Should You Outsource? How Crain Communications Partnered With the Right Team for Success
In a launch-obsessed business culture, projects that lose steam and crash back down to Earth are an all too common occurrence. When project owners sense themselves in freefall, they often ramp up their budget with the hopes of rekindling the flames of that initial momentum. Sadly, this strategy rarely yields the desired results.
For Crain Communications, a long-standing American publishing conglomerate of peerless worldwide prestige, their verticals (which include AdvertisingAge, Autoweek, Plastic News and so many more) have long-since achieved liftoff. Nevertheless, Crain’s Agile/Scrum development teams have been working overtime to augment the reach and accessibility of their print publications with responsive websites. These also include sites purpose-built to feature each of their numerous yearly events.
With the ever-increasing scope of this endeavor, it became necessary for Crain Communications to outsource some of their efforts. While many firms exist to fill this gap in manpower, Crain chose Axioned in part because of the firm sense of ownership the publisher would retain over its own projects. The partnership between the two has borne fruit, with Axioned enabling Crain to achieve more of its goals with less efforts.
Ownership Vs. Outsourcing
Outsourcing often fails not because of skillset deficiencies, but rather due to an inability to deliver a satisfactory client experience. Project owners often feel they lose control when they entrust their vital responsibilities to an outside team, which undermines confidence in the entire effort. Axioned alleviates these anxieties by offering:
- Daily progress reports highlighting milestones, red flags, and the path ahead
- Humanized communication via face-to-face video chats
- Handpicked personnel who take a stake in their clients’ successes
Crain’s Requirements
At the outset of their collaboration, Crain Communications set forth a series of requirements for Axioned to fill, including:
- 4–5 PHP/OOP/Drupal developers and manual testers to augment their own Agile/Scrum team
- An overlap in working hours between team members working in New York City and Mumbai in order to facilitate real-time correspondence and regular meetings
- An exceptional command of English-language skills to ensure clear communication
Axioned’s Solutions
Axioned’s solution began with picking the right people to work with Crain’s existing teams. Personnel were individually interviewed to assure a good fit in terms of technical ability, communication skills, and experience. Once the Mumbai and NYC teams were acquainted with one another, cloud-based technologies were implemented to enable a free exchange of engagement, communication, and organization of labor. These tools included:
Finally, Axioned coordinated with the AdAge.com team to develop a Drupal website template that could be used to easily produce high-quality sites to feature upcoming events.
The Results
In the end, Axioned’s tailored approach was equal to the task of augmenting Crain Communication’s in-house Scrum efforts in a cost-effective manner. Axioned doesn’t operate in a way that forces clients to make concessions on quality or increase spending, and instead strove to better understand and serve Crain’s needs through a policy of open and humanized communication. Crain Communications’ own personnel were then freed up to break ground on other projects.
Axioned strove to better understand and serve Crain’s needs through a policy of open and humanized communication. This increase in quality manpower allowed for enhanced development of website features along with more thorough debugging.
With the infrastructure in place and any potential geographical/cultural issues sorted out, Crain’s Scrum Masters were free to use Axioned personnel as their own. This increase in quality manpower allowed for enhanced development of website features along with more thorough debugging. Axioned’s strategy was so efficient, they were able to close out an additional Drupal-based event website that the NYC team wouldn’t have been able to produce on their own.