When it comes to decide an outsourcing partner one needs to be ultra careful as that relationship is bound to have a deep impact on a company’s reputation among its end customers. Having said that, a company needs to see many factors including profitability which is usually the prime reason for such a move. Despite of this many a times a client’s and a vendor’s relation turn sour which raises doubts about the concept though essentially it is the question of vendor selection. If a client has done due diligence in vendor selection, the end result will be a win/win situation. Let’s try and understand the various factors involved in an offshore outsourcing company selection.

1. Pricing– Price will always remain the Holy Grail and most of the discussion remains around this segment. However, this should not be the sole factor for reaching your final decision. Pricing is important, but let the market decide it. This means you may try reverse auctioning but allow only serious players to participate in the same.
2.  The Management Team– It matters a lot who is captaining the ship. Do they have that kind of experience or exposure to carry forward your process? Often, experienced heads eases the process of transition and have the audacity of resorting to creative solutions.
3. SLA -The service level agreement. The bible of such transitions. Have everything written crystal clear. Leave no room for confusion. There shouldn’t b any ambiguity about the minimum quality levels required for service s provided.
4. Flexibility – are they rigid or flexible? Usually such contracts are of long duration . In the course of time something or other may arise which may lead to the urgency of re negotiation. It can happen at either party’s end. The vendors musts be flexible enough to understand Clients’ concern and act in accordance to it.
5. Communications – your vendor should be able to clearly understand what is required out of him, should be able to promptly reply to your queries and must be competition enough to ask anything in clear terms and avoid any delay in decision making.
6. Staff Resources- Your vendor should have qualified and experienced resources who should be competent enough to carry on your daily operation smoothly and efficiently.
7. Reliability- need less in your vendor’s site visit , you must check the Infrastructure safeguards, backups against downtime and adequate Staff availability. State of art technology shouldn’t be only on the paper, should be on the floor too including the servers, dialers, servers and so on.
8. Stability– It is important to conduct a ref check of your vendor before awarding any process to him. A past record check helps you establish the trust factor and gives you the final push to go ahead and sign on the dotted lines.