Outsourcing & Working with Contractors

Hardware development is going global. More and more, teams are taking advantage of new methods of communicating to work with off-site team members and contractors. Some teams depend on outsourcing critical stages of their design cycle to meet technical or budgetary needs.

But an inherent challenge with working with contractors is the lack of transparency: project managers can't physically check up on the work in progress. Furthermore, any discussions on the project has to be confined to long email threads or scheduled phone calls, which may not be possible when you're working with an engineer on the other side of the world. It's also difficult to manage the back-and-forth files of new work and to know exactly what's been worked on.

A transparent, hassle-free way of outsourcing work

• Runs in the browser, on any OS: Whether your contractor works across the country or on the other side of the planet, Upverter can be instantly accessed without any download meaning you never have to send a design through email. Once they are granted the proper permission to edit the design, they can get started with their work right away.
• Gain transparency: With Upverter, it's simple to see any new activity that's occurred on a project, including design changes and comments. You can use the built-in timeline player to scroll back through every edit in chronological order, letting you know exactly what's been done on a project without waiting for a status report.
• Built-in Team Management: Communicating with your contractor has never been this easy. Upverter offers an uncomplicated way to add annotation to a design and assign tasks to team members, both internal and external. Start a comment thread directly under a task and talk through any technical issues that may arise.
• A single, unified data model: Upverter's innovation exists in the way the tool handles design data. The central, unified data model means that you never have to manage hundreds of separate files; every edit and every version is compiled as a single design. You won't have to send and receive new files to see the progress of your project.