Dear Customers,

We expect to face a service disruption on 1st December 2006 (Friday) due to an unexpected turn of events in Kolkata, West Bengal. As per the latest news there has been a political arrest of a leader of the opposition party in the state assembly and a strike has been called to protest the same.

Here is the link to the complete story: http://www.ibnlive.com/news/mamta-arrested-violence-in-wb/27405-4.html

Due to the given circumstances and possible disruption, many of our employees may not be able to reach office to serve you.

We got news about this event at 6:45 pm Indian Standard time and most of our employees leave office by this time. So they might not have been in a position to inform you of the incident. We regret the inconvinience.

At Indus Net Technologies, we always try to deliver you the best service and value. We will therefore make up for the day’s loss by working on Saturday i.e. 2nd December 2006. Therefore all milestones for the week will be met and you will effectively not lose any work. However the work will be delayed by a day and I am extremely sorry for the unexpected situation.

Looking forward to your kind cooperation.

Abhishek Rungta
Founder / CEO
Indus Net Technologies

Updated on 2nd December 2006 - 

Team INT defied the “strike” by attending office in good numbers inspite of voilence on the street. More than 65% team members were in office in Kolkata Development Center to work on their projects.

Kudos to those who kept work above self!

Abhishek

What does Jack Welch (The legendary CEO of GE) and McKinsey have in common when it comes to managing talent? Both of them seem to agree on the same thing when it comes to managing talent within an organization. In order to build a great company you need to employ great people.

What actually are A , B and C graders ?
“A” grade employees are people that deliver beyond what they are expected to deliver. Look at your best designer, best programmer, best sales guy, best support technician or, look at the best people with the same level (i.e. having same designation), your best manager, your best project lead. - they are the “A” graders within your company. The people whom you truly consider your assets!

“B” grade employee are people who are consistent performers. They don’t do exceptional things but they are fairly consistent at what they are doing. According to Jack Welch - “They are on the fence”

“C” grade employees are poor performers who either cannot deliver results or require too much pushing.

Why can’t you hire “A” Grader directly?
The problem is that there is no sure shot technique that will guarantee that you will have all the “A” class guys working for you. There are not many of them around! Even if you can come up with an objective shortlisting process that can help identify a super-performer from an average-performer, meeting the numbers will be quite a challenge - specially if your company is growing at 100% every year. If you think that everybody who works for you is an “A” grade gut then you have simply not raised the bar high enough.

The good news is that hiring “B” grade performers is not that difficult and as it turns out, it is a better strategy too. There are following possibilities with a guy who is at “B” grade:

1. He will turn out to be a “A” grader (Tiger within Sheep’s skin!)
2. They will remain “B” graders
3. They will actually turn out to be “C” graders

There is a real competition out there for hiring talent. McKinsey says that this “war for talent” requires a new way of thinking for attracting and retaining quality talent:

So you are in a safe position as long as you have a process to recognize and reward the “A” grade people, attract, train and upgrade the “B” grade people and most importantly, identify and get rid of “C” grade employees.

Why getting rid of “C” grade people is important?
There are a lot of reasons why you should get rid of poor performers:

1. You stand for what you tolerate. If you tolerate incompetence then you and your organization stands for it.

2. There is lot of effort required in converting “C” graders to “B” grade. At the same time remember that your “A” graders and “B” graders are spending their time on “C” graders. It’s like throwing an olympic swimmer into a pool with weights tied to his waist and then expecting him to win the race. I firmly believe that the results will be much better if a “A” grade employee spends time on “B” grade than on “C” grade.

How to avoid hiring “C” graders?

I think “C” graders are terrible at recruiting. If you believe, that a person is below average (either within the organization or amongst peers) then that worst thing that you can do is let them hire other employees. So, you should only allow your best and brightest people to select future employees of the organization. Remember, no one can hire someone better than himself. So, while “A” graders will hire “B” graders, “B” and “C” graders will hire even more “C” graders.

Let’s begin the new year by cleaning up some deadwood. Shall we!?

This is a great post by Robert May at BusinessPundits.com which explains on why a business should not emphasize too much on Marketing.

Running a business is like one giant optimization problem. How do you get the best outputs given your limited inputs? Don’t focus too much on branding at the expense of financial and economic analysis

Read the rest of the post here

Before I go on to explain the risks that are involved in working with freelancers, let me first talk about the reasons why people choose to work with them in the first place.

Lowest Cost
In comparison to working with the structured organizations, freelancers may charge lower fees for doing the same work. Moreover, most freelancers work through bidding portals like rentacoder.com and the price wars works out in your favor.

Working with a Specialist
Freelancers work in their specialized area on which they have knowledge and experience. This generates a sense of working with a specialist.

Availability
A freelancer will bid on your project only when they are ready to take up additional work. This means they are ready to start immediately and you can start seeing progress from the next day of awarding the contract.

