Contract signing is a major milestone in outsourcing engagement but things exists only on paper. Transition phase, from incumbent vendor or internal IT staff, sets the tone of the relationship. Your governance processes, performance measurement and reporting mechanisms are established during the transition phase.

The selected vendor is tasked to perform detailed knowledge transfer on client’s application, environment and operating processes. Tremendous time and commitment is required to plan and execute any outsourcing or managed service transition without significantly impacting the business.

Smooth transition also results in building mutual trust and respect that leads to stronger long term relationship. The quality of resources and processes brought to the table during this stage is a good indicator of how your vendor’s service delivery quality will shape up.

A poor service transition can result in a false start to a relationship and will require significant effort to make amends.  Following are the reasons for the transition failure:

• Poor due diligence and project planning
• Failure to understand the scope by the service provider
• Poor rebadging and Onboarding process
• Lack of access to client SMEs
• Aggressive Go-Live date
• Poor transition governance
• Unclear exit criteria
• Lack of tools, skill, prior transition experience
  

Effective planning, due diligence and proper communication across all the stakeholder’s is the key ingredient for the transition’s success. Recommendations to make the transition phase successful

• Switch from people dependent model to process dependent model
• Always perform the risk analysis and define the risk mitigation measures
• Involve all stakeholders in transition to create the right level of attention. Treat the transition as a “normal” change program with high impact
• Be open to all unanticipated challenges that arise in outsourcing engagements. Both the parties should bring challenges faced by each other and be supportive to each other

A well executed service transition a strong exhibition of vendor capability and resourcefulness and goes long way in building enduring partnerships.