If you’re contemplating a strategic
sourcing initiative, or happen to be starting that journey right now, a
critical success factor for selecting the best-fit partner is seeing them in
action. And the best way to see them in
action is by scheduling and conducting a vendor site visit and seeing your potential
sourcing provider’s proposed delivery center(s) and just as importantly,
meeting their delivery team members.
“Recently, one of our customers was down to
three potential sourcing providers: two
offshore and one onshore, and made the right decision to visit all three,” says
Founder and CEO Alsbridge Inc., Ben Trowbridge. “It was an
eye-opening, first time visit for the CIO to India, and it helped him compare
and contrast a US-based delivery model from offshore-based ones.”
Here are the five essential steps you need
to take in order to have successful vendor site visits during the selection
process.
Step
1: Plan and budget for the site visits right off the bat
From the very first plan and business case,
build in a full week of effort for vendor site visits, and budget to bring the
right number of key stakeholders and decision makers.
Step
2: Prepare early
This is important especially if your site
visit includes any off-shore destinations. Every aspect of the travel
logistics, from international travel documents, to airlines, to hotels, to
in-country transportation needs to be well managed and coordinated.
Step
3: Set your agenda
Your vendor site visit objective is a
consistent agenda by which each sourcing provider follows and allows for you to
gain first-hand experiences in the specific set of solution components that
each provider wrote in their RFP response.
In addition, you’ll need to compare and contrast each provider against
the others, and ultimately evaluate and score each site visit.
Step
4: Take it all in
It’s very important for you and your team
to see and experience as much of each sourcing provider’s company and
environment as you can. This includes
many dimensions; it is not enough for you to just focus on their technical or
functional capabilities. You’re making a
long-term, partnership decision. The
provider and their people are going to be an extension of you and your
business.
Step
5: Evaluate every night
It is crucial for you and your team to
dedicate time each evening to perform a formal evaluation of that day’s vendor site
visit. And while the experiences are
fresh in your mind, evaluate that sourcing provider’s performance.
You can read the detailed report here Five Essential Steps to Successful Vendor Site Visits
About
Alsbridge Inc.
Alsbridge provides world class sourcing advisory and benchmarking services for
the CIO, CFO and CPO. We’ve helped
hundreds of companies reduce costs and get more value from their vendors. Our experienced consultants leverage
proprietary tools and information databases to identify and engage the optimal
vendors for your situation, negotiate best practice terms at fair market
prices, and improve the way you work with your vendors. Alsbridge clients utilize the most cost
effective and value added sources globally for IT infrastructure services,
hardware and maintenance, network services, software and maintenance,
application support and development, business processes and cloud services.
Alsbridge was ranked the #1 outsourcing advisor in the world by the
International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) based on the
value delivered to clients. This
commitment to delivering value to our clients has made Alsbridge a
distinguished member of the 2010 Inc. 500 fastest growing privately held
companies in America.
