Lee Ayling, EquaTerra Managing Director of Information Technology (IT) Advisory Services, UK

The  second  in a pair of blogs where I look at sole-sourcing from the perspective of the service provider:

On 2 March 2010, EquaTerra held its first advisor relations briefing event in London.  At that event, a discussion about the traits of a successful evolution from a new relationship between service provider and client to an established partnership was a particularly hot topic.  It’s clearly important to recognise that the clients’ perspective of the relationship changes subtly over time – and extremely valuable when negotiating with a client considering renewing a contract on a sole source basis.

This is illustrated in the diagram below:

A new client’s primary concern is, “Are they capable of delivering what I need and have they done this before?”  To win a new client, the service provider will need to demonstrate this ability, followed by culture, compliance, commercials and then innovation (as shown in the left hand diagram).

However, a demonstration of these priorities is likely to be far less appealing to clients at the re-let stage. It’s therefore important to re-align your offering to account for the fact that ‘culture’ is now the priority; clients will now be saying, “We know that they have the capability, but are they the right cultural fit and can they innovate?” (see right hand diagram).

A simple message, but one  recognised as important by the service providers present at the event.

Further Insight

Read EquaTerra’s article Considerations for Adopting a Sole-Sourcing Approach to learn more about getting the best from the sole source approach.

If you would like to discuss how EquaTerra can help you deliver the maximum benefit and sustainability from sole sourcing please contact me at  lee.ayling@equaterra.com.

Filed under: Contract Review & Negotiation, How to..., Outsourcing by EquaTerra