Greater control
Another factor that comes into the mind is that freelancers are individual which is reassuring to know specially if you are scared of contracts and hierarchy.

So, where is the risk? Let me explain:

Project Matters!
Working with a freelancer is suited on projects that require only one set of skill that the freelancer can has and can provide. However, a typical project often requires different skill-sets for example designing database, writing codes, designing interfaces, testing etc. Thus, even if you freelancer scores high on one of these areas, he will score low on all other. Eventually, the average quality of output turns out to be low. Thus, if you have anything more a simple script written or a layout to be done, working with a freelancer is not such a good idea!

No Project Management
You know what I mean if you have ever asked any freelancer to give a project plan. The project quotes that they offer are often just “best guesses” of how much they want to make for the estimated duration of the project. If you do not have much experience in managing software projects then you are in for a ride as they take you through tech mumbo-jumbo.

Questionable Quality
A freelancer is not guided by a company policy for code standardization nor do they have access to time-tested code libraries that software organizations build over time. Thus, don’t be surprised if you find out that the code is poorly written and totally undocumented.

Alright! They are available now but, what about next time?
Even though the freelancer is available “right now“ to start the work but that does not mean that they are going to be available for the next time you need them. 

No backup for Uncertainties
What if the freelancer gets hit by the bus or falls sick when you have an important deadline to meet? Nothing! You will be standing alone, out there in the cold and you will not be able to do anything about it. The freelancer is a single person who is in control and there is nothing you can do about it. If they want to take a holiday in between the project – good luck!

No Infrastructure
Typically a freelancer working from his bedroom and has computer with maybe a UPS and a printer. The worst part is that your project resides on this PC which is also used by his four-year-old for playing games. What happens when this PC crashes? No points for answering that!

No Organization
A six-man month project will exactly take six-man months for a freelancer to complete. Since they are working alone they cannot work on two tasks simultaneously. There is also no hierarchy and you cannot escalate any issues if you run into trouble with the guy. 

No Contractual Bindings
An organization can enter an enforceable business contract with you to which they are legally bound.  You cannot enter into a legal contract with a freelancer. Even if you get something signed, it’s of very little value. 

It does not make any business sense unless you have a very small job that needs to be done cheap or one that you can do without!

Everybody who has ever has been into a position where one has to manage a crisis projects (either offshore or in-house) has come to a situation where things seem to be going nowhere. An out-of-control project first gets your attention as the problem is reported one of the three areas:

Schedule
The schedule of project seems unacceptable for some reasons. As a contractor you might feel that it is totally unrealistic given the volume of work. 

Costs
The costs may be sky-rocketing. You may have two people working on the project for past 4 months where this was supposed to be a 5 man-month work of work! The cost may be killing your profits and bringing you into the red.

Resources
The #1 thing an average person thinks of when project runs wild is to add another resource as doing that will release some pressure. But, as a business owner you know that it may not be entirely true.

So what are you going to do? Honestly, it’s for you make some hard decisions. There are two key strategies that should remain in your mind:

Maxi-Min
This means maximizing the minimum profit that you are making on the project.

Or

Mini-Max
This means minimizing the maximum loss that you could incur on the project. 

The strategy that you choose to pursue will depend on particular situation. For example, If the project is more about keeping or building a relationship then most likely, you would pursue the mini-max strategy whereas, if it a one-off thing then pursuing maxi-min is the best alternative. Whatever you choose, the steps below will help you in getting the project back on track.

Getting the project back on its Feet

STEP 1: STOP (for a while!)
The first thing you need to do is to stop the work on the project so that you can review what’s going on. Your objective is to answer the following questions clearly:

1. Are there any changes in the scope?
2. What % of the work is complete as per the client?
3. Are the requirements of the project clearly defined?
4. Are there any project management issues?

The one thing that you absolutely must be convinced about before moving to STEP 2 is that everybody should be on the same page about the project.

STEP 2: EVALUATE
As a person responsible for the outcome, you need to evaluate the entire scenario. This means answering questions like:

1. Which section of project does not have clear specification?
2. How is the present job description different from what was discussed earlier?
3. What are the reasons behind miscommunications?

This step involves intense communication both with the client and the project team. At the end of this step the client should recognize the problems as well as the project team must have clear picture of what will constitute completion of the given module or the success of the project.

STEP 3: FIX
Once the problem has been clearly defined, it is the next task to fix the root causes. This may involves things like:

1. Reassigning resources. You may need to move some existing resources out of the project and bring in other resources which the project needs.
2. Formalize communication structure: You may need to set up fixed structure of reports that the resources need to provide weekly or even everyday if required.
3. Re-negotiate the contract.

STEP 4: Re-Start
At this stage all the issues that have infested the project has been eradicated and the project must have clear plan with well defined deliverables and deadlines.

We pioneered a service called “Dedicated Hiring” that allows you to hire a blend of resources as per your requirements for a fixed contract period. This service starts at $8.25/hr and requires a minimum commitment of 176 hours. 

