Looking for help externally
Companies sometimes find they need to look beyond their own four walls to find the staff with the right skills to make an e-commerce project fly. Why do businesses investigate this route?
When initially planning their e-commerce strategy many companies will ask themselves -Why can't we do it ourselves?".
In the case of technology companies with in-house expertise in database operation, HTML coding, Web design and Web project management, it may be a simple matter of ensuring they have sufficient staff.
But for non-technology companies, the potential benefits are outweighed by the potential pitfalls and an e-commerce site that is not designed and built properly in the first place can become an expensive disaster.
The disadvantages include:
* Having to take up to six staff away from their core job for up to two years and retrain them in skills they are not necessarily suited to. (Experts say it takes three to six full-time staff with different skills to create a successful e-commerce site.)
* Training takes time and does not produce staff that have essential job experience; as a result the project can take much longer.
* The cost is often more than outsourcing or employing.
The benefits include:
* Having complete control over the project and its successâ€"or failure.
* Being able to provide the business acumen specific to your core business. (However, this can also be done by close collaboration with IT staff you have employed or contractors and suppliers the job is outsourced to.)
Once the site is operational, the logistics change. It makes sense to use existing staff rather than continue to employ expensive IT experts. Maintaining the site requires fewer people, less expertise, and it can usually be done as a core part of the business, meaning that existing staff can be trained in-house to do the job.
A pox on this continued garbage of a "skills shortage". There are thousands of skilled I.T. people who used to live in Australia, who are now working elsewhere in the world. Why? Because the "managers" in Australia get the latest technology but REFUSE to train anybody, and expect fully skilled people to roll up to their door. People with experience, who'd take a couple of days to get on with the job, are refused by know-nothing "agents" who demand "must have". Result? an unemployed person, and a client screaming "skills shortage". And if you're over 40, you're a dinosaur, can't do this new stuff. Absolutely pathetic!
Explain to me why there is not a "skills shortage" in Europe, and why there are Australians working over here? Yes, I am one of them.
The sooner the recruitment "industry" is dispensed with, the sooner this lunacy will dissipate, and then maybe Australia will become an I.T. country, instead of the global idiot!
I despair.