MindScape

While Outsourcing stands for giving out a part or certain parts of your business operations to a regional or local distinct business entity, offshore outsourcing implies delegation of the selected business operations to an offshore location outside the country.

The two concepts share some advantages and differ on others. The common benefits of outsourcing and offshore outsourcing include doing away with the burden of mundane business operations that can be easily and skillfully handled at an off-site location, generally for a lesser budget. Outsourcing is a brilliant idea to relieve the business entity from vain exertion and instead pay better attention to ones specialized services areas or may be provide more agile customer care. Also, outsourcing excuses the enterprise from the substantial set up costs, viz. the cost of work space, manpower, stationery, systems and other miscellaneous expenses that would otherwise incur, if the jobs are not outsourced.

While local outsourcing manages just a couple, offshore outsourcing comes with a whole baggage of advantages. The highlights of offshore outsourcing remain the niche economies available at the offshore location, including exceptional professional talent for considerably lower costs. In fact, inspired by the dynamism of offshore outsourcing model in India, not less than 40% of the Fortune 500 companies are already taking advantage of it, including big names like MicroSoft, Motorola, Oracle, GE and Lucent.

Economies of scale is another citable advantage from Offshore outsourcing, as offshore destinations generally conduct themselves as specialized ventures that also take up similar jobs from other companies across the globe. As statistics has it, offshore outsourcing can bring down the costs for you from 50% to 30%, subject to onsite and offshore resources.

Offshore outsourcing also allows you to make a careful choice as regards the standard timeframe on offer, so as to render the effective working hours almost round the clock. For example, IST and EST are complimentary in nature with around nine and a half hour difference. This in turn, considerably shrinks delivery time for US-based companies translating into achievement of business targets well within budget and sped up job schedule.

Moreover, offshore outsourcing can span across wholesome backend business operations; the most prominent of all being IT and IT enabled services (ITES) with a whopping 28% of the entire share. As per reliable reports, majority of IT based outsourcing contracts are already moving to India, in spite of competitive rates offered by China and Russia. India offers wider talent and more purchasing power for US dollar, in turn saving billions of dollars for its US counterparts.

Email marketing is a tried and tested direct marketing strategy that involves marketing solutions through electronic mail (Email). Email marketing may be better understood in the context of offline world, where direct mails are sent to prospective customers, printed newsletters are mailed to subscribers and advertisements are printed in subscription magazines/ newspapers. The only difference is that of the medium in use.

Benefits

Email marketing uses electronic media that renders it much cheaper and faster than any of its possible alternative mediums. It is a dynamic and interactive tool in the hands of the Internet marketers that may be utilized innovatively to create and maintain customers without waiting for an initiative.

With a suitable website tracking software, Email marketing can even be utilized to track down its effectiveness in terms of the number of visitors generated. Solicited Emails are a reliable and smart way to stay in touch with the visitors to your website, who showed enough interest to leave their names and email addresses at your website for future record. Email marketing is particularly effective in reaching out to your business to business (B2B) audience.

Negatives of Email Marketing

The picture, however, may not be desirably pleasant, if the marketing strategy is not implemented with finesse. It is frequently witnessed that Emails are not drafted with much caution, unlike in the case of its offline version. As a result, the Emails are often marked as spam entries in the targeted inboxes without much thought. The worst part is that companies still keep sending Emails to the same Email addresses, thereby running the risk of being blacklisted by the ISPs. The ideal approach should be to build a long-term brand name rather than race to achieve a certain target statistic.

Types of Emails
Double Opt-in, Single Opt-in and Double Opt-out are all solicited Emails, wherein explicit response from the recipient triggers the sending of the Emails. While Single Opt-in Email is sent when a user signs up for an Email subscription, Double Opt-in takes place when he confirms his/ her subscription by responding to the automatically generated Email. Double Opt-out, on the other hand, concerns unsubscribing wherein the recipient first unsubscribes and then confirms termination of the subscription.

Conclusion

Cheaper, interactive and forward-able Email marketing spells nothing less than a revolution in the electronic marketing circles that can be timed and targeted to precision. It is all the way a boon for the marketers, only subject to polished and judicious use of it.

Launched by its developer JJ Allaire in 1995, ColdFusion has assumed tremendous popularity as a preferred programming platform for web development within a rather short span of time. From
JJ Allaire to Macromedia and now Adobe Systems in 2005, exchanging hands between brand names of repute speak about its viability and latent talent as a web development programming language and an application server. Statistics reveal its extensive deployment across the world in over ten thousand organizations, translating into over 1,20,0000 plus servers, including but not restricted to over 75% of the Fortune 100 companies.

To introduce, ColdFusion is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) language that facilitates quick creation of strong and compelling websites. As indicated earlier, ColdFusion is both an application server and a language. ColdFusion is built on a certified Java J2EE platform, rendering it fast, scalable and portable that in turn has amounted to its global popularity and prevalent use.

