Staying in

Work out a daily rate for each person involved in the project – don’t forget to include project managers and administrative support. The daily rate should include all the overheads of the department (space, furniture, equipment, support services - the lot) and take account of time lost through sickness, holidays and training. Then keep timesheets from the inception of the project to its completion and use these, with the daily rates, as a basis for calculating labour costs.

On top of this there will be some direct project- related costs, including travel and other general expenses, and the use of external specialists, such as graphic designers and programmers. Add these to your labour costs and you’ll have a pretty good idea how expensive your project has been.

Going out

Your second option is to contract with an external producer to do the work for you. At least you can claim to be ‘ sticking to the knitting’, as the management books like to call it, concentrating on running your business rather than establishing a completely new area of competence. You get to exploit the not inconsiderable skills of the external developer, safe in the knowledge that you can ‘use them and lose them’ if they fail to deliver the goods or the work runs out.

On the other hand, you cannot just sit back and wait for the content to be delivered on the due date. There’s a considerable amount of work still required to manage the relationship and ensure that you get what you want, not what the developer would like to make for you. You’ll need a sound knowledge of the process of design and development, excellent project management skills and the ability to cajole subject-matter experts into co-operating. And don’t underestimate the work required in obtaining approvals from all the interested parties (not least the corporate lawyers ) at each stage in the process.

At first look, external development seems expensive, but in practice content development is always expensive, however it’s done. When all costs are taken into account, in-house development can actually be more expensive, without access to the tools, experience and expertise that an external producer can call upon. If you think a developer is overcharging you, look at their profits. Chances are your own business is making a better margin.