Collaborating Tools For Outsourcing

By Kevin D. Rolle

Outsourcing has been the secret weapon for many a top dog internet marketer for years. (You didn't REALLY think that they created all of those incredible pieces of software, or websites themselves did you?

And everybody is well aware of sites like www.rent-a-coder.com or www.elance.com where you can find people from all over the world ready avail you of their talents. (For a fee, of course). You can get just about anything done through these sites. Any project you can dream up, there is someone in those sites willing to bid on it that you can be matched up with.

But is it enough for you to sit back after you've handed the project over to them, and simply wait to see what they come up with weks later. (You could be in for a nasty surprise when they come back with something not quite the same as what you had in mind).

No. I don't think a simple phone, email, and fax contacts will do when there are thousands of dollars on the line, and deadlines looming.

No. What you need are coolaborative tools that will allow both you and the people you hire to work together in real time throughout the life of the project. No more 'waiting and praying' that all turns out well. You won't have to do that if you can see what's going on every step of the way, and make corrections on the fly at each bench mark.

This is all possible with collaborative online tools. Let's have a quick look at three of them.

By the way, I first heard about the last 2 tools through an article at Web Worker Daily.

www.webworkerdaily.com/2009/02/02/project-management-collaboration-and-how-our-brains-work

Go To Meeting (www.gotomeeting.com). Yes, we've all seen the commercials.

"GoToMeeting is a Web conferencing tool that allows you to meet online rather than in a

conference room. It’s the easiest and most cost-effective way to organize and attend online meetings. Patented technology enables co-workers, customers and prospects to view any application running on your PC in real time. With the flexibility to meet in person or online, you’ll be able to do more and travel less."

 "With GoToMeeting, it’s easy to conduct on-the-fly or scheduled presentations with a prospective customer, perform live demonstrations in real time, collaborate on documents with your colleagues and provide training to customers and employees. Within seconds you can be improving your productivity and generating more revenue."

You can even try it for free.

Project Thingy (www.projectthingy.com). This one really caught my attention. (And

not just because of the title).

"Because keeping project related communication and information in one place is vital for

the success of your projects. It keeps your team and clients connected and up to date.

So no time is wasted looking for current documents or tracking down communication spread out across multiple channels.

And what better place is there to do this than on your own web site? Password protected, but easily and immediately accessible to everyone involved."

"What people are saying

WebWorkerDaily says: "My brain works quite happily with ProjectThingy"

ReadWriteWeb says: "Innovation in Collaboration"

KillerStartups says: "The main advantage of such a solution is that it can be fully and seamlessly integrated with your site, to the point that someone would be forgiven for thinking that it was tailor-made. This also makes the whole process a more familiar one for your team, not to mention giving clients a sense of stability."

Patrick says: "A Beautiful Twist On A Boring Old Thing"

Tom Mighell says: "Check out Project Thingy, an interesting tool that embeds itself on your own website."

And lastly, but not least, Assembla. (www.assembla.com/)

Here are a few quotes...

"Get the best tools for each project

Select best-of-breed collaboration tools for a project workspace, or "get a space" to grab one of our pre-configured workspaces."

"Add and manage team members Manage your team list in one place. Assign owner, core team, and customer/watcher roles. Email invitations bring people together fast. Users can get to work quickly because they find their tools and content together."

"Follow activity and share information Assembla shows a stream of all team member activity, by email, RSS, and on the "Stream" web page. This unifies your team and helps everyone work together effectively."

"If you make software or manage any kind of distributed team, Assembla will make your teams faster and more unified. We studied distributed, agile teams and built Assembla to meet their needs and refined the tools in our own intense projects."

Your choice from three excellent tools to help with your outsourcing efforts.

Visit my Squidoo lens for information on the mobile phone industry at....
 
Mobile Phones Rising (lens):- www.squidoo.com/mobilephonesrising

Mr. Kevin D. Rolle is the owner of the blog  Site Traffic Overload Blog at
http://www.sitetrafficoverload.com/blog, and the site Maintaining Money Momentum
http://www.maintainingmoneymomentum.com/ where you can get a free
excerpt from his book, "Maintaining Money Momentum".