As described in the Webster® dictionary, "Outsourcing: the practice of subcontracting manufacturing work to outside and especially foreign or nonunion companies".

The development of any software, quite logically, falls within the terminology of the word 'manufacturing' & hence, when used for the software industry, the word 'outsourcing' means "offloading the development work to other companies".

Undoubtedly, outsourcing is fast becoming a strategy for forward thinking IT managers. No longer just a means of reducing costs, it has become a tool for adding value to business, simultaneously enabling organisations to concentrate on their core business. Furthermore, it helps managers to re-engineer business processes and provide the necessary information to assist effective decision-making and ensure quality and cost control.

You will require to hire an entire team to execute the projects with variable needs. The size & skill sets of such team may vary as per the project requirements & scale. So you end up increasing your capital as well as operating cost. Also, for the projects with altogether different requirements than your core competencies, the chances of abnormal delays, frequent change requests from the client & over all inadequate control on the execution are always higher, adding further to your operating costs.

The following is a quote from an April 1999 issue of Time by Bill Gates. "As a business manager, you need to take a hard look at your core competencies. Revisit the areas of your company that aren't directly involved in those competencies, and consider whether Web technologies can enable you to spin off those tasks. Let another company take over the management responsibilities for that work, and use modern communication technology to work closely with the people - now partners instead of employees are doing the work. In the Web work style, employees can push the freedom the Web provides to its limits."

India has an enormous supply of qualified, technical, literate & English speaking/fluent workforce and the salary rates compare very favorably with other developed / developing nations around the world. And hence, India is an obvious choice, more so for Information Technology (IT) sectors, and sectors where Human Resources is the key factor. The reason is not far to seek. There is no dearth of companies who have made (or are in the process of making) India as an outsourcing base due to all these reasons. Today Outsourcing has become THE word in defining business success.

The cost of living in India is much lower than most of the Western countries. The salaries are generally in the range of 20% to 30% of what they are in the Western countries. Even if we consider the capital expenditure at par, we are able to carry out your work at a much lower cost as our operating costs are much lower. This is one of the main advantages of having India as your outsourcing base.

We undertake software/web development projects primarily on Microsoft® platforms. However, we can also offer solutions based on Unix/Linux platforms, on a case to case basis. Besides the software development, we also offer integrated back office management solutions & IT enabled services.

Following summarises the solutions that we provide:

On receiving your inquiry, we respond within one working day for any clarifications. We also send you a summary of our understanding about the project, if there is no clarifications to seek. Further on receiving your confirmation, we then provide you with a ball park estimate of the project as well as the development tools that we intend to employ. On case to case basis, we offer the ball park rates for the project either on hourly basis or on 'not to exceed' basis, and sometimes an option for both to choose from.

We never ever interact with your end clients, until & unless you specifically requested us in writing / by e-mail. The solutions developed by us for you are handed over as a package without the slightest of indication about the origin of the same.

Once the project is agreed upon, based on the size & terms of the project, we then request for a detailed design document (or, if the need arises, we carry out the requirement analysis for you) and freeze the scope of the work in consultation with you. We derive the functional specifications & technical specifications after freezing the scope. After which, we provide you with a development schedule & milestones in accordance with the overall time schedule agreed. The actual development is then undertaken.

Once the project is accepted & undertaken, we assign it to a Project Manager/Coordinator & intimate the contact details to you for further communication. We also create an FTP area on a server (either on your server or on our server, as per the mutual convenience). The necessary data/content/copy/images etc. is exchanged through this FTP area. If the internet connectivity is not feasible at your end, we also exchange the same through e-mail. The progress reports are submitted to you on a weekly basis either by e-mail or through Work Extranet. On satisfactory completion & acceptance of the project, we sign off & declare the project as closed. Any request for a change is taken care of & if required, quoted separately based on the amount of work involved to accomplish the change & the stage of the project.

Obviously, it varies as per the size & the complexity of the project. However, while providing you with the ball park estimate, we also provide a tentative time frame. On receiving (or after preparing, whatever the case may be) the design document, we provide you with the exact time frame & the milestones. We have executed projects of varying time frames, ranging from 100 man hours to 5000 man-hours.

Once the project is accepted & undertaken, we assign it to a Project Manager/Coordinator & intimate the contact details to you for further communication. He/she, then becomes your single point of contact for all the communication & keeps you posted with the progress report. Based on the complexity & the size of the project, the progress reports are sent across on a weekly or biweekly basis. The reports are either sent across to you by e-mail or can be viewed from the client work extranet.

Payments can easily be made by telegraphic transfers through your bankers without any difficulty.