Outsource-A-Holic

Outsourcing is a very simple concept. By definition, it means to ‘purchase goods or subcontract services from an outside supplier or source’. For the individual business owner or the small to medium sized business owner, it is the known as the ‘fountain of youth and productivity’. Why? Because hiring outside talent at a fraction of the cost (and no overhead) allows a business to grow rapidly and ‘act’ like a much larger company while protecting the youth, vitality and productivity of the business and its owners.

Fortunately, there are now freelance boards like Elance which serve as a meeting place for buyers and providers to help support one another in their respective businesses. A business owner can hire out for virtually every aspect of their business, including legal, accounting, marketing, sales, design, manufacturing…and on and on. In fact, the reality is that a business owner can simply be a visionary and have an idea about a product, concept or business structure and have no other real expertise yet still make their dream a reality through outsourcing.

And timing couldn’t be better.

In today’s economic environment, statistics reveal that unemployment is at a 26 year high. What this means to an elance buyer is that there are more creative and trained talent and natural ability on the streets than in the last 2 and half decades. Another important statistic reveals that individuals working remotely have risen from 28.7 million Americans in 2006 to 33.7 million in 2008. I can only imagine how these numbers might have changed given the economic climate over the first and second quarter of 2009!

If you have some projects and would like to try the outsourcing world, start with Elance!

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Germany is a country with an estimated 81.4 million people, while nearly 5% of the gross national income in spent on education. That only breaks down to about $45 per student ($18 dollars per more student than the US spends). The population difference not being that large, Germany’s main study focuses are on Mathematics, the German language, and social studies. The literacy level is 99% and although Germany is a world wide provider in many technical fields, there is a very slim number of German technical providers that speak English. If this could be a problem for completing your contract or outsourcing needs, it would be helpful to have a bilingual assistant to help the process of communication.

German technical providers are on par with their Russian competition. The engineers and programmers are among the best in the world, largely to do with the fact that they focus so much time and energy in their education on strong mathematical skills. If you are looking for program development, scripting, design services or application development, Germany is a great place to start.

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With a population of just less than 50 million South Korea is home to one of the largest groups of college graduates per capita than any other country. With 30% of their college grads coming out with a degree in either science of engineering, South Korea is quickly becoming a world wide power in many of these fields.

When it comes to technical education, south Korea produces many application developers, such as java, perl, SSH, Shell, php, cgi, and many others. The applications produced by south Korean developers are seen all over in today’s world on phones, computers, in vehicles, even certain types of calculators, all filled with coding that was created in South Korea.

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Japan is a group of 6,852 islands in East Asia whose size is about 145,000 square miles with a population estimated just over 127 million. This country is overflowing with talented people to perform the work you need. The reason I bring Japans size up, is because California is 160,000 square miles, and the total population of California is estimated at just over 38 million people. Japan has just under half the population of the United States and is smaller than California! Japans main export is technology, and main import is foodstuff. 80% of the Japanese people are urbanized, which means less than 20% live in rural areas. Japan has the world’s second largest economy and is the third largest in purchasing power parity.

Japan ranks 12th in the Ease of Doing Business Index of 2008- They are very familiar with western ways of business and are extremely business savvy when it comes to negotiations with the United States. They are also ranked in the top 20 in the world for hourly rates, so your Japanese provider will not be cheap, however, they will deliver on time, with quality results. English is a required course of study for Japanese students, so are American studies.

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