Case Study: Exceeding acidgreen’s offshore staffing

Acidgreen is an award-winning full-service ecommerce agency offering premium web design, development and marketing services. The company initially engaged Outsourced in 2010 for their offshore staffing requirements. Now, they have a team of over 25 talented professionals at our Manila office who support acidgreen’s staff in Sydney, Australia.

We spoke to acidgreen’s Senior Technical Consultant, James Lowe, for insight into how they made outsourced staffing a success.

• Location: Australia
• Industry: IT, Creative, Marketing
• Outsourced Staff: Web developers, QA testers

The challenge

“As a developer for over 18 years and technical consultant and project manager for the last ten years, I have worked with many developers under various outsourcing models, some with limited access,” explained Lowe. “The main issues have always followed a similar thread: the time zones, language barriers, terrible code quality, laboured management processes and zero accountability.”

When asked about how outsourcing worked before partnering with Outsourced, Lowe recounted frustrations.

“I would have regaled a tale along the lines of; ask for X, Y and Z, and you will wait two weeks to get X,” said Lowe. “A week later, after your time has been invested in feedback, you will receive Y, but no Z. X will now be broken and takes another iteration to fix. This painstaking process is the norm for many outsourcing models.”

The solution

Acidgreen’s outsourced staff are divided into teams, each with a manager in Sydney who communicates with them daily via Slack and other methods. There are also weekly work-in-progress reports and regular in-person meetups between the Philippines and Australia. These tactics heighten the quality of communication and support team cohesion despite staff usually being based in different countries.

Initially, only a few developers were onboarded. Lowe recalled the difference in quality was clear.

“Having worked with many developers over the years, I can honestly say that the staff we work with at Outsourced are as good, if not better, than local developers,” he said. “This is based on technical ability alone.

“However, the quality of a developer’s code is only part of the solution. A great senior developer can not only code but also communicate and collaborate with other developers and project managers. Our team in the Philippines are fluent in English and are effective communicators, which is essential in virtual communication.”