Web design boss issues India alert (From York Press)

Web design boss issues India alert

8:29am Thursday 25th February 2010

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AN EXPANDING York web design company has dropped outsourcing to India in favour of using talent on its doorstep.

And James Riley, managing director of Explosive Designs, of York Business Park, Nether Poppleton, has warned other firms in the city to take care before they are lured by the notion of lower costs in the east.

He said: “The Indians are world famous for the IT skill sets they possess, but what you don’t realise is that when the website comes back it bears all the hallmarks of having cut corners to make a quick buck, because features don’t work.

“They look at charging you between £10 to £15 per hour where our official rate is £32.50 per hour, plus the savings on overheads, so the prospect of simply project managing and making a bigger profit seems irresistible.”

But, he said, he has now had to reject four out of his five Indian contractors in Hyderabad after shoddy work and has instead taken on two web developers who live locally, one who had been made redundant from another York company; and one who was sourced from the York JobCentre.

James, who has been a web designer and developer since 2001, began parent company Fuzemedia two years ago and, after a healthy start, it was hit by the credit crunch. Two of its major clients cut marketing budgets and pulled out.

So he set up Explosive Designs under the Fuzemedia banner and filled the gap by targeting start-up firms and small and medium enterprises, offering them affordable website packages, and it took off.

“Basically I went from working from home in my bedroom in Stamford Bridge to employing three people at York Business Park and the prospect of recruiting a marketing specialist next month, when we move to larger premises in the same building.

“If you put a toe in the Indian water you may be lucky, but my experience is that it costs more in the long run to correct mistakes and to hit quality standards expected by UK firms. So be careful.”

The fifth Indian contractor is being kept on as a back-up in case of overspill, but all of its websites are now designed and developed in-house.

The first web developer recruit, Chris Wells, was employed last April and the Jobcentre recruit, Jonathan Duncan, was taken on after a two-week work trial.

Since then Jonathan has created the back-end coding, functionality and programming for three high-profile website launches for businesses throughout the UK and is preparing for more York clients. Chris has created 15 websites since he joined.

James said: “Their work couldn’t be matched by anyone abroad.”

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