| 1. What is FTE hiring? How does it work?
FTE ( Full Time Equivalent) hiring system is a system which hires employees who will work for you on a contract basis. The arrangement is similar to that of a team of people who will be working for you from outside your office. We can help you recruit from our own team of programmers or you can choose to have a completely new team.
Once you have the team in place, you can instruct them and manage the project yourself. The team will be just like your own staff members and they will be directly reporting to you. Another added advantage is that you do not have to worry about the infrastructural requirements for these employees as they will be working for you from our office.
2. What benefits do I get from an FTE arrangement?
An FTE arrangement ensures that you have at hand a team of professional FTE employees will work exclusively on your projects. This saves you a lot of time, if your company is handling a lot of work and if your employees are burdened with other projects. The very knowledge that you have a team available for your project even at short notice releases great burdens. In addition this often proves vital and tends to be an advantage in cases where your customers or users come back with urgent change requests that need to be implemented under the deadlines and pressures of time.
You have direct control over the project and the team will report directly to you. As the FTE(s) works on your application they build up specialized knowledge about it. This learning translates into a major beneift as it helps them to come out with suggestions for improvement, and also reases their productivity as time passes.
Another benefit in an FTE arrangement is the IP protection you get for your software. Unlike in a conventional fixed price deal, where (in reality) you only get a license to use the product or at best you get co-ownership of the code, an FTE agreement is a “work for hire” agreement, and hence all Intellectual Property developed by your team in India will belong solely to you.
Add to this the infrastructural facilities of a web development company at minimum cost and also having the company ensure the security and confidentiality of your information and with such numerous benefits, the FTE arrangement seems to be a good bet indeed!
3. What is the skill set available?
We have a pool of experienced & skilled professionals who can work full time for your project(s) in Open source
Microsoft and Sun Java.
4. How beneficial is an FTE arrangement compared to outsourcing on fixed price or Time & Material basis?
In the case of projects where you have a clear idea of what you want, an FTE arrangement is the lowest priced option, se there is no reason for your software service provider to “buffer” or “pad” the quote to manage risk.
5. Will your company be responsible for the people I hire from you?
Yes. All the people you hire on an FTE arrangement are bound by contract to follow the company’s policies regarding Intellectual Property, security, leave and other aspects that are related to and may affect your work.
6. How do you ensure security?
All our employees are required to sign legal contracts to protect your interests. In addition, our networks are secured via firewalls and antivirus software. We also keep backups of all the data on our servers to protect against hardware failure or virus attacks.
7. What are the risks that I might have to face? How do you offer to alleviate these risks?
When you hire a small team of one or two people, the risk is that the knowledge is fully in the hands of these two people. This might become a problem later on.
To avoid this, at your discretion, we shall provide you with more people. For instance, if your requirement is for two people, we shall put in place four people dividing the work hours between them. The intention is to spread the knowledge among these people to avoid concentration of information. The major advantage you have here is that you get the skilled services of four at the cost of two.
In this arrangement the project management is vested with you and you will have to make full utilization of your resource(s). If sufficient work is not assigned to your hired employee you’ll be paying for idle time which will be a loss for you.
To help you manage your hired employee better, we have our operations team who will keep you informed about the progress of the work. If we find that you are not fully utilizing the time of the employees, we will give you timely alerts to remind you of the same.
8. Why should I choose your services?
When you hire from DATATeam Systems, you get highly qualified and experienced programmer(s) to work on your project.
The advantage that you get with our programmers is that our programmers are more than just programmers. They are trained to handle the design, analysis and development of a project. This gives you the advantage of hiring one person will all these skills instead of hiring three employees.
As a company, we assure the quality of our employees. If you are not satisfied with the performance of the employee(s), we shall provide you with a suitable replacement.
9. How unique is your service from that of your competitors?
We insist on providing quality and credibile employees and strive to give you maximum benefits from our partnership. Our uniqueness lies in how we provide you with the skilled service of more than two employees when you have to pay just for one!
The arrangement works in a manner as follows.
If you want to hire one programmer from us we would recommend you to opt for the arrangement wherein we put two or more programmers to work for you. The number of hours will be divided among these programmers. The benefits that you get from this arrangement are:
- You will be paying for just one employee but will be getting the skilled service of two or more!
- You do not have to worry that work will suffer if one person goes on leave or quits from the project
- There is no fear of concentration of information with one employee. This provides security from leak of information about the project
- Work will get done faster and monotony does not creep in
10. What are the costs and how do I pay you?
The cost depends on the type of personnel and the experience that you require. A typically qualified programmer will cost you $3250 per person per month. To simplify the process of making payments, we have arrangements with banks across North America and Europe through which you can wire transfer the payments to our account in India.
11. Will there be an rease in costs in the long run?
We assure that there are no hidden costs. The costs, however, will rease only on a yearly basis which will be with respect to reasing employee costs.
