In pursuit of mid-sized outsourcers
With large companies vocal about cost-savings, interest towards
outsourcing has trickled down to mid-sized businesses and some
enterprising companies like ELance Online is cashing on it.
Elance Online markets itself as a one-stop shop for outsourcing,
particularly targetting mid-sized businesses who do not have enough time
and know-how to develop an extensive lists of outsourcing candidates for
tasks such as programming, software development, Web design or database
application development.
So far, the company has lured about 14,000 service providers in its
website and surprisingly, most of them are also based in the US and others
from India and as far as Russia.Elance screens the contractors upfront,
verifies credentials and provides work samples when possible
An Elance official also noted a trend referred to as "reverse
outsourcing"; that is, international companies are outsourcing their IT
functions to small U.S.-based businesses
And according to the company, price alone does not guarantee these
companies contracts. References, past performance and turnaround time are
among the factors that often outweigh price.
The value proposition lies in the fact that since service providers are
small players, clients can save a lot more since they're not dealing with
the likes of Infosys or service behemoths like IBM.
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