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If you have decided to outsource some of your CAD to an offshore service provider (”OSP”), it is important that you carefully evaluate your potential partner first. Outsource to them only if they successfully pass through your appraisal sieve. Here are some important evaluation criteria and methods for assessing them:

—> Criterion: The OSP Should Be Web-Savvy Check if the OSP has a website. If they do not, in all probability dealing with them will yield a bad experience. If they have a website, check whether their postal address and telephone number are displayed on it so that they are physically reachable.

Give the OSP credit if the website has mostly text with limited graphics, has almost no animation, clearly explains what the OSP is doing and is easy to navigate. This implies detailed knowledge on website design, which increases their ‘web-savvy’ rating.

Your CAD outsourcing is most probably going to involve transferring large amounts of data over the web. This calls for an OSP who is proficient with email. To evaluate this, send the OSP a message asking for more information and see if you get a response within 12 hours. The response should be perfectly focused on your question. You have to be careful an autoresponder (ie, a web-based answering machine) is not replying to you, so formulate your question to require a tailor-made reply.

Subsequently send two more questions related to the work you are considering giving the OSP. Check whether these responses too are timely and relevant. If the OSP has a form on their website for sending them email, give them extra points (smart webmasters do not put their email addresses on their websites to discourage spam robots from finding the addresses and sending junk mail to them).

—> Criterion: The OSP Should Have a Satisfactory Profile

Email the OSP a questionnaire that gathers a wide range of information on them. Decide whether you like what you find. This questionnaire should cover address information, telephone number of the individual dealing with you, company history, financial performance, references, specific CAD capabilities, track record, installed hardware, software platforms, manpower, HRD policies, data security and physical security. (If you would like to save the extended time and specialised labour involved in compiling such a questionnaire, you can buy a bank of 200+carefully formulated questions from The Magnum Group at http://themagnumgroup.net/cadques1.htm for under $15.)

Get in touch with some of their references and ask them whether they had a good experience with the concerned OSP.

—> Criterion: The OSP Should Know Their CAD

Now it’s time to ask them for a small paid sample, preferably a minor portion of a project you plan to outsource. Check if their output is satisfactory (you would know best about this). Evaluate whether they asked you all the questions they should have before they started drawing, which is a sign of good planning practice.

—> Criterion: The OSP Should Know Their Commercial Paperwork

Send them a detailed specification of the CAD work you want done and ask for a quotation. Evaluate their quotation based on whether it clearly describes technical scope, cost, delivery time, non-disclosure, modification costs, payment terms, guarantee and mode of payment. If all these topics are overed, you are probably talking to someone with commercial competence — good!

