- Hey everybody I'm Dave Hecker, and today we're going to talk about outsourcing for
resellers. Resellers are companies like agencies, or graphic design shops, or just
bigger software companies that are hiring companies sometimes overseas, to
outsource work to and then reselling it to their clients.
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Okay, so what kind of resellers do we see?
Anybody who is hiring a company or even an independent freelancer to do work for them
and then selling it to their clients, sort of as their own, subcontracting it, we
call them a reseller. This can be anything from an independent freelancer who's just
got overflow work, or work they can't handle. These are consultants, any kind of
boutique web agencies, we see lots of that. Like a shop that just does
Wordpress, so when they have something that's not Wordpress, they send it out and
resell it. Or a larger agency with a standing offshore development center.
Anybody that has overflow. Anybody who's reselling to clients, usually with putting
a profit margin on top of it, that is what we call a reseller. A very, very common
type of reseller is the very, very small shop. This is an independent, a husband
and wife or just a few people, where they're not big enough to support an
offshore development center. They can't keep three developers or even one going
full time. What they're looking for is help with projects. These kinds of
developers are almost always asking, "How can we find a company that will help us
bid projects and then help us service those projects? We can mark it up and then
they'll sort of wait while we bring in another project." That's tough for the
vendor because they're going through the same ride with you, they'd rather have
consistent work. However, some of these small clients are going to do best with
some of the small vendors. You really want to be looking for a vendor who's doing the
exact same thing that you do. They understand what it's like to try to win
clients and lose them. They'll see it as a partnership. They're
okay having people on the bench. They're willing to take smaller projects, fixed
bid and change orders, and things like that. You can do pretty well with Elance,
that's where most of these small vendors go, but you have to learn the ropes of
Elance first. Give us a call if you need help with that because there are a lot of
bad vendors on Elance that aren't prepared for the challenges of working with a
reseller. A lot of resellers are kind of new to this, and they sort of see it like
it's like hiring a plumber. You ask them what you need them to do, and they pretty
much know what to do. They've got all the tools, they've done it before, outsourcing
is not going to work like that at all if you're one of these small resellers. Be
sure to find a company that actually understands what it is you do. They speak
your language, and they're ready to roll with you through the challenges of being a
reseller, especially a small boutique one. Another common type we see is small shops
but shops that are a little further down the line. They're a little more
successful, they're bringing in more revenue. And they have enough business to
attract much more professional teams. They don't need to go with a very small,
hungrier team. For these clients, we need to put them with a team that's not too
small because they're going to send steady work and they've got to do a great job on
it. But they can't be too big either because they're still small clients, so if
we send them to a gigantic, you know, 700 person developer, they might get lost in
there. You know you don't ever want to be a company's smallest client, or their
largest, so for these companies it's all about right size. They've serviced plenty
of fixed bid clients and they know how that works, but they're also big enough so
that if somebody quits or switches departments or something like that, they
know how to handle it. They're a mature company. So for your smaller clients that
do have steady work, we want to send them with still a fairly small organization,
but not too small. And if they're big enough we'll look at something like an ODC
for them. Okay that brings me to the larger clients.
These resellers are usually agencies. Maybe they've got 50 people. And they're
doing great. They've got more business then they can handle which is exactly why
they're looking to outsource. For these guys, we look at them and we think, "Are
they in a position to manage an offshore development center?" An offshore
development center is when you hire on full time employees, they're like your
employees, but they're actually sitting in a chair overseas, another company is
housing them, but they're only working for you. But it's up to you to manage them. So
if you're an agency that has tons of work, sending enough work is not your problem.
Think to yourself can you manage this work or not? The thing that I like to tell
clients is that every IT project is going to take management, it's going to take
more than you think it will.
Somebody has to do it, it's not going to do itself. Either you do it
or they do it, but if no one does it, it's going to be a train wreck. So that should
give you a little insight into what type of reseller client you are, and what kind
of vendor is going to fit you best. If you need a little help finding that perfect
vendor, give us a call, otherwise best of luck on your outsourcing project.
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