When an organization finally decides to work offshore, one of its biggest questions is whether to set up its shop or find a partner. If the organization doesn’t have the resources or interest in setting up its own shop (or even if it does) the better solution is to find the right company to partner with.
Finding the right vendor to start with the offshoring can be a tough challenge. If it goes wrong the organization can invest a lot more time and effort than it would have handling the work onsite.
So what exactly to look for when choosing the right offshoring vendor to partner with?
1. The Right-Sized Partner
Based on the size of the work and the client organization size, the partner should be decided. If it’s a one-off work for a few hundred hours vs. a constant work stream for a multi-year vs. a multi-million dollar project. Also, the capabilities of the vendor partner to scale in the future if the need be, is an important factor to look into as it’s not easier to switch the vendors.
- Assess the volume of the work and duration for which it is needed to target the right partner
- Look at their standing in the market, their team size, and their history of delivering similar-sized projects.
- The ability of the vendor company to quickly scale up in the future should also be taken into consideration.
2. Look At The Relevant Work
The vendor companies will often put up good presentations and testimonials to showcase their ability to take up the work. However, the company that wants to offshore needs to put a lot more effort and go into the details of the work that the vendor partner has done in the past. The work has to be relevant to what is required from them, not what they have been good at.
- Go beyond the presentations and testimonials. Check out the real work and demos.
- Look mostly at the work that is relevant and/or cutting edge.
- Ask questions about the work, how it was done, the challenges faced, how were they overcome, what were the learnings, how different they would do it if it were to be done again, etc.
3. Meet The People
Companies must meet the people whom they are hiring. Even in offshoring, it’s always good to meet the people on the ground who will be doing the job rather than just the execs or sales team of the vendor. That will give a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses and what to expect. This is often neglected and the contracts happen with a different understanding and expectations. For a thousands of dollars contract, a couple of days trip to that location and having a face-to-face discussion is always going to help in the long run. Even if f2f is not possible, at least a video call with the people on the ground is necessary to set up the right expectations on both sides.
- Meet on-the-ground people who will be doing the work.
- Face to Face meeting is always better even if it costs a few dollars. Wherever not feasible connect over a video call.
- Talk to the people beyond technicalities, about themselves, their likes/dislikes, culture, work environment, etc. It will give a better understanding of them and of their organization’s culture as well.
4. Evaluate Against Your Parameters
The vendor partners should be evaluated against the client partner’s parameters and criteria. The laurels, success, and certifications vendors have achieved might not be relevant to the success of the client company. And it’s important to see proofs against those parameters. If security is the primary parameter don’t just go by the presentation or the certifications that the company possesses but ask them to show in real-time how the infra, and application security is being handled by them in their other projects, what happens when security fails?
If specific work timing is essential, the question should be how does the company ensure that the team members are present in those work timings? How do they make sure they are productive when they are working the night shift? What kind of breaks, allowances, leaves, etc. do they offer their employees that motivate them to support during the night shifts?
- Decide on the primary evaluation parameters and evaluate the vendor partners on them.
- Ask probing questions to see if those parameters are really catered to rather than superficially.
- Check if the people on the ground share the same sensibilities and priorities for those parameters.
5. Rates Shouldn’t be The Be-All And End-All Of Offshoring
Usually, the vendors are finalized heavily on one criterion alone and that is the rates. The argument is that the offshoring is for cost saving, so the lower the rate the better it is. But that is the worst argument one can make. As is often the case with anything you buy, the quality of the thing or work will depend often upon the money you are ready to spend. Offshoring is no different. The same work could be done by 10 different vendors with 10 different rates but the quality will always differ. The client company needs to decide what quality of work are they expecting and what level of scrutinization and reviews they can do at their end. What’s the tolerance level for defects, rework, and substandard work? The nature of work will dictate many of these requirements.
- The rates are often commensurate with the quality of work. So decide the level of quality your work needs
- The level of onsite involvement in reviewing, contributing, and collaborating, can provide a fair rate for a fair quality
- Never let the lowest rates (or for that matter the highest rate) be the only guiding parameter for offshore vendor selection.
Finding the right offshore partner is an important first step. But there are 3 key mantras to setting up a successful offshore model. You can read about that here:
Offshoring 101: 3Cs for Setting Up A Successful Offshore Model