Satyam Computer Services, the scandal-ridden solution provider based in India, this week unveiled a marketing overhaul intended to function as the rebirth of the company.

In April, Tech Mahindra agreed to purchase 31 percent of Satyam’s shares, resulting in an infusion of $351 million (U.S.) into the beleaguered Indian outsourcing firm. At the beginning of the year, the former chairman of Satyam confessed to $1 billion in fraud. B. Ramalinga Raju, his brother Rama Raju, Chief Financial Officer Srinivas Vadlamani, and two Price Waterhouse auditors have been charged with forgery and falsification of Satyam accounts and for causing disappearance of evidence.

This week, the firm unveiled its new brand identity, “Mahindra Satyam.” The logo takes a cue from Mahindra’s current design.

So you can see how a deep belief in reincarnation can actually help Indian outsourcing companies!

The rate is a very reasonable $10 per hour and most 3D models were taking between 10 and 16 hours. This makes game outsourcing to China an important competitive consideration, especially if you’re in a competitive field (and who isnt?).

My new project (RiftForge) doesn’t require 3D, so I had to pass. Fortunately, I found the best 2D talent to be in Indonesia. Stay tuned for an update.

The ruling Communist party (I mean Workers party!) is the undisputed leader. Less than 20% of the candidates are NOT members of the Communist Party, so the result cannot be that surprising.

In the mean time, courts have put on trial and jailed a number of political activists and journalists. Two of them were occused of attempts to sabotage the elections.

It’s not cleat what these elections will mean for the thousands of businesses who have invested in Vietnam on the promise of a liberlized market. Intel has already committed to build a billion-dollar chip factory.

One thing is certain – whatever the Communists decide to do, they better not scare these investors. China is a good example of a roaring economy with waving red flags.

Game outsourcing has been here ever since Ultima Online came out more than a decade ago. Diablo 2 item trading was quite a big business but recently eBay banned the auctions of virtual goods.

BBC has an article on the implications of game outsourcing, here’s a few quotes:

Qin Shen, who works for a company called Ucdao.com, says: “Many white collar workers want to improve their character on their own, but they do not have much time. They need to go to work in the day and they don’t have the energy to improve at night, so they need someone else to play for them.”

But to say this is hugely controversial among the game’s community is putting it mildly. I posted a message on one website asking for people who buy gold to get in touch – and got a number of quite hostile responses.

Eventually, I did find someone who had bought gold.

“I have a life outside of the game that’s certainly much more important, so the few precious hours I do get to play on my game I don’t want to spend doing the same thing over and over again to get in-game money, when I could just buy that and do the stuff in-game that I actually enjoy,” he said.

A new wave of game outsourcing has sprung - mainly on the back of MMOs and has risen to prominence with Blizzard’s blockbuster MMO – World of Warcraft.

The game has claimed seven million lives so far and a whole cottage industry has emerged that delivers simple services and virtual items to the players.

The bulk of the people who procure the items are based in China. In fact, this is the way many people in China are able to pay for the game – by acquiring items and gold and then selling them for real money.

The phenomenon has become so wide spread that Chinese “farmers” are subject of abuse on many servers. The main reason for the special attitude towards “farmers” comes from the fact that they would indiscriminantly collect any rare resources they can lay their hands on – leaving other players empty handed waiting for a re-spawn.

While this isn’t traditional outsourcing, it follows the same model. Looking at it, there might be a niche for an European player in this hot virtual items market.

I haven’t heard of Bulgarian farmers though… maybe it’s just a matter of time before some of us return to our agrarian roots!

The solution? Outsource the government to India!

Here’s how the idea was born:

It’s common knowledge that all major government decisions in the United States are made via a process that Thomas Jefferson described in the constitution as “lobbyists bribing weasels.” Voters attempt to solve this problem by electing the weasels who do the best job lying about their intentions to change the system. So far, this hasn’t worked.

That’s why we need to outsource the important decisions to India. I’m sure a consulting firm in India could help the United States come up with a coherent energy policy, a plan for universal health care, a cure for global warming, and an anti-terrorism plan.

In addition to his musings, Scott has a special Q&A session that is a must-read.

