Outsourcing: Blanca Trevino, CEO of Softtek (Part 1)

Softtek is global company that provides its clients, which comprise top-tier corporations, with process-driven IT solutions. The company has office locations in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. The world has Softtek to thank for the creation of nearshoring, which involves companies outsourcing tasks to other companies that are located in nearby countries or accepting outsourced work from companies in nearby locations i.e., a U.S.-based company outsourcing its customer service responsibilities to a call center in Mexico or Brazil or vice versa.

Sramana Mitra: Hi Blanca. Let’s start with some context of your company. When did you get started? What kind of circumstances got you going, and what are you doing today? >>>

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Outsourcing: Brad Heath, CEO of VirTex Assembly Services (Part 1)

We often talk about how much technology has done to make our lives easier and our workflows faster. When we do, we aren’t usually thinking about the ways that Austin, Texas–based VirTex uses technology to make their customers’ lives easier. From RFID tags to medical training equipment to solar power monitoring, VirTex manufactures all kinds of things, even equipment that help farmers operate at lower costs. Although the company is based in the United States and has a U.S.-based clientele, it ships products all over world.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Brad. Let’s start with some context about you and your company. Where are you located? How long have you been around? What is your business, what is the scale, and so forth? >>>

Game-Changing Rules for Outsourcing

By guest author Kate Vitasek

In Search of a Better to Outsource
Peter Drucker challenged companies to “Do what you do best and outsource the rest!” Unfortunately, too many companies jumped into outsourcing using the same approaches and methods that they used for procuring commodities and materials to run their operations.   The result is that far too many outsourcing deals are less than optimal – leaving most in search of a better way to outsource. The University of Tennessee studied some of the world’s most successful outsourcing deals as part of a research project funded by the US Air Force.  Our work uncovered the fact that successful outsourcing deals had one thing in common:  they played by an unwritten set of rules that is fundamentally different from conventional approaches for procurement.  >>>

Outsourcing: LN Balaji, President of ITC Infotech (Part 1)

Bangalore-based ITC Infotech is one of the leading outsourcing companies in India. A fully owned subsidiary of ITC Limited, ITC Infotech has wholly owned subsidiaries of its own in the United States and the United Kingdom. This 11-year-old IT services business serves 140 countries and has delivery hubs in Bangalore and Calcutta.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Balaji. Let’s start with some context about ITC Infotech. Of course, ITC has a wide-ranging portfolio. Tell us more specifically about ITC Infotech. >>>

Outsourcing: Ian Ippolito, Founder and CEO of vWorker (Part 1)

Outsourcing websites abound on the Internet, and each one has its own unique spin on the process. And vWorker, once known as Rent-A-Coder, does, too. A global outsourcing company, vWorker or “virtual worker” has nearly 175,000 employers hiring and managing close to 360,000 virtual workers every day.

Sramana Mitra: Hi Ian. Let’s start with some background on how you started this company. What do you do in vWorker? Give us some context, and then we’ll dig into how you’ve done what you’ve done.

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Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer: Ignacio Galarraga, CEO of NetMen Corp (Part 1)

Most of the people who register to work as freelancers on Elance don’t end up earning $1 million or more in annual revenue. Ignacio Galarraga did it with his graphic design company NetMen. As my conversation with him will reveal, Galarraga started out on Elance in much the same way as Sanjay Dange started out on Freelancer.com. Both cite the production of excellent products along with a singular dedication to customer satisfaction as the keys to their unusual success.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Ignacio. First and foremost, congratulations on reaching the elusive $1 million in your entrepreneurial journey. >>>

Outsourcing: Rick Ferry, COO of C3 (Part 1)

Customer service can make or break some businesses. Yet customer service is something that businesses often outsource to companies like C3. C3 handles customer communications for corporations that see customer service as one of the most important aspects of their businesses. C3’s leadership team has about 30 years of customer management experience between them. C3 has locations spread throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia, but the company’s corporate office is in Plantation, Florida.

