By: Shaun Parker
Quite often, when corporations consider the possibility of doing some or all of their software development offshore (typically in Eastern Europe or India), the decision is made without considering all of the factors necessary to arrive at the best decision.

With companies that already have internal development capability, careful consideration needs to be given to the strategic importance that this capability provides. Unfortunately, in many companies executive management often misunderstands the process of software development. They frequently view the software engineering community and its professionals as a management challenge and the product that they produce as a commodity without regard to the value proposition that this capability can deliver.

The promise of lower hourly rates with offshore development is typically the “public” justification given for considering the possibility of going offshore, but often the true financial comparison is not given much more consideration than this simple comparison. This promise, combined with the desire to unburden the organization of internal development groups, forms the basis for sending the work offshore.

However, deeper consideration can often show that the perceived advantage quite often is not realized and that the organization could suffer in the long haul. The strategic importance of the software product being developed internally can often dwarf the perceived short term savings of a lower hourly rate. In addition, frequently the lower offshore rate does not result in lower overall development costs.

I recently did an analysis for a company that had multiple in-house development groups and one group that used offshore development exclusively. The organization claimed that the cost savings realized going offshore was substantial, based on the fact that the offshore company charged about $18 per hour, while the in-house groups had a “rate” calculated at over $60 per hour.

In reality, a comparison of total development cost as a percentage of the sales generated in each group revealed a different conclusion. The group doing development offshore had a development expense as a percent of sales that was over two times the groups using internal development resource. So not only was the company not saving money with the offshore resource, but also they also truly did not understand the total picture that made up their development expenses.

So in this scenario, what were the factors that were overlooked?

* Less overhead for internal developers—typically, the relationship with offshore developers requires extremely detailed specifications in order to communicate the software product being developed. While specs are necessary with internal development teams, the team can afford less rigor in this area, as issues are more easily resolved locally.

* The proximity of the development team to the “internal” customer (i.e. Sales, Marketing, Product Management) makes an iterative development process during the design/development portion of the project efficient and effective.

* Typically, an internal development team has knowledge of the industry, the channel, and the customer that the product is being developed for. This knowledge improves efficiency, accuracy, and ultimately provides value that is difficult or impossible for an offshore developer to deliver.

* Qualifying the software product with the customer (assuming the customer is in the U.S.) can also be lead to more logistics difficulty, additional communication between the client and offshore developer, and overall less efficiency.

Costs aside, the organization looking for an offshore solution must also consider a host of other factors regarding intellectual property security, potential legal issues with export control policies, and potential difficulties with project oversight.

Rather than focus on cost, the organization dependent on software products may receive a larger payback from more focus on the benefits their internal team can deliver in terms of innovation and the strategic value that their current organization can deliver. Software development is by nature an experimental and iterative process—organizations should not only accept this fact, but they should embrace it as a competitive advantage in an ever-increasing world of “me too” thinking.
About the Author:
The author is a Writer working with a leading software development company, which deals with software outsourcing, offshore outsourcing and offshore software development. Get more valuable information at http://www.a1technology.com
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By: Manjotkamal Manu
As per a write-up on Computer Partners “India’s software and services exports are estimated to grow by 32 percent to US$23.4 billion” in the fiscal year ending March 31, according to data released Thursday by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM).

IT services, including software development, are expected to contribute $13.2 billion to exports in the current fiscal year, while business process outsourcing (BPO) and call centers are likely to contribute $6.3 billion, according to NASSCOM in Delhi. Engineering services, research and development (R&D) services, and product development work are expected to contribute another $3.9 billion.

The total Indian software and services industry, including sales to the domestic market, is estimated to grow during the fiscal year by about 31 percent to US$29.5 billion.

Employment in the country’s software and services sector is likely to reach 1.3 million by March 31, according to NASSCOM, of which about 922,000 are employed in the export sector.

