

I was looking through 123outsource.net the other day.  It occured to me that we have almost 300 entries in the call center category. That is quite a few.  But, we had gotten many requests for telemarketing and lead generation. It seemed that it would be better to divide the category into pieces.  Inbound specialties are quite different from outbound specialties.
 
Inbound Call Center Work
Many international call centers do inbound as well as outbound work.  However, many do either one or the other, or tend to specialize more in one type of work.  Inbound call centers often specialize in help desk, technical support, online chat, email support, customer care, account maintenance, ticket sales, event registrations, etc.  This is very low key work, and less skill is generally necessary than involved in outbound call center work.
 
Outbound Call Center Work
There is a need for every type of call center work, however, we tend to get more inquiries about specialties that would fall well into the outbound category. Telemarketing and lead generation are some hot categories that we are asked about regularly.  This is more aggressive work, and requires highly skilled workers, plus some knowledge of analytics.  You need to understand market segmentation, and study who is buying what, when, and why!
 
Other Related Tasks
Many call centers do surveys, and market research for large companies.  A call center employee can get information from a client or prospective client, but an analyst is necessary to interpret the results of the data.  Data analysis falls into our data entry category, but is often a part of the job of a call center.
 
A New Category On Our Directory
In any case, we added an outbound call center (call centre) category to our directory.  We will shortly see if it is as popular as I anticipate or not!  I hope it is useful to you and to the other browsers on our directory of outsourcing companies.

International Outsourcing Summit in Manila

April 23, 2012 by 123outsource
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International Outsourcing Summit Held in Manila
On October 11th and 12th, an International Outsourcing Summit was held in Manila in the Philippines.  Delegates from seventeen countries convened for this summit.  The theme of the summit was entitled, “global Market Leaders Addressing Global Market Issues”.  It was agreed that Philippines should focus on non-voice IT and BPO services in addition to maintaining it’s current voice oriented services (call center services). 
For those of you who don’t know, the Philippines took first place globally as a call center outsourcing nation a year or so ago.  India used to hold the #1 title, but now, Philippines has taken the lead with a thin margin. Call centers in various districts of Manila (Makati City for example), Cebu, Daveo, and other areas are holding center stage in the global call center arena.
Additionally, the topic of talent pools for developing social media and social networking were discussed. Social Media is a relatively new industry that involves a lot of very saavy and sensitive communication skills.  Facebook, Twitter, and Blogging are prime examples of social media.
It seems evident, that Filipinos have better communication skills, than many citizens of other outsourcing nations.  The Summit seems to be encouraging the Philippines to branch out into other outsourcing industries.  I argue against this.  I believe that China and India have tremendous talent in the Information Technology industry, and that other countries will have a problem competing against them in terms of a price : quality ratio.  However, I believe that the Philippines should continue to refine it’s call center skills, and generate a stronger domination on world call center revenue.  Additionally, I believe that the Philippines should also move into other communication intensive industries such as social media and try to be the best at it.
In the long run, technology is always changing, but those individuals and cultures with strengths in certain skill-sets should concentrate on what they are good at.  The Philippines is good at communication, and I feel they should try to dominate every market that is based mainly in communication.
I see many Indian companies advertising that they provide various types of web services including social media, web development, database programming, etc.  My experience tells me that Indians are good at database, programming, and technical issues.  The company bosses in India are professional communicators, but the rest of the population are “communicationally challenged” (I invented this term). When I am on the phone with Filipino call center employees, I feel they have a smoothness about them, and a suaveness with interaction which most Indians don’t have.   Rather than try to take over industries where Indians excel, I feel that Filipinos should try to take over industries where they excel!