—> Criterion:Be Satisfied with the Contact Person

Phone this person and chat briefly with him/her. Decide whetheryou feel he/she is competent and easy to deal with.

~~~ The Evaluation’s Over: Now What? ~~~

By now you have an idea of how good the OSP is. Start by sending them a modest assignment. Don’t be worried if there are many technical questions: these should decrease as the OSP does more assignments for you. But that’s not all. Careful selection of offshore CAD service providers is not the only factor involved in successful offshore CAD outsourcing. A major cause of outsourcing breakdown is the client’s failure to manage the ongoing process. There is a lot to be said here; it will all emerge in my next article — stay tuned!

About The Author

Lakshman Balaraman, MS (University of Michigan), B Tech (IIT), runs an architectural and engineering design firm, The Magnum Group, India (http://themagnumgroup.net), that provides CAD drafting services to the global marketplace. You can freely reprint his articles in your website, ezine, or ebook.

Studies have shown that educational software is very effective enhancing the quality of teaching and helping students comprehends on a higher level. The software is widely available covering subjects like math, science, language and art.

What is educational software?

Educational software generally refers to software that can be used by both students and teachers to augment traditional teaching and learning tools. Nowadays, educational software is indispensable in learning environments, as it allows both educators and pupils to make best use of the educational functions of the computer.

What are the kinds of educational software?

Educational software can be categorized into content-free educational software, and content-rich educational software. Both are very effective teaching and learning tools when used correctly.

Content-free software refers to ‘open-ended’ software products that allow for user creativity. Examples of such software are graphics and word processing programs. Many educational specialists consider it as being ‘more flexible,’ because it allows teachers and students to generate their own content.

This kind of educational software is ideal for more advanced classes, such as creative writing. Teachers have to select educational word processing programs that contain limited menu options (no ’spell check,’ for example), while supporting a variety of graphic, font and sound file formats. There is educational word processing software that allows auditory feedback, usually used in schools for challenged students.

Other types of content-free software include imaging software and photo sharing software.

Content-rich software, on the other hands, refers to commercially-produced educational software that contains multimedia content such as animation, graphics, sound and video. The information contained in this educational software is usually presented in a very structured manner. Other popular forms of content-rich educational software include science-simulation programs and multimedia encyclopedias.

The increase of human capital in developing countries has impacted the United State’s workforce through domestic firms’ increasing overseas subcontracting. The industries specializing in information technology have been utilizing this increase of foreign human capital the most. From a study of 179 IT managers a reported 69% outsource their information technology services (Outsourcing statistics). This extremely high number shows the trend of the industry, and if countries like India, who is becoming the forerunner of outsource operations, continue to become more efficient and economical, that number may become even higher. The question is whether or not the foreign IT service providers can keep up with estimated growth, or if poor infrastructures will fall the massive flow of work into their sectors.

According to a new study, as a result of increased foreign subcontracting, the information technology industry has lost 403,300 jobs from the start of the recession in March 2001 to April 2004. Nearly half of those jobs were lost after the recession’s official end. This has left thousands of experienced IT professionals at the waysides of their dominatingly efficient foreign counterparts. What makes the foreign IT firms more economical to upper management is their ability to undercut domestic work by accepting lower than industry standard wages while also maintaining an extremely efficient firm (Frauenheim).

The largest player of IT service outsourcing operations is India. The number of developers in India who service primarily US markets is 250,000. This makes them a significant contributor to the total number of programmers a company has to draw form. In the United States there are about 500,000 developers, where roughly half are in product development. This makes the Indian programmer pool equal to the available domestic programming pool. India’s impact on domestic IT employees is that there has been a decline in the wage rate of developers who are still employed. Indian software exporters offer development services which are an easy target for subcontracting. The nature of these development services is very impersonal and hands off as far as management is concerned. Once a project is given, all that matters is the finished working product. India’s IT firms fill this requirement perfectly, and for the right price (Dossani).

