When it comes to the selection of outsourcing provider for the creation of innovative web project (anything from social network to widget creations) the company shall make sure that the provider has the actual expertise of developing similar innovative projects. In the majority of cases the customer might end in selecting reliable web development company with a long track of experience creating web projects, employing experienced developers but without the experience of creating the relevant innovative web properties. Chances are high that this project will be a failure because the provider is simply not there yet from a relevant experience prospective. They haven’t work with this types of web properties and do not invest much in R&D and stepping into powering startups (usually those are the first adopters of innovative technologies).

We’ve seen customers that engaged established software houses into the creation of a media streaming web sites ending in a failure to deliver the project after half a year!!! of work. The vendor experienced in this type of projects can roll out the similar solution developed from scratch during 2 months (assuming that the customer doesn’t want another clone of YouTube but has a more-or-less unique concept).

Now not only starts ups but big media companies need to innovate. Consider this example: an average American citizen spends 28 hours a week watching TV (sounds unbelievable, right) however for the young people that’s much less because they take this time and move it to their computer. So media companies, like MTW, suddenly say: Ooops, how do I get into computer? How do I reach this audience? What technologies do I use to engage the audience? In the majority of cases the answer can not be found internally. In the old days such companies were innovating internally but now when the web is evolving so fast the internal senior executives might not even how to use an RSS reader. Same issue with the internal IT folks – it’s most likely that they do their job instead of doing the research on new technologies and happenings on the web. So where is this innovation going to come from?

We see that more and more companies are relying on the outsourcing providers to come up with this innovation or support it. It’s important to understand for the customer and the vendor that to success in outsourcing innovating not only the technology aspects should be in place but the provider should understand the business of the customer and take themselves more of a consultant just as a provider of development services. This is the aim of the MoveYourWeb development departments and that’s where we are at partly and where we are going to. Not only we are proud to develop innovative web properties for our customers but support big names dealing with innovation, such as MixerCast – one of the best widget distribution companies out there.

Here at MoveYourWeb we understand this principle and develop a lot of innovating web projects and try to share the critical knowledge as much as possible among the employees engaged into production. Innovative web technologies and latest happenings on the web are under our radar and we are really pacionate about it because clearly this is the model that will be very popular in the future.

Tags: management, web 2.0, web development
Posted in management, outsourcing, web 2.0, web development | 1 Comment »

Here at MoveYourWeb we are excited about WEB emerging as a platform and continue supporting leading pioneering technology companies by assisting in creation of a leading web products and services. With the increasing (soon the word would be changed for dominating) popularity of online media over the traditional media (tv, newspapers, books) it’s fun to read a real book sometime on weekend. Googling the information is just the typical way it’s done so we need to get away sometimes too.

Reading traditional books (especially business books) is becoming more of a fun rather the part of self-improving or gaining the specific knowledge. It’s nice to touch the book and not just see at the screen of the laptop, share it with someone who can find the content useful. This weekend I’m reading Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent which our action script guru Dmitry shared with me as a must reading. While on it I have a few people in mind which I will definitely pass it further on. A lot of ’sales’ pitch in the book led me to the idea that business books are different from all other books, say cooking books. An author of a business book needs to convince the reader about the importance of the ideas contained in a book. He is giving the case studies proving the theory, showing the success stories and engaging the reader inside the business stories. At some point the business book becomes the adventure to the reader and kind of time waster – looks like the sales pitch keep 80% of the books content with 20% going to actual prescriptions.

With this said the reader should be actually prepared to reading. Take the sticky notes or paper and make notes all the time you drop on the information allowing to improve what you do at work! Remember: if you haven’t implemented at least three improvements after finishing reading the book during 1-3 weeks you waisted the time! It was just an adventure to you, when you were following the author but you missed the most important 20% of the book since you haven’t implemented it in the real life.

Tags: general thoughts, management
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As a Director of Marketing here at MoveYourWeb it falls under my radar to update and maintain our own corporate web site. The shame thing is that our portfolio section was really outdated (yeah in bold). We do have the set of customers that we work with for many years so they are perfectly aware of our technology expertise as well as solutions that we’ve created. We also have enough management at different levels who are always ready to suggest on the work in specific technology or industry that we’ve accomplished. A big percentage are contacting us thru WOMM so a lot of our new prospects are already educated about our company’s services and past work.

Anyway there is a still put of prospects coming from sources other than WOMM and it takes our Sales Dpt additional time to compile the list of projects accomplished for specific industry, especially when the same work should be done again and again on a daily basis. So here I go – researching the ways to organize and structure Case Studies section for offshore outsourcing company. 30 companies located in TOP50 Google under a relevant search quarries were reviewed. Find the results of the research below:

1. Downloadable Case Studies – a prospect is able to select the case study of interest and download the pdf by filling out a short form. Service Provider can use this data for further promotions, prospect education by sending relevant promo info to the subscribers thus trying to convert the prospect into a customer with time. The negative aspect of this model is that it takes time to fill the form/check email/open the pdf. The other negative thing is that the Case Studies published are generally presented in a A-Z list rather being structured by industry/technology/etc.

2. Client List – list of customers is published on the web site with additional description of their business. This model is relevant for companies handling small projects (their prospect is luckily to see similar company at the Client List and sign up).

3. Portfolio – list of finished projects, normally provided with the screenshots. The services providers should really choose this model if they are in creative business only. So web design studios and companies should choose it because it allows to reflect the style of the finished work, not the technical details which is critical for complicated projects focused on back-end rather the UI.

4. Case Studies grouped by Services – e.g. web development, software development, emended programming. The prospect is able to quickly find the relevant projects finished by a service provider and estimate the level of vendor’s proficiency. The question that arises is why service providers put Offshore Dedicated Center as a separate service. One customer may hire a team of web developers and another of software guys, the third will be hiring SEO Consultants. Shouldn’t that fall into the Service grouping directly? I think so. Ask me what to do with the Case Studies for Offshore Dedicated Center – don’t include this ‘service’ in a case studies structure at all! From a sales/marketing prospective Offshore Dedicated Center is an engagement model not a standalone service (well unless an ODC is of 20+ full-time people or ‘Build Operate Transfer’ model which is a different story).

5. Case Studies structured by Industry – e.g. banking, real estate, financial. No comments on that – clear for everyone

6. Case Studies by Solution – e.g. CMS, ERP, ecommerce.

7. Case Studies by Platform – e.g. .net, java enterprise. That one speaks for itself as well.

Our choice is to show case studies sorted by 1. Services (the most important and demanded), 2. Industry, 3. Platform and 4. Solution. The ‘Portfolio’ section that we’ve used before will fall under ‘web site design’ and ‘web site development’ services. Coming to production and will be reflected on the web site soon!

Tags: internet marketing, management
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