Top Symptoms of an Unhealthy IT Outsourcing Partnership
Those unhealthy IT outsourcing partnership service organizations, which cannot serve everything to all the clients, going for a strategic IT outsourcing partnership makes sense when there is some kind of a gap in their area of specialization. For ensuring that a partnership works successfully for a long-term, a business must offer solutions, which are mutually beneficial. Plus, the communication channel should be free-flowing and open.
Sadly though, similar to any other business relationship, even IT outsourcing partnership can be affected by factors like emerging technologies and tools leveraged by these partners, volatile market requirements, and the economic climate. Due to all such changes, they impact businesses albeit differently. You need to also understand that partnerships are hardly in a healthy state permanently. The key problem is that a service-oriented company is so involved in navigating the dynamic business climates that they tend to ignore the writing on the wall at times. If you think that your partnership is due for a quick checkup, check out the following symptoms, which may suggest that things are not so good:
1. Mutual Respect Is Lacking
For different people, respect means different. However, one can hardly refute that the basic principle at any workplace is that the partners should treat one another with respect. In fact, respect could be pertaining to how they use one another’s resources and time and the way in which they communicate. Although the word “partnership” is used, there would be an element of the client-vendor relationship always based on the direction in which the money is flowing. A crucial self-query should be whether the seller/buyer is dynamically manifesting itself in communication tone and style. You need to assess whether as far as deliverables are concerned, whether your IT outsourcing partner is fulfilling expectations with respect to professional courtesy, responsiveness, and urgency or not. You need to also gauge whether your critical feedback is even-tempered and constructive or sounds as a warning message or peppered with hostility.
2. Your Partner Is Not Representing Your Solution Adequately
On the outset, it is important to realize that there is no way any partner in the world can be a complete expert on the service offering of their clients. Even while your partner could have previous experience in the same area, there is a possibility that you are doing similar things in a different way. However, what is even more important is that they are adaptive, flexible in embracing your working methodologies, and quick to respond.
3. Little or No Interaction Between Vendor-clients
There are innumerable partnerships that may continue on paper though there have been no meaningful conversations between the partners for long. How receptive is your IT outsourcing partner to opportunities for sharing knowledge like training on deploying new software or a recent software update? When offers to attend webinars and seminar are met with avoidance, then something is not going quite right in your partnership. If there is no commitment to future activities from your partner’s side, there is little chance of your partnership with the vendor to have a bright future.