So far the growth of IT jobs in India has been staggering. Industry experts predict that by 2015, subcontracting by US companies would represent $135 billion in wages and 3.3 million professional jobs (Gartner Group). New players are evolving every day. “Countries like Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Mexico are looking to take some of the outsourcing market share away from India in the coming years” (Gartner Group). Indian software exports alone exceeded 17 billion last year, representing a four billion increase in one year (Gartner Group). These massive increases have some analysts worried about how specifically India’s already poor infrastructure will hold up to the increasing demand for technical services.

The Indian hub of the IT services boom is undoubtedly Bangalore. Large IT firms have built huge developments in “Electronics City,” a few miles out of town. Some of these developments are as modern and efficient as the United States counterpart of Silicon Valley. They include state-of-the-art remote network-management systems and cappuccino bars. However, Bangalore’s infrastructure is beginning to waver after years of intense expansion. Nonetheless, foreign firms are continuing “to pour in at the rate of three a week” (The Bangalore Paradox). Now Indian IT professionals, with their newly found wealth, have continually been buying motorcycles and cars adding 900 a day to the already overcrowded streets (The Bangalore Paradox). This has made the simple process of commuting a major problem. The poor road systems make a small 7 mile drive take roughly an hour to complete. Other problems include “a water shortage, inadequate sewers, and an erratic power supply” (The Bangalore Paradox). Samuel Paul of the Public Affairs Centre, an office that reviews the government’s performance, says it shows that a few months of neglect are enough to reverse years of improvement. After hearing the very negative signals about Bangalore that the government released, many city workers stopped bothering to do their jobs. This has resulted in “total urban chaos” (The Bangalore Paradox).

The “total urban chaos” has not boded well for the IT firms of Bangalore. Unreliable power and other problems can sometimes make development times longer than anticipated. As a result, a “survey of 25 large organizations with a combined $50 billion in outsourcing contracts found that 70% have had negative experiences with outsourcing projects and are now taking a more cautious approach. One in four companies has brought outsourced functions back in-house and nearly half have failed to see the cost savings they anticipated as a result of outsourcing” (Gartner Group). Also, a reported 20% of outsourcing deals do not produce cost savings while 10% of those deals actually wind up increasing costs. In 2005 alone, 50% of all outsourcing projects will not deliver their expected value and will be labeled unsuccessful (Gartner Group). The question is whether or not India and other offshore IT firms will continue to be reliable and handle the high growth rates, or will the outsourcing simply be seen as a trend that will pass and lead to the recreation of the thousands of domestic IT jobs.

Contrastingly, another viewpoint is that the potential of foreign IT development and other outsourcing operations is limitless. The extent of growth and production shown to date with sub par infrastructure points to the potential once the infrastructure becomes more stable. More business opportunities are opening every day, including “processing insurance claims; desktop publishing; the remote management and maintenance of IT networks; compiling audits; completing tax returns; transcribing medical records; financial research and analysis,” that can be all effectively outsourced (The Bangalore paradox). Stefan Spohr of A.T. Kearney, an Indian consulting firm, remarked “we have barely scratched the surface” (The Bangalore paradox). Major US corporations are beginning to move the majority of their workforce to India and other countries. General Electric’s “70-70-70″ plan is an example of this. GE plans to outsource “70 percent of its head count, push 70 percent of that outsourcing offshore and locate 70 percent of its workers in India.” Such inclusive plans are the main concern of domestic IT workers and a reported 26% of companies already using offshore services expect to double their spending in the in 2006 (Gartner Group).

Domestically, many of the professionals whose jobs are at risk, reported by the University of California-Berkeley to be as many as 14 million, are trying to make themselves perceivably more valuable and efficient to management in an attempt to prevent their entire departments from being outsourced (Gartner Group). Their aim is to create more willingness to work with other domestic technology solution providers in an attempt to become more economical. This would help eliminate or at least reduce the temptation to subcontract the entire IT process overseas (Vizard 20). By working more closely with other local IT providers and developers, a domestic firm can become much more knowledgeable about every new IT innovation. They can also respond to problems faster. Those are the two keys to creating a more efficient economical IT model which is what executives seek in times of moderate economic growth (Vizard 20-1). However, if sub par overseas infrastructure becomes more adequate, the already economical option of outsourcing will become even more efficient for corporations. The fate of US outsourcing relies mainly on the quality, security, and timeliness of foreign work. If overseas firms can keep up with demand, domestic professionals may find themselves in much more trouble.