Theoretically, the dedicated hiring service should deliver a savings (or, more profits in case of software services firms) of atleast 22.5% on fixed price projects in comparison to other offshore vendors and around 70% in case of onshore vendors. Besides projects, this service is extensively used by ISV and Software Services companies as an alternative to in-house staffing and the cost incurred is literally one-third of what it would have been if they decided to hire resources locally.

However, in practice we have rarely seen such high cost savings. The reason now seems well justified. According to Meta Group, Gartner and Renodis, there are few hidden costs which cause the profits to fall short of expectations. They are listed below:

“Layoff’s and retention cost” are the cost incurred at the end of the contracting organization while they shift roles and right-size the staff. “Lost Productivity” refers to the loss of work due to turnover among workers at our end. Depending on the maturity of the organization that you work with, this value can be between 3% and 27%. Thus working with an organization that has a very high turnover rate or that does not does not have a way to manage this, cuts your profit expectation to two-third.

Let’s analyze this with a one year contract with 2 dedicated resources for which the billing is $1450 per month. The total contract size is 2 (People) X 12 (Months) X 1450 (per month cost) = $34800.

Indus Net Technologies proactively manages the risk of “Loss Productivity” to ensure that your organization does not have to suffer such huge losses and you could enjoy greater profitability.

Friends,

A little while ago we completed a Jewelry Web Site for Nancy Rebecca Twine. The project went off successfully and we made it live. When we asked for her feedback – Here’s what Nancy had to say about us:

These days, excellent web design and customer support at an affordable price is hard to find.  Luckily, Script2Please was there to fulfill those needs.  Not only are Script2Please’s prices extremely competitive and affordable, the dedication of the development team is superb and hard to come by.  From the day my project took off, I had access to a team of dedicated and knowledgeable technicians who were able to make my dream website design a reality.  I was able to communicate with the designers and programmers on a regular basis to ensure the project was being carried out to my specifications.  I always received fast and friendly responses from everyone working on my behalf.  Script2Please doesn’t just get the job done, they truly want all of their customers to be fully satisfied and are willing to work extra hard to stand by that belief.  I am extremely satisfied with what the team has done for me.  I would strongly recommend Script2Please’s services to anyone looking for exceptionally affordable website design/construction, excellent and friendly service, and solid results. 
 

Nancy T.
www.serranojewelry.com
service@serranojewelry.com
(203)657-GEMS

Many thanks to Nancy Rebecca and we will continue to do the same – Souvit

In the dedicated hiring model, you pay us fixed fees on a monthly basis, based on blend of people that are assigned to your project. On the contrary, as the name implies, the fixed price quote is one final price that is given to you for completing the entire assignment.

Fixed Pricing, from the vendor’s perspective, generally has a built-in contingency, usually between 10-30% of what it would cost on hourly hiring basis. This figure generally depends on the clarity and complexity of the job.

For example, if it has been estimated that the job will take 300 man-hours, and the going billing rate is $10/hour, then the “estimated” fix price would be $3000.  The price that is presented to the client would be 1.2 or 1.3 times that much — $3300 - $3900. So, as a client, you are “paying extra” to ensure that the job comes in at a fixed fee. There are a number of reasons why we have to do this:

1. The initial estimation may not be very accurate. This may be both due to insufficient details or very optimistic expectations.
2. No project has a fixed scope, some changes are generally required in every project
3. Management overhead on the project is quite high.
4. The entire risk for timely project delivery within specific budget lies with vendor organization.  

Let see how dedicated hiring model saves cost. Let us assume that the project involved 20% (60 hours) design and 80% (240 hours) programming. We assume an average rate of $1100 for a dedicated offshore designer and $1450 for an average offshore programmer. Let’s calculate the costs:

Thus, there I an outright saving of 21% against hourly rates and 39% against fixed price contracts.

Note: We do not accept project of less than 3 man-months duration on dedicated hiring model. 

“Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.”- Stephen Leacock

Content2Please started its journey with an impression in the hospitality industry by accomplishing mega projects before time. Once again, it made a mark with a project that was big in size, thoughts as well as focus. Here’s a feeback on the work Content2please has done on http://www.uk-airport-car-parking.co.uk/

“I have been working with Content2Please and its director/owner Mr. Abhi along with his content writing head Mousumi Chatterjee and the rest of the team for about the past 6 months or so. I have found that our working relationship could not be better and I always found that any request can be accommodated without fuss. The whole team’s work ethic is of the highest class and the end products always live up to expectations. In brief throughout the past 6 months Content2Please have always delivered what I wanted and more.”
Parag Gaykar
Director, Trident Web Infoservices Pvt. Ltd.
www.tridentindia.net

We, at Indus Net Technologies, express our gratitude to you for the undaunting support and also promise to keep our wings open for you so that we can fly high together, over and over again.

NOTE: www.content2please.com provides comprehensive content writing services for better search engine ranking and bolstered web presence.