12. Is FTE arrangement a good option for me?
The answer to this query of yours depends on what you want to achieve and the level of expertise that you already have. An FTE arrangement is apt when you are looking to either augment your existing team, have a large project that requires dedicated staff, or if you have a steady stream of maintenance and enhancement requirements for your software product.
13. What is the procedure to initiate a project on FTE? How soon can I start off?
The procedure is very simple. Once you fill up the form provided to you at the bottom of the screen and send it along with your basic requirement specifications, our Client Engagement Team will get back to you within 24 hours. Once both parties are conved about the partnership, we can start off immediately. The time span between our contact and project start off could be between one week and one month.
14. Do I get a trial run of your FTE services?
Yes you can opt for a paid trial of our services. The period can be from one week to one month. Once you’re satisfied, we can enter into a full fledged contract.
15. What service level agreements and guarantees do you offer?
Before the commencement of the project, we will sign a Services Contract that details the responsibilities of each party, the deliverables, pricing, complaint handling mechanisms and delivery schedule of the projects. All payments are milestone based and made after you approve of the milestone and its deliverables.
16. How can I make optimal utilization of the resource allotted to me?
You can make optimal utilization of the time and skills of the employee hired by you with:
- Organized project management
- Planned work schedule and assignment of work
- Constant monitoring of work progress
17. How do you ensure employee credibility?
Employees are recruited into the organization through tested methods of evaluation of capability and integrity. While entering into projects, all the employees who will be involved in the projects are required to sign confidentiality agreements with DATATeam Systems. The access to client information is restricted to a limited number of people and we employ high level security systems at their workstations.
18. How do you ensure that quality standards are followed?
We have our own coding standards defined by our Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG). But if you would want the team to follow the standards prescribed by you, we can work that out. Normally if they do not follow the standards that have been defined, you will not be billed for the time that they take to correct the code. We understand that we can never fully make up for wasted time and hence our processes and systems focus on avoidance of such instances.
19. Will I get a daily update on the tasks performed?
Updates are usually on a weekly basis for any strictly controlled project. But this is flexible as per your requirement.
20. Will the costs remain the same for employees with different skill sets like PHP, ASP etc…?
The costs will remain the same regardless of the skill sets of the employee(s).
21. Who will be managing the FTE? An unknown project manager or I?
In FTE, the project runs completely under your supervision and you will be managing the project. If you think it will be difficult for you to manage the project, you may also hire a project manager who will perform the managing task for you.
22. What if my FTE goes on leave?
If you are hiring a team of more than one employee, the tasks can be easily handled if one person goes on leave. Even if you are hiring just one employee we would recommend that you opt for the arrangement wherein we provide you with two programmers at the cost of one! The work hours will be divided among these people and the project will not suffer even if one programmer goes on leave.
23. What happens if I am unhappy with the employee?
If at any time you feel unhappy with the performance of the programmer(s), you can notify the issue to our Operations Manager. We will take up the responsibility of giving you a replacement.
24. What can you do if the hired employee leaves? If we are provided a replacement how do we help in knowledge transfer?
Our policies ensure that employees serve a two months’ notice before they resign. This gives ample time for us to put in a competent replacement. We also ensure that a smooth transition and knowledge transfer happens during the same.
25. What if the employees need training? Who will bear the training costs?
DATATeam Systems will bear the costs for any training regarding the software languages that is needed for the replacement. If any new language or skill is to be acquired by the programmer(s) for your specific requirement, then you will have to bear the training costs.
26. Will I be able to hire more employees at a later stage?
Of course. You can hire more employees at a later stage and we would love to provide you with the same.
27. What are the conditions regarding terminating hired employees?
If you are unhappy with the performance of the employee(s),, you can notify us and we will take immediate steps to take him off the project. We will also provide you with a replacement ASAP.
28. What are my rights regarding source code, copyright, intellectual property etc?
All rights regarding the project rest solely with you. The arrangement is such that we are a party in providing you with people who will work directly under you. This gives you the sole ownership of source code, Intellectual Property, copyright etc…
29. What if the arrangement does not work well?
If you ever find any problem in the FTE arrangement you can immediately bring it to our notice. We will take immediate steps to make good for the drawbacks.
30. Will I be able to shift to Fixed Price/T&M based contract if I am not happy with FTE arrangement?
There is always room for flexibility as we intend to provide you with the best of our services. If you think that the FTE arrangement is not working well for you, we can work out a better solution, whether it is on a Fixed Price or Time and Material basis.
31. Whom do I contact if I have any grievances regarding the hiring arrangement?
We shall provide you with the contact details of our Operations Manager and our CEO. You can directly contact them if you have any grievance.
32. What are the conditions for terminating the contract?
The terms of terminating the contract will be specified in the initial contract that we will be signing |