Mexico is America’s #1 choice for Near-Shoring

April 20, 2012 by 123outsource
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Near-Shoring Popular in Mexico
America is outsourcing many services overseas these days.  However, it is difficult, complicated, and expensive to outsource to Asia in many cases.  When you have to send executives to Asia from America, it is expensive!  If you need to call Asia from America, there is a time difference of 9-12 hours. There are strong cultural differences too which lead to communication discordances. In short, there are many complications. 
However, outsourcing to Mexico, and various other Latin American countries is much easier in many ways.  Communication is easier due to the cultural similarities between Anglo and Hispanic culture.  Americans who don’t reside in Texas, New Mexico, or California typically think of Latin culture as something exotic and distant.  However, if you travel to Africa or Asia, you will quickly realize that the Spanish language is very similar to English, the Catholic religion dominant in Latin America is very similar to the Protestant religion dominant (or previously dominant) in the United States.  The culture is much closer to American culture than Chinese, Thai, or Indian culture.
Additionally, business trips to Latin America are much easier than to Asia. There is no jet-lag.  Air-time might be anywhere from 8-16 hours as opposed to 16 to 36 hours for a trip to Asia. If you are in an industry where you need to send your executives back and forth constantly, it will be a drain on a person’s health to be going back and forth to Asia.  However, going back and forth to San Jose, CR, or to Buenos Aires, or Mexico City will be much easier to tolerate in the long run.  There might not be the exotic pleasures of Penang Beef, or Kung Pao Chicken, but the lack of jet lag or long flight times really makes a difference in the long run. Outsourcing to Latin America is easier in many ways.
My friend keeps telling me that in the future, there will be airplanes that will be able to fly from Los Angeles to Mumbai in five hours.  That is a wonderful concept, and I hope it is true.  But, in the mean time, it easier to fly from Dallas to Guadalajara!

Finance & Accounting Outsourcing

April 17, 2012 by 123outsource
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Finance & Accounting Outsourcing
Finance & Accounting Outsourcing (F&A outsourcing) represents a huge percentage of the global outsourcing revenue.  The US dominates Finance & Accounting outsourcing revenue, but the UK and Australia also do a lot of F&A outsourcing.  123outsource.net has many companies in India that specialize in various types of accounting and finance.  There are companies that specialize in UK  accounting that can computer your VAT tax, and other types of taxes as well. These companies can put together financial statements, spreadsheets, calculate sales taxes, income taxes and much more.  With the high cost of services in America, UK and Australia, outsourcing to India has become a popular way to save on expenses.  Many companies in India do a great job on various types of services, and in addition, offer fast turnaround which in many industries is virtually impossible in America.
Finance & Accounting is one of the fastest growing outsourcing industries, along with Legal Process Outsourcing and Pharmaceutical Research. Future growth of Indian companies in this industry rest in their communication and marketing strengths.  If they can successfully woo Western clients, and offer smooth interaction, and reliable work, companies in India will win over many Accounting and Finance contracts. Although there is a lot of global competition for any type of outsourcing work, India has their history of being colonized by the British in their favor.  The educated classes generally have a good command of English in India, not to mention a long standing cultural relationship with the UK and America!
I am wondering if all of the outsourcing to India will cause a general widespread reduction in hourly fees for Accounting and Finance services.  This happened in the IT industry about a decade or two ago due to mass outsourcing.  We will wait and see.  Let’s hope that India will save a few industries for the rest of us, otherwise we will all have to move to Bangalore!

Particular offices and how they effect your work

April 14, 2012 by 123outsource
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Offices and how they effect your work
 
I am unusual in that I work from home.  Of course, in today’s virtual world, more and more people are working from home as employees and freelancers. I own my own company and hire others who work from their home as well which is also unusual. Unfortunately, there is no way to keep an eye on employees working remotely, so you have to pay them by the job as sub-contractors which works well… generally…
 
But, I am thinking that at one point, I will need to get an office in able to be able to grow my company to the next level. I run several bustling online directories, and there is a lot of work involved. Having a few people in an office to do phone calls, emails, and database management would really help in the future.  Some people think that people work much better in an office environment. The focus is purely on work, and there are fewer distractions than being at home.  I think this is generally true, but we need to look at each environment one by one.
 
My visits to local Los Angeles office buildings – Downtown
I visited office buildings in many parts of Los Angeles, and the types of buildings were all very unique.  I started in downtown in a high-rise. They had special deals on office spaces as they had many empty units. They were in prime, A rated office space.  We were up on the 36th floor in a very professionally managed building with high security.  The small rooms with no windows on the inner side of the building were relatively cheap for the area starting around $600 per month.  But the nicer rooms with windows were much more expensive.  My main issue was air.  The air was recycled, and not fresh — with a low percentage of oxygen which is not tolerable if you have a heart condition.  I would suffocate if I worked there more than two hours.  I thought of bringing in many plants which would convert CO2 into Oxygen… I wonder if that would work.
 
