Recently we have been analysing the pros and cons of this relatively new, but very successful, online phenomenon for an Alsace-based client.  Services such as Odesk, Guru and Elance have been cashing in on globalisation by providing the means for even the smallest of businesses, individuals even, to outsource just about any process or project.

The theory is simple enough, you need something doing but you don’t have the skills or the time to do it yourself, so you sign-up to one of these services, place an advert and wait for the bids to come flooding in.  You select your preferred bidder, and if they agree to the terms of your engagement a contract comes into effect until the job in question is completed satisfactorily.

Each of the main service providers use their own specific models to earn revenue from the user base, and at face value it appears to be a highly profitable business to be in. The question is however, how effective a means is it for outsourcing, or indeed finding work?

As a job-seeker you are faced with the onerous task of having to undercut rival bidders in order to get a foot in the door.  This leads to unfair downward pressure on prices for skilled work, particularly considering that many workers are based in low-cost countries.  This then leads to a deflationary cycle as potential employers learn quickly that they can get a lot for their money, and will post and repost the same job until they get the lowest possible price.

This then leads to the services filling up with jobs that are so wildly under-budgeted that no-one in their right mind would bid for them.  For example we recently found one employer who wanted someone to research and write chapters of a new book, specifying a word-count of approximately 42 thousand words.  At face value this job would take about six months to complete but the employer is expecting to pay between 500 and 1000 USD. No wonder then that many of the services are referred to as ‘e-slavery’.

Many of the service providers of course have wised-up to this problem, and are now charging job seekers to use their services, regardless of whether any job ever gets allocated or ever completed. Unfortunately this is somewhat counter-productive to good business process outsourcing.

In our view the fairest, and most fool-proof model can be found on Freelancer.com where employers are required to pay a refundable deposit on each job post, avoiding the system filling up with unfulfilled jobs, and only taking revenue from completed transactions. Membership is free for both providers and employers – so the potential user base is not restricted to those who can afford the service’s subscription rates.  I don’t doubt the profit margin is smaller than that of Guru and others, but one thing is assured on Freelancer – it’s future as a successful BPO service.

We are currently running online market-research surveys for two Strasbourg based associations:

  1. The Association Babelle is investigating the viability of opening a ‘Hammam’ in Strasbourg (a spa effectively)
  2. The Giving Tree is proposing to open an English-French bilingual crèche (bilingual survey)

If you have time, and live locally, I’m sure they’d appreciate your participation.

Client turnover: 100m USD
Age of business: 150+ years
Website built: 4 years prior to project
Last updated: 6 months prior to project


Before

This project unfolded in the way most do for us, the client initially being driven by the need to refresh a tired and out of date website. However, it immediately became clear to us that the real challenge lay in clarifying what it was the business wanted to achieve with it’s web presence; the incumbent website being riddled with meaningless jargon, conflicting customer messages and a brand that did little to reflect on the company’s prestigious 150 year history of innovation.

A simple redesign of the site was not going to improve the business’s visibility, it’s reputation nor it’s brand. Like many sites, it had been created with little fore-thought and almost zero alignment with the business strategy.

What was needed was some brand clarity, some connection with the goals of the business and a recognisable identity for the company, before we could even think of how things might look design-wise.


  1. Brand and business audit
    After a brand audit with key stakeholders we discovered that much of what was visible on the site actually reflected the internal needs of the business, rather than an external view for the benefit of customers. The biggest issue lying with the business’ logo itself, a dual brand which had been created following a merger with a much smaller rival.
  2. Methodology
    Applying what we had learned we created a number of possible ‘brand worlds’ upon which we could build a believable story and identity. These were presented to the client and refined according to feedback.
  3. Deliverables
    With all the pieces in place we were finally able to put forward:

    • A strong USP for the business
    • A design solution (that included simplification of the logo)
    • A single phrase that summed up the core strengths of the business (a strapline)
    • Three key customer messages to deliver time and again with clarity to every customer in every communication
    • A brand lexicon (a way of talking about the business)
    • and of course … a website that truly reflected the goals of the business

The result had further ramifications after the project was completed. Acknowledging our work in identifying the strengths of the brand, the company proceeded to drop other brandnames it had acquired through mergers/takeovers around the world, and today now appears under one strong unified international brand.

This post by Aaron Winborn, author of, among other things, a book entitled ‘Drupal Multimedia’ seems to find its way to the top of my Google search queries on a regular basis.

The article, written in August 2008, weighs up the pros and cons of the three leading open-source content management systems (CMS) on the market. As you can probably guess Mr Winborn recommends Drupal as the most flexible solution for serious website developers, hence the trick question.

Having now built sites using all three systems I can safely say now that not one of them can be regarded as the best solution for all needs, however, as time goes by I am increasingly convinced that Wordpress will eventually become the default choice for website construction.

Things have changed a lot since August 2008. While the development of Drupal and Joomla may have progressed, the sheer size of the user community lending itself to improving the program have accelerated the development of Wordpress’ gamut of functionalities ten-fold; and 12 million downloads of the current selection of themes tells you that Worpress is not going to go away anytime soon.

Just look at the numbers – Wordpress offers double the number of extensions available to Joomla users and four times the number available to users of the current version of Drupal. (8000 vs 4000 vs 2000)

While Drupal may remain the most flexible of solutions, its usability for inexperienced coders is a major drawback (you have to love Drupal to use Drupal). Its built-in functionality is so thin on the ground that you have to add in a dozen modules before your site approaches anything remotely usable. The key frustration from my perspective is the lack of a intuitive in-line image uploading/management solution. Perhaps Drupal 7 will be better, but for the time being version 6 is frustratingly cumbersome.

Joomla, still at version 1.5, is a solid CMS, but I have yet to create an installation that didn’t need some sort of customisation of the back-end php code in order to get it to do what I wanted.

The key advantage Wordpress offers over Joomla and Drupal – is its built-in future-proofing. What I mean is, its built in ‘click to upgrade’ functionality for themes, plug-ins and the core program is a major, MAJOR advantage. This is practical from so many perspectives, it means security flaws are easily plugged, it means you always know if you have the latest versions installed, it means you know not to customise the core code (otherwise it won’t upgrade successfully), and it means that this time next year – you won’t be looking at pulling the whole thing offline in order to shoe-horn in functionality that responds to the latest trends.

There are many things that Wordpress currently cannot do particularly well, however, all you need do is wait.