Distribution of investments (number of)

• Romania – 40%
• Bulgaria – 25%
• Turkey – 20%
• Serbia – 9%
• Greece – 4%

The survey also asked investors which factors need to be improved. Here’s the investor wishlist:

• Infrastructure – logistics & telco
• Political stability
• Following EU standards
• Simplifying administration
• Quality of life

Admittedly, outsourcing attracts only a small part of the direct investments but my guess is the investor wishlist is almost 100% identical regardless of sector.
 

The reasons are endless, some people prefer to outsource their work in order to spend more free time, others are not qualified to do the work and therefore outsource the work to professionals. Major companies on the other hand outsource some of their work to specialists in order to focus on their goals and get more work done by employees.

As an example imagine the benefits you will receive by outsourcing your graphic design work to professional companies. For one thing you don’t have to worry and stress yourself on how you are going to get the work done when you yourself are not a graphics designer. This practice also saves you plenty of time, the number one reason is because qualified professionals will be doing your work and they can create five different varieties of a logo for you to choose the one you like. If you tried to this you would spend weeks just educating yourself on how to use the program.

Another great benefit is the value for money you get. As in the previous example you can have a professional company create you varieties of a logo design you want and then you choose the one that most appeals to you. Any changes can be done in minutes. This can cost you anywhere from $50 to $200, which is relatively cheap considering the amount of time you save and the quality of the work that you get.

If you were to embark on this task by yourself you would in the least need to spend $400 for a good piece of software that can handle all your graphics work such as Illustrator or Coral Draw. The training would cost you another $600 depending on how fast and in depth the course is and it will take some time before you can produce pieces of graphics work that look professional.

Another of the benefits, and this is sometimes the number one reason why people choose to outsource their work is because, you give out the task and responsibility to professionals to handle it. Those who take on the work are usually specialized, qualified and trained just for this specific task. A graphics design company hires professionally qualified graphic designers to do the work. Companies will outsource all their graphics work to such a company because they already have the expertise necessary to get the job done quickly even if it costs a couple of thousand dollars, it remains much cheaper than setting up a completely new department just for graphics. Hiring a graphics designer alone will cost the company loads in the long run even when work is scarce.

Outsourcing work such as graphics or whatever it maybe does have it’s huge benefits, when time is a constraint, and the need of professional quality work is a must, then handing the job and the responsibility over to a professional is the better choice.

About The Author
Julia Raven specialises in Writing Articles about http://www.LogoDesignTeam.com, Graphic Design and Outsourcing. She also maintains a http://www.BestLogoCreators.com where you can get the complete List of Logo Designers in 1 place.

It’s a 45-minute video so take your time!

In fact, any delay of project not only causes inconvenience but also affect operation and benefit of firms. If a new business can’t be put out into marker by reasons of not ready for its software or information related, and others occupy the opportunity, how it will affect the firm. Or a project is developed for simplify internal workflow and improve work efficiency, then delays of the project will prolong the operational choke point and increase operational costs. All these affect a lot on benefits of company directly or indirectly, not merely on the matter if investment will increase or reduce?

However, in Europe and America, outsourcing projects are mainly accounted by actual numbers of work days, so it will impel to overspend if project is delayed.In this case, to avoid project delay is an important target to judge management capability of project manager. Project managers have to monitor schedules and risks of outsourcing project effectively to avoid delay of project and extra development charges. We can learn this management idea to manage outsourcing projects in China to guarantee that project can be achieved before deadline.

1. Establish Our Own Project Plan

As a project manager, you can not adopt project plan of outsourcing provider completely and chuckle to yourself to pass over project planning. Even if it is an outsourcing project, you have to make a full project plan by yourself, then you will know exactly about the whole workloads, evaluate the price to negotiate with outsourcing provider, ensure technicians who will be involved, judge if outsourcing provider can provide sufficient resources and if the promised time is feasible.

Having made the project plan, firms should require outsourcing provider to provide a full development plan before starting the project. In order to avoid numerous paperwork, some outsourcing provider usually claim that the plan provided before signing contract is the whole project plan. This tell us that they have no system of integrity on development management and project management?and their project manager is not suitable for his job. Any employable project manager should realize that the preliminary plan for delivering the project made in period of contract negotiation can’t be all-around, and it needs modification to be a feasible plan according to actual contents of the contract, add actual workloads, assignment of resources, and time required.