Midtown -  a dream shared office
The next building was a shared office loft.  There were several companies with mini-suites there (no walls), and a whole bunch of entrepreneurs. The atmosphere was vibrant with creative energy and hard work.  I liked the manager very much, and the air was freshly pumped in from the room (the manager was the architect who designed the place).  Wow!  So, I went back and tried working there.  You can rent by the afternoon, day, week, or month at reasonable rates considering how attractive this place was.  I did 76 phone calls in two hours and five minutes. I’m not sure if that is a record, but my concentration was very good there, and lots of work got done!
 
Beverly Hills – a nightmare office
I saw a realtor near the border of Beverly Hills.  He was very nice and arrived early, and so did I.  However, the square footage of the office was not what the specifications said.  I learned that they include hall space in the specifications.  The building was really old and very unattractive.  But, at least the windows opened, so I could breath.  
 
Midtown again…
I saw a nice office with two rooms separated by a wall with a huge window.  I found that the size of the rooms wouldn’t meet my future needs. I needed the back room to be smaller since it would be for me personally, and the other room to be bigger as it would need to accomdate three people during peak usage…  
 
The 1920′s building.
This was a real cultural experience.  The landlord was really nice and showed me around. The entrance had a wonderful classic Spanish architecture and a domed arch near the entry.  The tenants were an ecclectic mix of creative people including a singing teacher, an acupuncturist, and many varieties of small business owners.  I thought it was a really interesting place. 
 
Conclusion
It is hard to determine where would be the best work environment and why.  But, the work environments were so diverse, that it was an interesting tour of my own city, that lead to my eyes being opened in new ways.  My favorite was the shared office.  But, in the long run, I’ll need to find that perfect office that is the perfect size and configuration.

How to test a software company

April 11, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: Software | Tagged | Leave a comment

How to test out a software company!
 
If you have important projects, you can not put them in the hands of strangers without taking a huge risk. Interviewing companies will only let you know how well a company presents themselves, and background checking companies may get you inconclusive information.  One problem is that you have to give your FTP codes to new software companies, but what if they are not reputable?  What if they take two months to do a week of work after a lot of cracking the whip to get them to do something?  What if they won’t let your site function without paying them some unreasonable sum of money? It is risky hiring programmers.   Additionally, once a company has your FTP codes, it takes time to have server admin people change the FTP codes and send it to the new party.  Many things can go wrong and the process that should have taken a day or two took close to two weeks to have the new party able to login with the server codes. 
 
So, what can you do?
I interviewed many software companies.  The problem is that when you talk to the salesperson, they always put on a good front, so that you will feel confident about their company when they might not even be able or willing to work with you. Salespeople will tell you any type of lie to get you on board, and then once you are involved, you will be talking to the technical manager, and will never hear from the salesperson again. 
 
Lesson #1 – never believe anything the salesperson tells you — no matter what.
 
The technical managers will tell you what they can’t do, and will tell you all of the limitations, and will very happy to reject you as a client.  Also, technical managers typically do not like people like me talking directly to their programmers.  My projects are complicated, and without direct communication, we will have a mess that you can’t believe.  It is better if I am sitting side by side with the programmer during the tricky part so we can get it right the first time, but programming folks like to keep their clients as distant as possible — why?
 
Lesson #2 – dig by asking questions.. see if their staff is really in America or somewhere else?
Even if you are in India, you need to know if you are dealing with a real company.  Visiting them before you hire them makes sense. If you see a big office with dozens of very busy looking people, that is a good sign.  If it is a small office, and there are only a few people who look sluggish, or are absent a lot of the time — watch out!  If they are hiding their office and don’t want you to come — AVOID these people.   Many American companies have back office workers in Vietnam, India, China, or somewhere else, but want to charge an American price.  You might as well deal directly with India yourself unless that company is a great intermediary.
 
Lesson #3 – don’t believe a company that says they want you as a client
I was told by a few companies that they were willing to work with me as a client.  Many were anxious to set up interviews, but the interviews led to them asking me lots of questions and me not knowing who they REALLY were.  I only knew how they presented themselves.  I was flat out rejected by the most expensive company I interviews during the interview.  It was insulting, but at least they didn’t play games.  Another company said they wanted to work with me.  However, when I called for more information there were problems.  I could only get the information from Amanda, but whenever I called, Amanda was either out for the day, at lunch or at a meeting. This company refused to let anyone else answer my questions.  Finally after trying Amanda four times, I was told that I was not “A good fit” for the company.  I spent half a million in programming in the last decade. I’m not sure which part of half a million is not a good fit even for a fancy company.
 