ColdFusion as a language is compatible with various application servers, including J2EE application servers, to be used on top of them as an alternative simplified (HTML like) scripting syntax. ColdFusion server also supports various web servers on different platforms. To quote a few examples, ColdFusion supports Apache, IIS and NSAPI based web servers and Solaris, HP-UX and Windows for platforms. ColdFusion also supports additional programming languages like server-side Actionscript.

Unlike PHP and ASP, ColdFusion is a commercial product that sports many integrated services not available otherwise. The attractive features of ColdFusion include business graphing, full text search and file upload handling utilities. ColdFusion also brilliantly incorporates Macromedia Flash, rendering it further ideal for web development. It is usually preferred among (data-driven) intranets worldwide.

Another highlight of ColdFusion is its capability to handle asynchronous events. ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise Edition can handle events like SMS and instant messaging via its gateway interface, providing a web developer a dynamic tool in his/ her hands. Other exceptional value added services of ColdFusion include its capability to concert HTML to PDF, Graphic User Interface (GUI) widgets, database querying using ODBC or JDBC irrespective of the platform, client and server cache management, management of session, client and application et al.
Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 is the latest release of ColdFusion in the market at present. Awaited is the release of its version 8 in the second half of this year. As demonstrated at CFUnited 2006, MAX conferences and CFDevCon 2006 at UK, the future version will integrate with Adobe PDF forms, live Macromedia Breeze presentations and Microsoft .Net.

One of the most common pitfalls while doing keyword research is to pick the keywords with the most search count as shown/predicted by various tools including but not limited to Overture, SEO Book and Wordtracker.

Often you would find that even though you achieve a good rank with the ultra-competitive keywords that you chose isn’t yielding the right right benefits.

There could be various reasons:

• Google’s SERPs change with the datacenter the query is executed on and  also the location from where the search query was fired.
• With the rise of SEO, people competititors researching for keywords often end  up looking for a keyword more than your target customer!

So - what could be done about it?

One of the first steps that you could do is to tweak your Traffic Analyzer to stop accounting for unwanted traffic. For instance, we have tweaked Google Analytics to exclude local traffic from India to give us a true picture of the outcome of the rankings achieved by our website.

Other steps revolve around choosing the right keywords and strategically planning to optimize your website for them.

I would cover them in my next post - until then, the aforementioned may be useful! 

Team Vinove in action.

Advent of Internet has literally revolutionized the way business is done in the contemporary world. With millions of users across the globe surfing the World Wide Web for their day-to-day needs, activity and recreation, the potential of Internet as a market can easily be imagined.

The statistics reveal that more than 12 million websites are already over Internet and about one million new websites join in everyday! The figures reflect a stark picture of the extent of cut-throat competition prevailing over the medium. Doing business under the circumstances indeed needs a well-planned marketing strategy or a smart mix of strategies.

Marketing over Internet is a serious business in the present arena. Internet marketing comprises of many sophisticated and promising concepts, including Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Banner Advertising, E-Mail Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Interactive Advertising. The span of Internet Marketing continues to evolve and expand, as the Internet marketers apply their tact and creativity to fight the ever-growing intense competition.

Of all, Search Engine Marketing is the most happening form of Internet marketing. It focuses on topping the Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERP) by search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. The term includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. While SEO focuses on organic or natural search, PPC based links are called sponsored ads. SEO basically involves optimizing a website in all respects, so as to render it most favorable for top ranks as per search engine algorithms. The rest of the Internet marketing concepts are direct marketing strategies that may be easily comprehended by their name itself.

Given the informative and dynamic nature of Internet, Internet marketing provides even a small business entity with a lot of scope to expand its markets beyond its local margins and present itself with much more sophistication for lesser cost. Internet marketing is undoubtedly a considerably cheaper option than employing a sales workforce in an offline business. The highlight benefit of Internet Marketing is that it does not require much of experience to venture into it.

Internet Marketing may seem to be an all profit no loss situation. But, it also has a dark side to it. In the absence of any stringent rules and regulations against objectionable content, as well as, open nature of the medium, each online business entity runs the much dreaded risk of negative publicity. Spreading a bad word about something or someone over Internet is a very easy task that may render all marketing efforts futile.

A term being frequently tossed around in the contemporary Internet marketing circles is SMO or Social Media Optimization. As evident from the full form, SMO has everything to do with social media such as blogs, wikis, vlogs, forums and the likes.

The term SMO involves consistent and enduring implementation of all necessary changes in a website that may optimize it to render it more easily linkable and more vastly noticeable in the online social media. The essence of SMO is to provide such good quality content, design and usability that people should wish to link to your website. Accordingly, SMO focuses on designing, developing and maintaining a website to suit the social media applications like Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube, Second Life, Digg, Flickr, Miniclip et al, such that the pertinent social sites would want to stay connected to the website on their own.

Being a rather nascent concept, Social Media Optimization (SMO) still needs to be groomed into a full-fledged subject with exhaustive strategies and rules all laid down. Presently, there are few rules, coined by few Internet marketing experts, which dictate the scene in defining precise strategies.

