Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.

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Insight

Vendor evaluation is a continuous process that permeates the entire acquisition process. Rather than being viewed as an event or a step in the procurement process, it should be tightly woven into the entire outsourcing effort -- from initial project planning and feasibility studies to the request for proposal (RFP) process, contract negotiation, and relationship management.

Executive Summary

Vendor Evaluation

The accompanying Executive Report examines the importance of employing an effective evaluation model to consider vendors vying to become an organization's outsourcing partner. All too often, the process of evaluating vendor responses to an outsourcing request for proposal (RFP) is viewed as a single step in the outsourcing process.

It's a ritual reminiscent of a peacock strutting its tail feathers. To woo potential clients, service providers parade their quality achievements and certifications in front of potential suitors, trying to convince them that on-time delivery is a foregone conclusion.

Outsourcing as a business option has increased dramatically in the past 10 years. US spending on outsourcing increased from US $9 billion in 1990 to $250 billion in 1999. 1 Cutter Consortium asked a panel of Cutter Consortium Senior Consultants -- Mike Epner, Ian Hayes, David Herron, and Wendell Jones -- to guide us through the outsourcing process.

It seems like you can't open a magazine without reading about the fast-growing software industry in India. Recent issues of Business Week, CIO, and even IEEE Software have all focused on the fortunes of India-based software organizations and their mounting challenge to US-based service providers.

I've just come back from a week in India, where the most common question I was asked was "If there is a recession in the US, what impact will it have on the Indian IT industry?" As if to highlight the possibility of such an event, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testified before the US Senate, on my second day in Bangalore, that the US economy had reached "zero growth." Nobody in India seems pa