In Part One, we focused on site visits before you decided to outsource. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so, as you’ll find the differences between the two trips interesting. In this part, we’ll focus on the site visit basics when you’re performing due diligence during vendor selection.

Why Are You Visiting?

There is simply no better way to learn about the competencies and weaknesses of potential outsourcing vendors than to them in action. You didn’t pick your spouse without going on a date or tow (at least most of us don’t) and you wouldn’t extend a job offer to a job candidate without an interview. This is an absolutely essential task during the vendor selection process.

Written proposals can only provide you limited reassurance of vendors’ competencies. The problem is that vendors are masters of proposal writing. They copy, paste, and tweak past proposals submitted. The most sophisticated vendors, such as IBM, Convergys, and Accenture, have dedicated proposal-writing teams that pour over every word, color, and graphic. Proposals are generally (unless you follow the advice of a future post we’re in progress of finishing) smoke screens, filled with hyperbole and “We can do anything!” verbiage. The simple fact is that you’ll learn 70% of what you need to learn about vendors’ strengths and weaknesses by watching agents handling calls or observing application development meetings in person. It’s like MTV’s Real World where “people stop being polite, and start getting real.”

Who Are You Visiting?

On this trip, you want to visit only the vendors who have received your Request for Proposal (RFP). Do not exclude any, except where they decline to respond to your RFP. This is why we limit our RFPs to 3 or 4 vendors. Unlike the educational trip, you’ll want to visit every location the vendor has proposed. It’s important to limit these to two or three locations per vendor, otherwise its too much travel. Sometimes you’ll even ask the vendor to provide minimum numbers of recommended locations in different areas (domestically, near shore, and offshore). The reason for this level of scrutiny is that you’re going to need to make a decision…and you want it to be an informed, objective decision, rather than one based on hearsay and magazine articles.

In some cases, the vendors will propose multiple locations in the same city. Visit them all, but handle the agendas differently.

In this case, it’s essential to only visit vendor locations that contain operations very similar to those you are considering outsourcing. It may be okay if the vendor has call center operations in one building and back office processing in another building, but intends to add call center operations in the back office location for you. However, keep in mind that you’ll need to make assumptions about the relative strength of the new location…

How Do You Plan the Logistics?

Plan the logistics in the same way as you did with the educational visit. However, do your best to not inform the vendors of their competition. Also, be sure to plan for enough ground vehicles to accommodate a larger group and their baggage. Limit the team to one check-in bag per person. We sometimes limit the team to carryon baggage only if the flight connections are tight. We just do laundry more often.

What is the Site Visit Agenda?

Vendor visits should be 4-5 hours long and each should follow the exact same agenda, which you’ll provide the vendor as part of the RFP. The agenda should include the following activities: introductions, an overview of the vendor’s local operations, a formal walk-through of how the vendor will provide you services at the location based on their proposals, and then deep dives into key functional areas, including local demographics and hiring processes, new program training curriculum, quality management and continuous improvement practices, a facility walk-through to see similar transactions/programming in action as well as to see where you’re work would be situated, a discussion on new program implementations, a sidebar conversation on technology and connectivity capabilities (which your IT representative will do while you’re on your operational walk-through), and a conversation on the potential sources of disasters and disaster recovery processes. The goal is to obtain a detailed understanding of how the vendor will perform services for your and where their potential strengths and weaknesses are in that solution. The final essential meeting is a 30-minute meet-and-greet with the agents to gauge a sense for frontline talent. An important part of this agenda is that the sales people are to be quiet…let the operations people do the talking for them.

Ask the hard questions, but use behavioral interviewing style questions as much as possible so that you can detect whether the vendors’ personnel have the skills to do the job. Bring your proposals with you, if possible, so that you can ask vendors direct questions.

That’s it for now. Do you use different site visit evaluation methodologies? Are we on the right track? Add a comment and let the community know!

Who Should Attend the Site Visit?

Be inclusive on this trip and include your key executive stakeholder, an IT resource, and one or two experienced functional unit representatives. Include your procurement representative if they are coordinating the RFP for you.

What Should The Team Include in Their Final Report?

Again, these trips are real work. After each site visit that the team combines notes in a debriefing session, which will occur as soon as possible after each vendor meeting. If you wait too long, you’ll forget critical information. The reports will be similar to the educational trip reports, except that you may now rate vendors based on the subset of evaluation criteria you evaluated on the trip. You’ll include this feedback with other evaluation scoring conducted at home (e.g., Pricing and IT capabilities, which are best left to the experts at home).