How Group Zero Keeps Prices Down

Web experts at Group Zero find cost-effectiveness with an overseas team — and customers get the savings.

It's not difficult for Luke Salsich, president and co-founder of Group Zero, to describe the impact that oDesk providers have had on his web application development business. "Our business is growing monthly," he says. "It's very concrete — I'm a bottom line guy."

Since joining oDesk three years ago, he has put together a team of providers, most of them web developers living in Ukraine, who brought great qualifications to their work, several having master's degrees, and have shown a tremendous work ethic. He's not sure he could've found such hard workers in his own back yard, but he knows he couldn't afford to hire local staff with master's degrees.

Getting work done quickly, expertly, all at highly competitive rates means Salsich can charge clients less than his competitors do. He says Group Zero's prices are bringing them more clients every month.

"The benefits of using oDesk are incredible," he says.

"We are able to charge a fraction of what our competitors charge."

Luke Salsich / Co-Founder and President, Group Zero

Finding the Talent

Salsich doesn't view hiring remote workers as a necessary evil to get access to better talent or more competitive rates than he can find locally. "I prefer to hire people on oDesk," he say. "I find that they're tremendously motivated and enthusiastic, and grateful for the opportunity."

He dismisses the idea that hiring remote workers is any more complicated or risky than hiring locally. He says Group Zero takes every hire, whether a full-time staffer in Boston or a part-time remote provider, seriously. "We're a professional operation," he says, and explains how he's learned to use oDesk's hiring tools to find the right providers. He looks for professionalism in every aspect of of a candidate's portfolio, from previous experience and feedback ratings to the grammar in the cover letter — chat-room lingo, he says, is a big red flag.

Since first making a hire through oDesk, Group Zero has expanded the role its remote workteam plays, and that's not a trend Salsich expects to reverse. "We started hiring providers on oDesk to supplement our need for additional programmers," he says, "and now it's become a valuable part of our business model."