How To Outsource? Step 6 Of 7: Choosing The Right Outsourcing Vendor

Shaun: Now that you know which model you want to go with, how do you go about choosing the right outsourcing vendor? The first thing to appreciate is that there are a lot of rogue outsourcing companies and that is because companies can hide behind their website. The chances of you actually visiting the company and seeing what their capabilities are are pretty slim. Most clients probably 2% — 3% actually go and visit their vendors; the vast majority will do it purely online. When you’re doing that, it is very easy to miss out if this vendor is actually capable or not because all you are looking at, all you are judging this company on is their website.

The other thing rogue entities do is they will offer very, very low prices, so it becomes very tempting to go and work with them. Then once you get enticed by their low cost, you are no longer doing your due diligence, you are no longer assessing them credibly. And that is how a lot of companies end up partnering with these rouge entities because they are not really evaluating their capabilities.

Here’s a few red flags you can look out for. These are kind of your tell-tale signs of rogue outsourcing companies. Again it is commonsense but again you would be surprised that how many clients I have seen make this mistake.

When you are looking at a website, just five very, very quick things you can look out for. One is fake testimonials, two is a lack of senior management transparency. With any company you are thinking of offshoring to, go out and look who is the CEO of the company, who is the VP, and if you can’t find that information, don’t partner with that company, and when you find that information, go and check it out on LinkedIn, get a bit of background, who are the owners of the company, who are the investors, who are the directors. There should be that transparency behind the firm. If there is not, it is probably because they are trying to hide something.

And then company transparency as well, just little, little things, tell-tale signs like do they have pictures on their website, do they have an address. You would be amazed that how many companies don’t put an address on their website, and that is because they are trying to hide something. So just these very, very small, basic commonsense things are so, so important and crucial.

And the overall look and feel of a website. I mean an outsourcing company if it only has 10 pages, if the design is poor, if it doesn’t have any videos, certifications, or associations, again what is that telling you about the company is it’s probably not a reputable firm. Look how these small little tell-tale signs that they themselves might not have are very strong software development team. Most outsourcing companies work in the software outsourcing industry, so if they themselves cannot build a good website, what type of capability are they going to have for your company.

Then English proficiency, again I have seen a lot of clients come to us and say, “Well, there’s a rival company and they are £300 cheaper,” and I will go and look at their website and the spelling, grammar, and punctuation is terrible. I think (indiscernible) [3:41] It looks like a 10-year-old kid (indiscernible) [3:44] So little things like that will definitely indicate to you whether it is a reputed or rogue entity.

Now that you have filtered out all of the rogue entities, now you have just the reputed firms. How do you choose between let’s say three or four very capable vendors, how do you decide which one to actually go and partner with. The first thing is assess the technical capability of the company; that’s quite easy to do, but again how many clients would just rush into the process and not do these three, four things. This is probably the most important thing when you are choosing a vendor is to test the technical capability of the firm. Again I have seen so many clients not do this diligently. I cannot stress this enough but look at previous samples of work, look at their work portfolio, interview the staff, assign technical tests, and if you can’t do this, this is ideal, ask for a trial, ask for a one, two week, three week, one month trial. You have very little to lose but you have a lot to gain even if you end up losing a couple of hundred pounds, but you get a feel for the company. That’s worth so much.

This will start to give you an idea of which vendor is technically the most capable, and this is probably the most important factor is technical capability. There are other factors you want to take into consideration like assess the infrastructure and hardware of the vendor, what is their bandwidth, Internet bandwidth, and reliability of the Internet connection, just little, little small things like that. What systems are they using, do they servers, just very, very small little things out there that you should test because you are going to be working with these guys now remotely.

Another very important thing to keep in mind is data security and IP protection. Ask to see a copy of the vendor’s IP and data security protocol and ensure that their measures are stringent and effective. You don’t want your work getting stolen or not being safeguarded by the vendor. That’s another very good litmus test you can apply to see how credible the vendor is.

Then assess professionalism, again small, small little things. What is their response time, how long does it take for them to respond to your e-mail? Is it one hour, is it one day, or is it six hours? Just little, little things that will start to tell about the mindset, about the culture of the company. Is their sales department open 24 hours a day? Any credible outsourcing company should really have a sales department opened 24 hours, because their market is 24 hours. If they are not doing that, that’s telling you a lot about the vendor, it’s probably telling you that they have a very limited capability and capacity.

Just keep an eye out for these small things, how do you find communicating with the sales team, and that kind of brings you to my earlier point as to why it’s so illogical not to pick up the phone and call these vendors, because a lot of the times when you do that, straightaway you start to get a feel for whether you can work with this company or not. When you call the vendor up and you find that, “I cannot even communicate with the sales team,” do you really think that they are going to be able to do your work credibly? No. So again these very, very small things go a long, long way when it comes to outsourcing.

Finally, assess the relationship and rapport. Whenever you are outsourcing generally speaking unless you have a very, very small project, you’ll have several interactions with the vendor, and with each interaction you will start to get a feel for what the relationship and rapport might be like. And that’s very, very important. If you have a vendor that is on a similar wavelength to you, you find it easy to communicate with them, you find it easy to explain what your needs and requirements are. That in the long run is going to go a massive, massive way. Again I appreciate just how invaluable having a good relationship with a vendor is because in the long run, six months down the line, if there is a hiccup down the road, you need to have that relationship and rapport to ensure that you can overcome those obstacles and hurdles which you might encounter.

Source: https://youtu.be/jMS_Zjpguag