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

The human factor

All of these questions are relevant. At the end of the day the outsourcing agreement will be about people delivering services to other people. Our experience shows that if there is a fracture in the personal relationships between the parties, and it is not addressed early, frankly and openly, then it will eventually emerge with a vengeance. Unless the two sides actually get on with each other, and the supplier’s senior management show real and sustained commitment both to delivering the agreed quality of service and to aligning their own extraction of value to that of the client, then any hiccup will result in both sides resorting to the letter of the contract rather than its spirit. And what you will then have is a marriage ...