Works Cited

Dossani, Rafiq. “The Impact of Services Offshoring.” Asia-Pacific Research Center. Stanford University. Available at: http://www.unifi.it/eaae/cpapers/24%20Dossani.pdf.

Fannin, Rebecca. “India’s Outsourcing Boom.” Chief Executive. May 2004. Available at: http://www.chiefexecutive.net/depts/outsourcing/198.htm.

Frauenheim, Ed. “Study 400,000 IT jobs lost since 2001.” 14 Sept. 2004. Accessed: 10 May 2005. Available at: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9589_22-5364627.html.

Gartner Group, Hewitt Study, META Group, Harvard Business School, et al. “Statistics Related to Offshore Outsourcing.” 28 April 2005. Available at: http://www.rttsweb.com/services/outsourcing/stats.cfm.

“Outsourcing statistics.” 8 May 2005. Available at: http://www.bellsoftinc.com/outsourcing_s_method.asp.

Vizard, Michael. “Common Cause.” CRN 2 May 2005: 20-21.

“The Bangalore paradox.” Economist. 23 April 2005: 67-70.

Patrick Flaherty
ClassNotesOnline. Click for a free resource for teacher websites

The destruction of the Soviet Union about 15 years ago, made a huge country with a great level of IT science divided into small bricks. Nowadays, despite Russia’s expansion into the world software development market, Ukraine keeps playing an important role here too. There are several prerequisites for this.

Prerequisites

Traditionally, Ukraine always was a technical region of the USSR. No wonder, the IT education was and still is one of the most popular and respective education in the region. Such well-known Ukrainian universities as Kyiv National Technical University, Donetsk National Technical University etc. as well as new establishments with more innovative approach for IT specialists education, such as Donetsk State Institute of Artificial Intelligence and others, educate a new prospective generation of young IT professionals, ambitious and purposeful.

It’s obvious, Ukrainian students win in international contests, and show true professionalism and ability to enter a business life immediately, hence, to play the first fiddle in the labour market. As the latest example, one can remember students of Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics that became first place winners of the International Web Development Contest (I.C.W.D.I.C. 2005) held by XITEX Software Company in spring 2005.

That is why governments of European countries encourage Ukrainian programmers to come and to work there. Germany is the best example of a country that understands all pros and cons of Ukrainian IT professional, thus it’s the country that sees its benefits of employing Ukrainian programmers.

Another one important factor is the cost of labour. In Ukraine, usual hourly rates for programmers are $10-$15. Although they are little bigger than Indian ones, they are still 1.5 times lesser than Russian ones and several times lesser than American or European costs. If you consider the high level of professionalism and responsibility, then you add a European mind and time zone, plus a fluent English of the most of IT people, you realize that Ukraine is that happy medium each company looks for. Hence, many companies that outsource have already realized it.

Ukraine’s Prospects

Due to the Market Visio’s research http://research.aventures.biz/eng/result.html, the volume of Ukrainian IT-services export in 2003 was estimated to be $70M, 40% more in comparison with 2002. The market prospects for 2005 were to be $150M; that is three times more in three years.

There are about 300 public companies that work for export. They are located mainly in big cities such as Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk etc. There are also a huge amount of groups of professionals who are mainly engaged in export on a level of freelancers. The total number of IT specialists engaged in IT-export services was about 10,000 in 2003 and grew considerably during next years.

Everything mentioned above shows that Ukraine has great prospects to become and equal player to the most known leaders of the market. Its well-developed IT infrastructure, level of services, and professionalism of programmers made Ukrainian companies able to compete for complex and complicated projects with other well-known developers. There are several companies that invest in their own software solutions and market them internationally with success. However, all of them are engaged into smaller or bigger software development projects as subcontractors.

The next step of Ukrainian gait into the world IT market seems to be a wide establishment of offshore development centers based on currently existing software development companies. Prerequisites are obvious:

1. Ukrainian IT companies have whole infrastructure required to develop reliable custom application and deliver it in time.

2. The gross yearly expenditure per one programmer will vary from $20,000 to $30,000.

3. Ukraine’s time zone is GMT +02:00. Hence, all programmers and project managers will be available on daytime for any European company.

The only thing remains to be done, though. Ukrainian IT companies are making only their first steps in self-promotion. The more professional they become in this field, the more obvious it would be that Ukraine becomes a competitive player on the world software outsourcing market.

Alex Polonski is a Senior Sales Manager at XITEX Software Company, Ukraine. The company works in offshore software development market since 1999 and has a fair expertise in J2EE and .NET technologies. Among company’s own-developed and marketed solutions, one can see a J2EE content management system, Xitex WebContent M1.

