Choosing your outsourcing partner

What should you look for in your outsourcing partner?

• Experience and track record
• Do they have any US based support staff?
• Measurable quality of service
• Competitive pricing
• Flexibility in partnership

Experience and track record

Successful execution of similar projects to yours will tell you a fair deal about the ability of the outsourcing supplier. Also if the outsourcing provider services multiple domains, then they may not really be specialists in one domain. You are better off choosing a supplier with a single domain experience.

US based support team

Communication between your offshore outsourcing partner is very essential, especially in the early stages. If the company has a US based support team, it will become much simpler.

Measurable quality of service

Quality is a very generic term, so look for the measurable quality. If the service provider has standards and measurable quality for their tasks, then you must give a preference to them. The service level agreement should mention this and be agreed between you and your partner.

Competitive pricing

Quality comes at a price. But you should look for competitive price wherever possible.

Flexible partnership

The agreement between you and your outsourcing partner must be flexible. The ability of the partner to adapt to your unique requirements is very important. They should also be big enough to adapt to you requirements.

Apart from these, there are various factors such as their history, senior management people and financial stability of the company.

How to choose your outsourcing partner?

Getting into an outsourcing relationship is like getting married. You would expect a good level of trust and great deal of understanding before marrying someone. Wouldn't you? The same goes with finding an outsourcing partner. You have to do the home work and find out everything about the outsourcing partner, before deciding to choose them.

You don’t think about lengthy legal battles and messy divorces, before planning your marriage. But if you did, you would be that much more prepared if something goes wrong. Likewise, you have to understand the outsourcing partner’s strengths, weakness and their cultural fit for you. Transparency must exist between you and your outsourcing partner. Just as in marriage, you are giving away the control of important functions of your business to your partner. So the relationship must be strong, successful and long lasting. If you do your homework well, there is a very good chance that you will “live happily ever after!”

Success of outsourcing is finding the right partner. It must be mutually beneficial and the relationship must be honest and transparent. To achieve it, you must do the home work. If you do that properly, then success in outsourcing is guaranteed.