The basic strategy involves giving up static web content in favor of dynamism. The tactics favor inclusion of blogs or white paper etc. to widen the scope of linkability and putting in quick buttons like add to del.icio.us / Digg this and ask a friend to facilitate tagging/ bookmarking, as well as, help the content travel. Supporting mashups is considered another fine strategy, wherein webmaster allows prudent reuse of his web content by others, so as to work in teamwork towards enhanced and augmented content. Further, rewarding inbound links is also a recommended strategy to encourage the links in the long run.

SMO, in essence, calls for being a user resource that is genuine and unpretentious. It is a good idea to keep trying new things and put across a fresh face forever. Active participation in activities of interest to ones target audience is a definite must.

If done properly, SMO can be your ticket to convincing and long-term commercial success. Effective SMO can fetch you highly desirable web traffic and significant brand recognition. The tale of extraordinary growth and glory of YouTube in a matter of mere 18 months is a striking instance of successful and innovative SMO.

Though SMO can drive crazy traffic to your website, it may also prove to be nasty, as you constantly run the risk of negative publicity. Therefore, it is utmost important to choose your tactics carefully and target the right audience.

I was taken aback at seeing a completely new interface for Google Analytics upon logging in today. I was automatically logged out after a few minutes but what I saw surely looked impressive.

When kicked out, Analytics also mentioned “5M pageview cap per month for non AdWords advertiser” on the sign up page!

Not sure if it existed previously but all the efforts from Google now seem like concentrating on Adwords/Adsense!

As they say, there’s no “Free Lunch” in this world!

Go Google!

We have recently started upgrading the code for our company’s website from XHTML 1.0 Strict to SEO Semantic XHTML 1.0 Strict. The new code would help in the following ways:

• Reduce the file foot print making the pages lighter and further reducing the load times.
• Assist search engines in comprehending the right hierarchy in which the content is to be inferred.
• Reduce the ever-increasing server load and bandwidth consumption.
• Possibly, improve the search engine rankings.

Those who might be interested can view the new (under development) code at http://www.vinove.com/

Update: We have received several e-mails enquiring if we offer SEM Semantic XHTML Conversion - Yes, we indeed do! If you would like to know more, please get in touch with us now!

Outsourcing has taken the world economy by storm. Many a companies worldwide have gained enormously from it and gradually but surely, outsourcing from an option is becoming a mandate to remain competitive.

As we move down the food-chain, numerous small-medium companies still struggle to find the right outsourcing partner. Even if an outsourcing partner is identified, the relation is not successful due to various reasons.

The primary reason for the failure is the mindset - outsourcing is almost always taken synonymous to cost-cutting. This has proven to be a time-bomb for many companies as they end up outsourcing to firms that offer the lowest bid on a project.

Some of the important points to be kept in mind while outsourcing are:

• You get what you pay for: The old clich holds true in the case of outsourcing as well! The cheapest vendor might not always be a good choice as they might try to under-sell to gain your project. A solid outsourcing partner would have overheads in the form of infrastructure and would have people on payroll. If you are on a look out for a long term relation - it may be a good idea to pay a little extra but to ensure that both parties make a profit.
• Look for partners, avoid fly-by-night operators: Easier said than done! For maximizing ROI, outsourcing should be considered as a continuous process rather than a one-time activity. Find yourself an honest and reliable partner rather than looking for vendors each time you wish to outsource.
• Transparency: Maintain transparency be it processes, timelines and costs (if possible). This would help you manage your commitments and estimate the deliverables.
• Don’t expect the stars: While outsourcing, expect the initial “turbulence”. As any other process, it might require initial leg work for the processes to smooth up and work as you expect them to.
• Don’t step into multiple boats: One good reliable partner is better than having 10s of unreliable vendors. Concentrate on finding one good partner.
• Shop around but be careful: Relatively better outsourcing companies are quite wary of replying back to templatized e-mails sent to various vendors seeking a figure. Study, choose a few. and provide your complete contact details while sending an inquiry. If possible, use your own domain to send an e-mail to establish authenticity.
• Walk with your partner: Attrition is very high in outsourcing favorable developing nations - your partner might face loss of one or more employees taking care of your project. Cultivate the culture of open-ness so that your partner can communicate clearly the reasons, if any for delay so that you may expect accordingly.
• Communication: Don’t expect your outsourcing partner to be available 24×7 - schedule and maintain a communication plan that is feasible in the long run.
• 24×7 work cycle: Yes, it is possible! It might take some time before you can actually get it going!
• Commit but do not over-commit: Commit if you can - however, do not promise something that you cannot fulfill!

The aforementioned points come from the other side of the fence and is a result of numerous outsourcing successes over the past years. These cannot guarantee but should certainly help in a better outsourcing experience.

I welcome any questions or feedback that you might have.

Happy Outsourcing!