Sramana Mitra: Hi Rick. Let’s start with an overview of C3, your background and just some general context. >>>

Outsourcing: Ross Kimbarovsky, Co-Founder of CrowdSPRING (Part 1)

We’ve covered outsourcing sites before, like Elance and Freelancer.com, which are open to all kinds of freelancers, from telemarketers to virtual assistants to graphic designers to bookkeepers. But some, like Chicago-based CrowdSPRING, specialize. CrowdSPRING dedicates itself to serving the needs of creative individuals, like graphic designers and writers, and those who need their services. Founders Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson wanted to create an outsourcing environment, using a crowd sourcing model, that would safely open the world to new possibilities rather than limiting small business owners, or whoever needed creative services, to people in their own countries or communities. >>>

Latin America Measures Up Well Against China as ITO Hub

By guest author Dan Berthiaume and Kirk Laughlin

Despite Latin America’s increasing prominence as a provider of IT outsourcing services to North American companies, a popular perception remains that Latin America serves as a second choice to China. However, when the relative advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing IT functions to Latin American providers are compared to those of Chinese providers, the results indicate that Latin America can effectively compete with China as an IT outsourcing hub, and in many instances may even prove the superior choice. >>>

Outsourcing: Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance (Part 1)

Followers of this blog may recall that Elance was featured on Deal Radar in 2008. Founded in 1999, the Mountain View, California–based company continues to give outsourcing competitors like oDesk and Freelancer.com a run for their money.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Fabio. Would you give me some background about you and also about Elance. I know you’re not a founder, but give us a bit of the genesis of the Elance story. >>>

Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer Sanjay Dange, Co-Founder and COO of Smartinfosys.net (Part 1)

We’ve featured lots of successful outsourcing companies in this series, whether they’ve been companies that successfully outsourced work to third-party vendors or accepted outsourced tasks from other businesses.  None, however, has been quite like Smartinfosys.net. A small Web design and development company founded in Gujarat, India in 1999, Smartinfosys increased its customer base by taking advantage of Freelancer.com — then GetAFreelancer.com –to advertise Smartinfosys’ services and expand its horizons beyond India’s borders. >>>

Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 1)

Websites for freelancers abound on the Internet. From oDesk to Elance to Guru, there’s something for everybody, it seems. And each has its own way of doing business. With the Sydney, Australia–based Freelancer.com, for example, an employer pays a contractor only when he’s satisfied with the work the contractor has done. That could explain why Freelancer.com is the largest outsourcing and crowdsourcing company currently on the Web, with close to three million users worldwide and earning in excess of $100 million in annual revenues. The top employers are in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Canada and Australia.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Matt. To start off, let’s get some context about you personally and also about the company, Freelancer.com, and what you do and what’s the scale of the company, and so on? >>>

Outsourcing: Jason Beans, Founder and CEO of Rising Medical Solutions (Part 1)

Health care costs can be prohibitive, not only for the average citizen but for employers and insurance providers, too. Rising Medical Solutions, a Chicago, Illinois-based company, works with insurance providers to help keep health care costs down without sacrificing the quality that patients receive. Their specialities include medical bill review, hospital bill review, care management and provider negotiation, among others. >>>

Outsourcing: Sanjay Dhawan, CEO of Symphony Services (Part 1)

In the early days of software, using it was as simple as buying a licensing agreement, and then uploading the software to each employee’s desktop. The evolution of computers is moving at such a rapid pace that in order to keep up, companies have to refurbish existing software to accommodate employees who are no longer chained to their desks from nine to five. Instead, telecommuting or making the most of long commutes on public transportation by using their laptops or smart phones to get their work done. That’s where companies like Palo Alto, California-based Symphony Services come in. Symphony has a presence throughout the United States and India and in Surrey, United Kingdom, and has a client list with names like Oracle, Yahoo, Motorola, Google, and Hitachi. >>>

Outsourcing: Arul Murugan, Founder and CEO of Enrich IT (Part 1)

Enrich IT was founded by Arul Murugan and his wife, Kavitha Palani, with the idea to help companies by providing them with tailored solutions in areas like business process management, technology services, enterprise application management and software licensing. Bootstrapped with $25,000, the company is now a multimillion dollar enterprise that specializes in Oracle supply chain and procurement solutions.  >>>