Attention!! IT folks who intend to outsource/offshore IT services

If you are trying to out source/offshore your IT application service needs for the first time, you need to be very careful with the selection of offshore IT service provider and your approach towards offshoring. Any mistakes on these will push back your offshore initiatives to years and you will need to face a lot of skeptics within your own organization

• Ask for a general corporate presentation followed by a presentation on the service provider's capabilities on your area(s) of interest. Insist on the presence of a potential team member (Team Lead or so) in the meeting along with the vendor's sales and pre-sales executives.
• Prefer a face-to-face meeting. In case it's not possible, insist on at least a video meeting
• Assess the following  during the presentations and Q & A session thereafter (not essentially in the same order)
• Vendor's business continuity and customer feedbacks
• Cultural fit with your organization
• Ability of the vendor to communicate with you seamlessly
• A few case studies (previous project experience) on your areas of interest
• Technical expertise
• Consultative approach
• Ability to grasp your business/problem domain rather quickly and provide solution
• Vendor's core IT service processes and methodologies in relation to your needs
• Vendor's resourcing  capabilities (attrition, bench strength etc.)
• Few sample resumes
• Vendor's infrastructure standards and practices, their communication facilities etc.

• When you are reasonably satisfied with the above qualification process, check at least 2 customer references who have done IT service offshoring with the vendor
• When the reference check passes, get ready for your first out sourcing/offshoring experience. Get the NDA signed if not done already

• Select a non-critical, small project which you can define very well. Most probably a legacy version of that app is already running in your enterprise and your operations will not be affected by the non-availability of the proposed new application

• Transfer the knowledge through meetings, documents, IM chats etc.
• In case you do not have a clear cut requirements document, then insist on getting an understanding document from the vendor before proceeding.

• Once you are reasonably satisfied with the understanding level of the vendor, ask for a quote (in terms of number of hours and rates per hour)  

• Receive the quote and validate it with your IT team or your other technical partners or hire the services of an independent technical consultant.

• Start the pilot engagement on a formal note.

• Be on your toes to identify potential issues even before they occur. It's very important to fix all the glitches in the engagement in the pilot itself before you start off with the vendor in the regular mode

• Upon delivery, check the product for quality, fitness for purpose and additional value adds.

• Check the differentiators as claimed by the vendor during the pre-sales cycle

• Sit with the vendor for a retrospective meeting in which you discuss (dissect the project from all the aspects)
• What went right?
• What went wrong?
• What needs to be fixed if the engagement needs to continue

• Ask all the stakeholders to rate the vendor on different aspects and assess the satisfaction level (You shall have several metrics for this purpose)

• Once you decide to continue with the vendor, decide on the model, sign a MSA, non-compete, non-solicitation etc.

• Depute a Partner Account Manager (PAM) from your side and insist the vendor to deploy a Customer Account Manager. They must be very seniors and the highest points of resolution

• START THE ENGAGEMENT