India’s outsourcing industry is riding a boom in outsourcing. A report released in December by management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and NASSCOM was upbeat about the prospects for India’s outsourcing industry. India can sustain its global leadership position in offshoring, and grow its IT and BPO industries at an annual rate of over 25 percent to generate export revenues of about $60 billion in 2010, the report said. Some keywords related to this are :

Outsourcing software development to India, outsourcing software industry, it outsourcing India, application development outsourcing, outsourcing India, offshore outsourcing to India

Off-shoring / Outsourcing is an in the face reality of the 21st century, but fewer than 200,000 American jobs lost to India in a presidential election year experiencing a low job growth has proven highly controversial. Yet, more and more stock market analysis to computer software development and troubleshooting service jobs are being off-shored / outsourced by US companies to India and other low-wage countries. Clearly, it makes economic sense to pay middle-class salaries rangingfrom $2,000 to $7,000 a year in these countries, opposed to paying the same amount per month for the same work in USA.
About the Author:
manjot kamal working in a1 technology as SEO analyst. To know more about this plz. visit: http://www.offshoreoutsourcingworld.com
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Submitted by aisha.danna 

Your website is your link and representative to the world. An elegant building in a prime location of the city is a matter of pride for the owner. Location, design architecture, aesthetics and usability quotient of the edifice go a long way in creating an overall impression and relevance of the build. Your site on the web, as your representative, should incorporate the best of design, content, navigation and accessibility. Apart from all these, there are aspects of website development which need to be taken care of to suit your business needs.

Functionality of a website is not just limited to building brand image but extends to being a tool of operating business. Primary aim of a website is to fetch more business and a lot of planning goes in to achieving that aim. Though the business experts may-be, have the knowledge and know-how of the business, even then there is a need to outsource web site design, development, and maintenance as it is a highly specialized task involving a team of experts from various fields like software development, graphics, content development, conceptualizing and visualizing. Hiring all these people for the development of a websites of a single company will be very expensive, however, web site design and development companies like ePurple Media, through economies of scale, can provide best services in a cost effective manner.

Essentials of a website design will include an appropriate color scheme (which would incorporate not only aesthetics but brand building aspects too), navigation, display, graphics development using 3D and 2D software, brand building, content designing etc. Developing will incorporate programming (PHP, Coldfusion, JAVA, HTML) may be even developing an operating software, if required. Website development takes care of aspects such as browser compatibility of your website.

Consistency and quality of your website depends on weaving the various aspects of Design and Development together. Various aspects of Webstie Design and Development should blend like various elements in an excellent painting. The brand image should be consistently reflected in the content, color scheme, graphics and theme of the website. Content should be compatible for semantic indexing Google uses, this will bring optimum results for a search where there is a relevance for your product/service. Navigation and hyper linking is another crucial aspect as these take care of user compatibility. Internal link building has to be done efficiently to retain a viewer’s presence on the web page/site. ePurple Media will take care of every small detail which will bring maximum results for your web site as here we understand the client requirements and our deliverables are tailor made to suit the special client requirements which may range from conceiving a unique URL or developing a software for your website. 

About the Author 

Author is an advertising copywriter and consultant specializing in Search Engine Optimization & Marketing, currently assisting ePurplemedia, in delivering effective Web Design & Development, web marketing search engine optimization
. Hire our service contact marketing@epurplemedia.co.uk 

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Now a day’s business is becoming more advanced and complex. It is difficult to handle many business functions manually and then many companies have started to develop the software from software development companies to manage their business activities smoothly.

Tandon Information Solutions Pvt Ltd (TISPL) is a leader in providing custom software development and consulting services with a vision of creating a competitive advantage with software and becoming our clients’ most valued partner. TISPL use leading edge technology in its operation and products/services which provide advanced solutions and support to keep our client at the top in the market.

Tandoninfo provide complete custom software development solutions, project management and application management, Quality testing and Quality assurance services to various kind of business areas. We also offer workflow management, business services, Enterprise Solutions, Web Services and IT services at affordable costs.

We have professional expertise in all latest Software areas like C, C++, Java, VB, VB.NET, ASP, ASP.NET, SAP, RDBMS and many more. Our consultants are skilled in multiple platforms, languages and applications and receive continual cross training in our world-class development facilities to ensure that TISPL stays at the leading edge of technology.

TISPL emerged in response to growing demand for intelligent software design, software development and implementation of new, fully integrated business software systems. We have grown steadily since our inception by providing a comprehensive range of software consultancy services to industry and commerce worldwide.