Let me introduce you to David. David is an expert. He lives on a beautiful farm in Spain. David is an expert in many things: almond growing, sheep herding, and wild boar rustling are just a few.

But most importantly David is an expert Chumbos harvester.

What’s a Chumbos? A Chumbos is more commonly known as a prickly pear.

The Chumbos tree grows rapidly in the southern parts of Spain, where it turns waste products (pooh to me and you) into fabulous fruit.

My husband Marcus and I went to visit David to marvel at his expertise. Now, David had told us how wonderful this fruit tasted, and I couldn’t wait to try it out.

In my infinite wisdom, I grabbed a prickly pear off the tree.

But here’s the problem, it’s not called a prickly pear for nothing. It’s prickly! It does what it says on the packet.

There are tiny pricks of excruciating pain - hundreds of them. They break off when touched and leave their length in your skin. They are almost impossible to remove as they are so fine.

You have 1000s of nerve endings per square centimetre of flesh in your finger tips. It felt like every nerve ending on mine was on fire. I threw the pear to the floor and ran around the farm screaming - followed by a cacophony of farm yard animals.

Well as you can imagine this attracted the attention of David. Did I tell you he was an expert?

Well he quickly appraised the situation (as experts do) and calmly removed the prickles. He then took me by my other hand (the good one) and introduced me to his tool.

It’s a great big stick! About 6 feet long, with 6 inches of drainpipe lashed to the end to form a kind of “T”.

David then proceeded to show me how you use this ingenious tool. You lean precariously over into the Chumbos trees and balance on one foot. You shove the stick into the Chumbos and hook a pear with the drainpipe. Then with a twisting action you detach a pear and throw it (in one action) onto the ground.

You then roll the pear around on the ground with your foot (obviously whilst wearing shoes) which has the miraculous effect of removing all the annoying prickles. You can then pick up the pear and with a rusty penknife (that appeared from the depths of David’s pocket) you can cut open the fruit and get to the sweet bit - delicious!

David is an expert.

You should always listen to experts. They’re the ones who tell you what can’t be done and why and then go ahead and do it anyway.

My husband Marcus tried this not long afterwards…

Unfortunately he isn’t an expert!

Learning From Others

So, what can we learn from David & Marcus that helps us understand why outsourcing is really great?

It can be painful doing it yourself

When you tackle a task that you’ve never encountered before you may make mistakes. It’s incredibly difficult knowing what’s right for your business if you’ve never done this before. The pain can be simply wasting time - but quite often it can be the pain of wasting money AND losing opportunities. Can you afford to lose time, money and business opportunities?

You don’t always get what you wanted

A poke in the eye with a sharp stick! The skills required to ensure a successful business are wide and varied. At first you’ll be doing everything yourself, but as your client’s requirements change and you need to adapt to meet their needs, you need to surround yourself with people who deliver results. When you develop your business yourself you only have your own resources to call upon which quite often leads to fewer opportunities for your business.

There are steps in the process

If growing a business is something new to you, you may not be fully aware of the different steps involved in the process. It’s important that the steps are carried out in the right order at the right time to ensure success. There are steps in every specialist skill that a growing business requires. How can you know what they all are?

There are skills involved

You may have never even heard of some of the skills required to grow a successful business. The terminology may be strange or new. Ensuring the availability of the right skill at the right time will make sure your business will make you money or save you money.

There are tools involved

The tools may appear strange or arcane - but these are the tools used by professionals. Tools that ensure the validity of your web pages so that the whole world can see them; tools that create pictures that tell a thousand words; tools that measure the effectiveness of your hard work; and tools that manage your database of prospects, moving them through the pipeline.

You need expertise AND experience

But most importantly, you need expertise and experience. The experience to know what tool is needed and at what stage. The experience to know what strategy will work best without lengthy trial and error. The experience to know how to move prospects through your pipeline and ensure they contact you. The experience that only comes from having been there and done this before.

So, what skills do you have in-house? It’s important to understand where your skills and knowledge can be used to best effect. Will your time be used at a strategic level - or will you get down to some hands-on tactics? If you don’t have the skills in your own team, where will you get them from?

This skills gap needs to be thoroughly inspected. You need to be honest with yourself. This could be a costly mistake if you get it wrong.

Speak Soon,

‘Dangerous’ Debbie Jenkins
debs@debbiejenkins.com

(c) Copyright 2005 www.BookShaker.com

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