It’s December and it’s time to reflect on the past year and how your business performed to expectations. One critical area to evaluate is the performance of you outsourced partners.
Evaluating outsourced partners is a critical process to ensure that you’re partnering with reliable, high-quality, and cost-effective providers. The right partner can significantly impact your business operations, while the wrong one can cause delays, cost overruns, and frustration. As you look back on 2024 results, don’t just look internally, but spend some time to evaluate these critical partners.
Five things you should consider when evaluating outsourced partners:
- Are they meeting pre-determined objectives?
Were their deliverables timely, of high quality, cost effective and did they meet internal or external customer needs? For example, did the outsourced marketing programs deliver the expected business growth? - Do they communicate effectively with you and your team?
Did your external partner respond promptly and clearly to questions and concerns and when issues arose, how effective were they in resolving them? Did you partner have a formal process in providing you with regular reporting and did they offer any insights or suggestions for improvement? - Is their work aligned with your business?
Is the work your partner delivered aligned with your broader business goals? For example, is your outsourced IT support reducing downtime or improving system performance as expected? - Did their results meet the needs of your customers?
Outsourced partners can interact with both internal and external customers to your business. Gather feedback from all stakeholders about the effectiveness of the outsourced partner. - Did their results impact the results of your business?
Did the outsourced partner enable you to focus on higher-priority tasks, or did it create dependencies that hindered internal progress? Did the partner contribute to your success, offering support or collaborating effectively, or did they operate in isolation, leading to a disjointed workflow?
Once you’ve evaluated their performance, conduct a formal review and feedback session with them. Discuss successes and areas for improvement. Don’t stop there however but take the time to evaluate your performance and interactions with the partners. Did you allocate the appropriate amount of time to them and their efforts to drive the desired business results?
By systematically evaluating these factors, you can make informed decisions about the success of the partnership, identify areas for improvement, and determine whether you should continue working with the outsourced partner or explore alternatives.