To know more about us please visit at - http://www.tandoninfo.com 

About the Author 

Name: Maria Desouza ,
Email: tandoninfo@yahoo.co.in ,
URL: http://www.tandoninfo.com

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Submitted by Erica
The term Business Process Outsourcing has achieved a wide meaning with the advent of the Information technology. Servicing industry is mainly dependent on this pillar which leverages the technical and analogical resources available to curb the rising demands of the industry. The most common examples of BPO’s are call centers, human resources, accounting, and payroll outsourcing. It may also use offshore resources. It includes the software’s, process management and the people to operate it.

Business Process Outsourcing history

This term crept into the global business vocabulary in mid 1980’s after the great revolution in the IT sector which vouched for the changes in strategies and goals and also struggled for the means to achieve them. Business houses generally vouch for this method to curb the costs of labour, technology, capital and resources. Outsourcing means transferring or sharing the decision making of a business function to an outsider and it involves a control of labour processes rather than entering in contracting relationships. The important segments of outsourcing include information technology, human resources, facilities and real estate management, and accounting. Call centres and customer service supports are also an important means of outsourcing for some companies.

Offshoring and offshore business process outsourcing

Outsourcing means transfer of organisational function to a third party.

Offshore outsourcing means transferring these organisational functions to the third party operating from the other country it does not necessarily include the internal organisational control.

Offshoring means transferring the organisational functions to the third party operating from the other country irrespective of the whether the work remains with the corporation or not.

Outsourcing is beneficial for a organisation to curb their production expenses at the cost of exploiting the labour and technological resources of the third party. It reduces the firm and customer costs and also induces the quality in products. Offshore outsourcing have paved the way for many businesses organisations to harvest the value of less labour costs and to exploit the value of less than par foreign currencies. During this method of dealing business strategies although due to less labour costs there might be some decrement in quality but it may boost the productivity which contributes to the upliftment of the country’s economical setup.

Criticisms

1. Quality : This is the most important question dealt by management and customers both as well globally. Managements talk in terms of the perservence of the quality on par with their existing standards due to which their products are controlling the consumer market. Customers talk in terms of quality of the products which they are buying as the substitute of the costly counterparts performing the same functions.
2. Economical imbalances : Although outsourcing may solve the problems related to the labour costs by helping the industries to gain more profits but it threatens to victimize the workforce of the nation contributing to the instability in the economy. This is the main issues faced by the developed countries where more business houses seek the outsourcing to expand their business ventures in lieu of less labour costs and other plum advantages.
3. Security concerns : This is also one of the main problems with the outsourcing regarding the security and confidentiality of the organizational details when they are transferred to a third party. Also the chances of fraud and misuse of resources are at high like faking the expense reports and all.

Developing Countries and Business Process Outsourcing

Business Process outsourcing has boosted the stagnant economies of the developing countries.

Philippines – Customer care, medical transcription, software development, animation, and shared services are the emerging industries in Philippines . Call centres are the booming factors of the economies world wide but it’s the excess of language proficient technology, human resource, finance professionals which gives Philippines the winning edge over other developing nations . And with the quality of the service this nation had managed to oust India from the list of the most favoured outsourcing destination. The other most contributing factors for this outsourcing boom in Philippines is the lowest labour costs which are $7 per day as compared to $10 in India and also there are many graduate people in Philippines who can adopt easily the American culture and be at ease with the slang.

India – Indian outsourcing industry began its first journey in mid 90’s by telemarketing for the American and other Europeans giants who wanted to expand their horizons to farther places.But today it has succesfully stepped into many sectors like call centres, human resources, information technology, medical transcription and financial consultancy services. Although the services were started primely in large cities but now to curtail the financial expenses this industry is now shifting its focus to small cities. The outsourcing have curbed with the issue of unemployment to the tee and have also boosted the economy of the country.

These are some of general terms associated with the Business Process Outsourcing

Offshore Product Development : This is considered a more extreme form of outsourcing as typically companies outsource their peripheral tasks which they do not consider core or strategic to their business. Like in Offshoring IT services where some countries can outsource their innovations and product development activities to other countries.

Nearshoring and inshoring : As offshoring involves relocation of the business to the lower cost destinations whereas Near shoring means relocation of business processes to (typically) lower cost foreign locations, but in close geographical proximity (e.g. shifting United States-based business processes to Canada/Latin America) whereas Inshoring means picking services within a company.

Bodyshopping : Means using the offshored products and personnel to do small disintegrated tasks within the business environment without any intention to outsource the entire business functions.