Lesson #4 – Test them out on the phone
Many people at software companies are lazy and unresponsive by phone.  Call people and ask them to call you back and see what happens.  If they leave you high and dry now, you can rest assured that you will be left high and dry after you hire them and they have your FTP codes.  Call companies up and ask for information — see how fast they get back to you if at all.  Ask for an appointment to work on a small project to test them out.  See how long it takes them to call back.  Or, better yet, ask for the programmer to personally call you at a specific date and time.  Most programmers would not pick up a phone if they had a gun pointed at their head.  You can learn a lot by asking people to lift a finger and putting the ball in their court.
 
Lesson #5 – Have them do a small project
You don’t really know someone unless you have done activities with them. You can find out people’s quirks, and how cooperative or helpful they are if you do a mini-project with them.  If they are reliable on a small project, then try them out on a bigger project, and keep it growing.  You are in trouble if you have a huge project that you are desperate to finish, because programmers are typically busy and don’t have time to give you more than a few hours per week.
 
Lesson #6 – Consult a psychic
It is hard to know who to use.  Sometimes a good psychic can steer you away from a bad situation.
 
Good luck — you’ll need it!

Programmers and their speed of work

April 8, 2012 by 123outsource
Categories: Software | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Programmers and their speed of work
 
I have had the pleasure or displeasure of needing the services of many programmers in my lifetime.  They are all different in so many ways.  Some get back to you when they are supposed to while others leave you always wondering what their progress is, has been, or will be — if any.  In any case, I had spent too many years with the same programmers and noticed that one of them was pretty fast while the other was sometimes reasonably paced, and sometimes a little slow. I didn’t realize that the speed of  a programmer can vary much more than these two.
 
After this, one of the programmers got fired, and the other quit.  I was left high and dry. So, I tried some other programmers out, foolishly thinking that they would churn out work at a similar speed to the previous programmers.  The first one I hired took three times as long to do similar tasks as my previous programmer.  He used the excuse that he was not familiar with the coding of the site.  I tried another who took four times as long.  Familiar or not, I feel that maybe taking 50% longer makes sense but three or four times is ridiculous.  I don’t know who is right or wrong because I am not a programmer.  All I can say is that I would really like to have my old programmer back.
 
The moral of the story from a business standpoint is that you can NOT assign programming jobs to be billed by the hour, unless you are very familiar with the individual doing the work.  Otherwise, you can easily get crazy bills that are high because the programmer is slow, or perhaps they are padding their hours, or who knows what? It is not easy to say unless you know a person’s character or behavior. I only know the bottom line which is that I am being billed for far more hours than I feel is reasonable.
 
Additionally prices for programmers can range from $10-30 per hour in India and from $45-$180 in the United States.  The quality and speed of their work can really vary, and it is not easy to know how skilled an individual programmer is unless you really know them well and have worked with them extensively.  The best way to assess a programmer is to engage them in conversation, see how responsive they are about their work, and use your senses.  If you start having problems with their work, that might not show up for months, so in the beginnning — use your senses.

BPO and Social Collaboration

April 5, 2012 by 123outsource
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BPO and social collaboration
 
Do you use social collaboration to market your BPO or Call Center?  There are so many channels, mediums, or should we say avenues to do so these days.  There is Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and more… But, who do you attract, and which channels are most effective for you?
 
The key here is to have materials that people like to read, and groups that are fun to interact with.  If you are running a BPO company offering certain types of services, and you have a Facebook profile that is more or less dead, then promoting it will be a waste.  But, what if you have fun and interesting topics of conversation regularly and draw an inspiring crowd?
 
Linked in is a way to network with others, and you can draw in a higher calliber of people using it too.  Twitter seems to be more gravitated towards people who want one way communication and quick tips. The attention span of many Twitter fans is not the highest. 
 
Blogging is the most fun way of intereacting with others even though it is mostly one way, people can write their commentary.
 
There is also collaboration between companies where relationships are formed.  They provide certain services which are not part of your core competency.
 
It is common to collaborate with workers who work remotely, or even might be in a foreign country.
 
In short, the modern business environment and BPO industry involves a lot of collaboration — at least if you want to be operating at maximum efficiency!