Should You Hire or Contract an Access Expert? | Hire an Access Expert

Hire or Contract

National Public Radio recently interviewed a business owner who was actively seeking full-time computer programmers to work at his company. He was having difficulty finding qualified personnel. While it may be necessary to employ full-time computer programmers in many situations, many times it is not. Winning Solutions, Inc. is a contract programming company head quartered in Ames, Iowa. We have done large and small programming projects for companies all over the United States. In fact, several years ago, we completed a large multi-year programming project for an organization in Seattle, Washington.

There are several reasons full-time developers may not be necessary:

1. The programming cycle; when programming work is being performed, it periodically needs to be reviewed. When the reviews take place, it may be necessary to halt programming until the review is completed in order to avoid wasting time going down the wrong path. This leads to programmers sitting idle. Idle programmers still have to be paid if the programmers are salaried employees of your organization.

2. Full-time employees and contractors working at an hourly rate have a lack of incentive to bring a project to an early or on time completion; they could be laid off or their contract could be ended if they do their job well.

3. Working on a single project may be boring and can cause highly creative people, which most programmers are, to be less than fully productive.

4. Full time developers are not needed to ensure ongoing support and the ability to update and patch existing software. Winning Solutions, Inc. has been in business continuously since 1996. We are based in the same community as Iowa State University. Many very talented ISU programming students have hung out a shingle and started offering programming services in our community. More often than not, they move on to bigger opportunities. But WSI has been here year after year. Almost every year we acquire one or more programming projects that were worked on by these students from organizations that are in need of a stable, reliable company to provide on-going support and enhancements to their software. WSI has a carefully designed business model that allows us to work on large software projects while supporting numerous projects that are stable and working but just need minor adjustments. Most of the time, we can turn software updates around in the same week they are requested; sometimes they are turned around the same day. This variety of work addresses the productivity concern raised in reason three above.

There are cost-effective alternatives to employing full time computer programmers and software developers. Winning Solutions, Inc. is a provider of such alternatives; we offer the ability for your organization to have software programmed, which will be fully owned by your company. You can choose to work with WSI on a project basis. This means that you provide us with a specification for your software program or database. Winning Solutions, Inc. provides you with a written estimate to complete the project including a delivery date. You only pay for work on a percent complete basis; you can stop or restart the project at any time you choose. You own all the programming work performed by Winning Solutions, Inc. up to the point where you stopped the project and paid for the percentage of work completed at that time. If you do not like the way we are working, you can always hire a full-time programmer and have them take over the project. Or if you cannot find a suitable full-time programmer and want to begin a project now, this flexibility allows you to transition the project back to your full time programmer or programmers at any point, should you find one.

Naturally, when you are have this type of programming relationship, you do not need to worry about how long it is taking you to review the progress that has been made on your programming project. It is up to Winning Solutions, Inc. to find other work for programmers to do while you are reviewing and providing feedback on the project.

We perform work for clients all over the country. Today’s technologies for sharing screens give Winning Solutions, Inc. the ability to serve clients all over the country and around the world.

So, if you cannot find the programmers you need, or if the programmers you have are not cost-effective, we would encourage you to give Winning Solutions, Inc. a try. Please contact us today.

To get a free quote for your Microsoft Access Database needs.

To learn more about the WSI quoting process.