Selecting the Service Provider

You may have picked up this book looking for advice in the middle of an offshore provider selection process and jumped directly to this chapter. Please do sit back for a few minutes and go back to the section in Chapter 3 (pp. 73–6) which is dedicated to the sourcing concept. Many companies struggle to identify the right offshore partner simply because they attempt ad hoc sourcing and do not have any IT sourcing strategy and/or governance in place. For many CEOs and CIOs, offshoring gets attention only during the selection and contract negotiation process. Deciding whether to do it alone in a captive offshore model, selecting the best offshore provider, choosing between multi-national companies or firms of Indian origin, and agreeing on a contract, are tasks doomed to fail without a proper IT sourcing strategy in place. You simply will not know what to scrutinize, what weightings to assign to the criteria, and what content to put into the contract. Naturally you will begin to view the offshore provider as kind of an untrustworthy enemy, who does not tell you the truth and tries to suck too much money out of you, while not understanding and supporting your company goals. This view has no place in offshoring. Both you and the offshore service provider will need to work together to control risks and build a lasting win—win relationship, which starts with your sourcing and governance strategy, and is then implemented in the evaluation, selection, and negotiation process.