Smarter Outsourcing: An executive guide to understanding, planning and exploiting successful outsourcing relationships

Stage four: Set you and your vendor up for success

During the detailed negotiations, the board needs to stress to the team that the deal must feel like a win/win for both sides – because if the balance of reward is not perceived as ‘fair’ by each party there will inevitably be stresses in the future. Both sides also need to make sure nothing is traded away that would put the success of the deal in jeopardy; accept there will be a learning curve, and build explicit allowance for this into the timeframes and approaches the management team adopt and will be measured by. There should be agreement that the deal teams on both sides will remain on board long enough to ensure that the transition and first year are in line with expectations. This must ...