BPO services – Outsourcing the services to national and offshore destinations in order to gain revenues ,cost cuts and quality have gained a very wide acceptance globally. These are some of the processes that are outsourced like :

IT services

* Software development services
* Application development and management
* Re-engineering
* Conversion and migration (across platforms/ languages/ versions)
* Data warehousing and mining
* Embedded systems
* E-commerce applications
* Programming:- C, C++, VisualC++, Java, JavaScript, Java Beans, Java Server Pages (JSP), Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), ASP (Active Server Pages), Visual Basic
* Microsoft Access
* Novell Networking
* EDI and Integration
* Bar Coding and Hand Held Data Collection

Data Entry

* Data control audits
* Regular reporting of work systems
* Data entry software and validation tables
* Dispatch of data to the customer
* Double keyed data (when required by the customer)
* Proof checks
* PC hardware and services

BPO Insurances - Insurance industry is one of the largest and most regulated industries worldwide and has a host of associated legal and regulatory compliance including the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Insurance Industry is further highly paper intensive and deals with significant amounts of paperwork. Infact, almost 40% of personnel time is spent in managing insurance documentation. This along with pressures to reduce costs, improve service levels and focus on core competence is forcing Insurance Companies to look at outsourcing. Generally via the outsourcing BPO’s offers insurance outsourcing in field of claims processing, Policy administration, new business acquisition, billing and payments etc.

As BPO has a very wide application and it almost embodies the entire business definition in itself and is the topic of wide research for the intellectuals studying about the impact of globalization.
About the Author
I am working on this site www.businessstrategyblog.com . My job is publishing the articles for Business Strategy Blog. Our prime motive is to provide latest information Regarding, All Businesses, Business Outsourcing, Business CRM, Business Ecommerce, Business Education, Business Financial services, Business Insurance, Business Property Dealing, Business Service, Business Venture Capital and Investment.
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Tony Simpson 

Webmasters Articles | September 21, 2005 

Google Sitemaps enables Webmasters to Directly Alert Google to Changes and Additions on a Website and that’s just one of 7 Benefits. It’s the most important development since RSS or Blog and Ping, to hit the Internet. 

Google Sitemaps enables Webmasters to Directly Alert Google to Changes and Additions on a Website and that’s just one of 7 Benefits. 

Telling search engines about new pages or new websites use to be what the submission process was all about. But major search engines stopped using that process a long time ago. 

Google has for a long time depended on external links from pages they already know about in order to find new websites. 

For webmasters and website owners Google Sitemaps is the most important development since RSS or Blog and Ping, to hit the Internet. 

Using RSS and Blog and Ping enabled webmasters to alert the search engines to new additions to their web pages even though that was not the primary purpose of these systems. 

If you’ve ever waited weeks or months to get your web pages found and indexed you’ll know how excited we webmasters get when someone discovers a new way to get your web pages found quicker. 

Well that new way has just arrived in Google Sitemaps and it’s a whole lot simpler than setting up an RSS feed or Blog and Ping. If you haven’t heard of Blog and Ping it’s a means by which it’s possible to alert the search engines to crawl your new website content within a matter of hours. 

If you’re a webmaster or website owner Google Sitemaps is something you Can’t afford to ignore, even if you’re also using RSS and/or Blog and Ping 

The reason you should start using Google Sitemaps is that it’s designed solely to alert and direct Google Search Engine crawlers to your web pages. RSS and Blog and Ping are indirect methods to alert search engines, but it’s not there primary purpose. 

It works now, but like most things it’s becoming abused. Search Engines will find ways to combat the abuse as they’ve done with every other form of abuse that’s gone before. 

Abusing the search engines is a short term not a long term strategy and in some cases certain forms of abuse will get you banned from a search engines index. 

You may also be thinking, don’t we already have web page meta tags that tell a search engine when to revisit a page. That’s true, but the search engine spider still has to find the new page first, before it can read the meta tag. Besides that meta tags are out of favour with many search engines especially Google, because of abuse. 

If talk of search engine spiders leaves you confused, they’re nothing more than software programs that electronically scour the Internet visiting web sites looking for changes and new pages. 

How often the search engine spider alias robot, visits your website depends on how often your site content is updated, or you alert them to a change. Otherwise for a search engine like Google they may only visit a website once a month. 