After getting the project plan from outsourcing provider, we need compare and check it with our own plan carefully to understand if it tallies with requirements of the project, that is workflow of the whole project, contents, estimated workloads and arrangement of resources. It is necessary to clarify timely and make it acceptable to each other if there are obvious difference. The project will be started formally after the project plan of outsourcing provider has been confirmed, and now it’s time to monitor the project.

2. Concerned On Evaluating the Schedule

Outsourcing contract should ask outsourcing provider to provide schedule reports regularly. I have seen many project schedule reports, and they are different a lot in contents, however, most of them explain definitely which parts have been completed, which parts are going on, which parts will be taken up in next report period, and whether the work has been completed on time or not, even more, some use different colors such as red, yellow and green to show status of progress.Basically speaking, all these information can only allow directors to see the project roughly?but can’t make the project manager hold the schedule of the project in hand.

In my opinion, the best way is that we should know how many tasks have not been finished, how long they will be complete, which parts have not start and will they start as scheduled, and is there any change on planned resources. If answers are different from original plan, we are supposed to question ourselves immediately, find out main reasons why the task haven’t been finished or why not start according to the schedule. Consequently we can discuss it with outsourcing provider, how to bring the project into normal schedule. Such finished tasks have become history to us and they have little effect on the schedule of the project. The parts haven’t been completed or haven’t start are the key of project, and they are in need of monitoring in particular

We need confirm the schedule reports offered by outsourcing provider to make sure if tasks have been actually finished as planned. The best way is when each program module is finished, we need let outsourcing provider to list original codes and testing results of the program. And let technicians and user representatives check the results to confirm that work provided by outsourcing provider has been finished in fact. This procedure of confirmation doesn’t mean we do not trust outsourcing provider. We simply want to confirm if the schedules of the project have been finished as planned, and ensures the person in charge is able to report to boss about the accurate status of the schedule.

3. Closely Associated When Checking and Accepting

The biggest risk of the software outsourcing project is not in development progress, but appears after the project has been finished.Many of them often turn up problems in program logic or editing range of data entry during checking and accepting period, which result in differences between testing result and real requirement, outsourcing provider cannot but modify a lot to result in project delay. Sometimes, outsourcing provider complains that it ’s not their fault. Avoiding these risks, you’d better check and accept the project at the same time of developing, but not to do it until tasks have been closed.

It is not a proper idea that some firms put it as a last work to check and accept. Checking and accepting of project should be on it’s way, begins and ends at the same time of project development, and then can make sure the final procedure of checking and accepting successful. Another mistake in software development is to ask developer to create testing data for module testing and system testing.

Technician have limited knowledge of business operation, and only users know ranges of these datas and what information of the data is accurate. Therefore, an experienced project manager usually asks user representatives to assist its module and system testing in project process, and establish testing data for technician testing. Testing data of every module are offered by users. To prevent us from disputing, outsourcing project is suggested to test with this method. When outsourcing provider delivers original codes list and testing report of each module, users and technicians of firm check it together, and guarantee the results consistency between testing and users’ data, and at last check and accept the system successfully, and cause no fatal delay.

4. Distributing Time in Reason

It is more complicated to manage an outsourcing project than develop it internal, and more milestones are necessary to be established to monitor the schedule of the project.More communication and negotiation are needed; firm members should cooperate with the schedule of outsourcing provider constantly and supply with data needed for testing, all these will be handled in extra time.

Generally speaking, it supposes that an internal project will be completed in 500 workdays, 50~75 workdays are for project management, about 10%~15% of the entire workloads. And the same 500 workdays of outsourcing project needs another 75~110 extra days to manage this project. In other words, it takes 15%~22% of workloads for firms to manage outsourcing provider. Certainly, these data are only for reference for software development outsourcing projects, every project and outsourcing provider have difference management requirements. However, it is an unchangeable rule of project management, we can not think that outsourcing allows us have no management requirement .

About The Author
Steven ZHAO is a MBA and CTO of http://BPWork.com Info-Tech Co.,Ltd, An offshore outsourcing IT services and software development Company in China & Australia specializing in Data entry and processing, Software development, Software testing, Database support, Website design,Softwareocalization,Multimedia localization and BPO.