As the internet gets bigger every second of every day, the problem for search engines and webmasters is becoming evidently greater. For the search engines it’s taking their search spiders longer to crawl the web for new sites or updates to existing ones. 

For the webmaster it’s taking longer and becoming more difficult to get web pages found and indexed by the search engines 

If you can’t get web pages found and indexed by search engines, your pages will never be found in a search and you’ll get no visitors from search engines to those pages. 

The answer to this problem at least for Google is Google Sitemaps 

Whilst still only in a beta phase while Google refines the process, it’s fully expected that this system, or one very similar, is here to stay. 

Google Sitemaps is clearly a win-win situation 

Google wins because it reduces the huge waste of their resources to crawl web sites that have not changed. Webmasters win because they alert Google through Google Sitemaps what changes or new content has been added to a website and direct Google’s crawlers to the exact pages. 

Google Sitemaps has the potential to speed up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Google’s index for any webmaster that uses Google Sitemaps. 

Conventional sitemaps have been used by webmasters for quite some time to allow the easier crawling of their websites by the search engine spiders. This type of sitemap is a directory of all pages on the website that the webmaster wants the search engines or visitors to find. 

Without sitemaps a webmaster runs the risk of webpage’s being difficult to find by the search engine crawlers, or never being found at all. 

Do I need Google Sitemaps if I already have sitemaps on my websites ? 

Google Sitemaps are different to conventional sitemaps because they’re only seen by the Search Engine Spiders and not human visitors. Google Sitemaps also contain information that’s only of value to the search engine in a format they understand. 

Creating Google Sitemaps in 5 steps 

1. Create Google Sitemaps in a supported format ( see end of article ) 

2. Upload Google Sitemaps to your Web Hosting space 

3. Register for a free Google Account if you don’t already have one 

4. Login to your Google Sitemaps Account and submit the location of your sitemaps 

5. Update your Sitemaps when your site changes and Resubmit it to Google 

From your Google Sitemaps account you can also see when your sitemap was last updated and when Google downloaded it for processing. It will also tell you if there were any problems found with your sitemaps. 

Google Sitemaps can be used with commercial or non-commercial websites, those with a single webpage, through to sites with millions of constantly updated pages. However a single Google Sitemaps file is limited to 50,000 web pages. For websites with more pages, another Google Sitemaps file must be created for each block of 50,000 pages. 

If you want Google to crawl more of your pages and alert them when content on your site changes, you should be using Google Sitemaps. The other added benefit is it’s free. 

If you’re expecting this special alert process with Google Sitemaps to improve your Page Rank, change the way Google ranks your web pages, or in any way guarantee inclusion of your web pages, Google has made it clear it will make no difference. 

Google Sitemaps web pages are still subject to the same rules as non Google Sitemaps pages. 

If your site has dynamic content or pages that aren’t easily discovered by following links, Google Sitemaps will allow spiders to know what URLs are available and how often page content changes. 

Google has said that Google Sitemaps is not a replacement for the normal crawling of web pages and websites as that will continue in the conventional way. Google Sitemaps does however allow the search engine to do a better job of crawling your site. 

The Google Sitemap Protocol is an XML file containing a list of the URLs on a site. It also tells the search engine when each page was last updated , how often each page changes and how important each page is in relation to other web pages in the site. 

Google Sitemaps 7 Benefits You Can’t Ignore 

1. Alert Google to Changes and Additions to your Website Anytime You Want 

2. Your Website is crawled more Efficiently and Effectively 

3. Web Pages are Categorized and Prioritized exactly How You Want 

4. Speed up the process of New Website and New Web Page Discovery 

5. No Waiting and Guessing to see when Spiders crawl your web pages 

6. Google Sitemaps is likely to set the standard for Webpage Submission and Update Notification which will extend the benefits to other Search Engines 

7. The Google Sitemaps service is Free 

Exactly how to create a Google Sitemaps file to upload to your website is in the continuing part of this article in Google Sitemaps. 

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Tony Simpson is a Web Designer and Search Engine Optimizer who brings a touch of reality to building a Web Business. The continuing part of his article is entitled “Google Sitemaps at : http://www.webpageaddons.com/stp/googlessitemap

For more info please visit: http://www.semaphore-software.com/bpo_business_process_outsourcing/search_engine_optimization_seo.htm