IT Outsourcing Service Provider: Understanding the stakeholder dynamics: Order-Giver Vs Order Taker

In the earlier blog we saw different stakeholders involved in IT services organization. We broadly classifed them as Order takers: Mostly the IT service providers (offshore) with any contractors/partners at offshore and Order-Givers: Client Onshore, Client Captive centers offshore, and the IT service provider (Onshore). We saw the complexity continum in engagement depending on number of stakeholders in play. In this blog we look at the interaction dynamics between the different stakeholders:

The dynamics can best be understood along the following dimensions:
Teams: This details the team members involved
Interactions: This detailes the Software lifecycle phases when the interactions is pronunced
Projects: Details the projects where the interaction plays out.

It is important to understand not all stakehoders will be present in all engagements and also not all interactions may play out. One can see different combinations of stakeholders and interaction depending on how the organization and information flows are setup. In this blog we will look at the complete picture to understand the dynamics well.

The diagram below provides a pictorial representation of the stakeholders and the interactions dynamics:

We will look at each interaction pairs and the dynamics that are not so evident in the above diagram:

Client Onshore + IT Service Provider (Onshore): The cosy relationships whereby the client onshore stakeholder interacts with Onshore vendors. This interaction is often relationship based. Most often they have shared interest (retaining control) and drivers (read saving their jobs). They often pair up to protect their joint interests. If things go wrong it is always easy to blame the Offshore entity first and then followed by Order takers.
Client Captive centers Offshore + IT Service Provider (Offshore): The relationship is driven primariy in terms of deliverables, metrics and reports. The order giver and order taker relationship is noticebale and pronounced.  They often are at logger heads and built on mistrust. The mistrust stems from fact that the captive center leads despise the fact that the IT service provider at offshore get most of instructions and details from their Onshore counterparts. Often they captive center clients control information and draw their power and position on additional information they have. In times of trouble they easily blame the all woes to the IT Service provider offshore team. They like to pair themselves with the Client Onshore but often client onshore dont see them adding value and believe them to be necessary evil to deal with.
Client Captive centers Offshore + IT Service Provider (Onshore): Mostly the interactions are very limited, but whenever this interaction is strong the IT service provider often suffers due to miscommunication and vested interests. Mostly the client captive center  team hates them but engages them to down-play or comlain against IT service provider offshore team. Sometimes we see the IT Service provider onshore engage the captive center team just to draw a wedge and feed their own interests and drivers (jobs).
Client Onshore + IT Service Provider (Offshore): This relationship is seldom seen, but wherever this exits the interactions underplay the captice venter and IT Service provide onshore. Usually we see this interaction well established when the onshore component is non-existant and client prefers 100% offshore execution. This is best and most cost optimal solution in most cases and often not preferred by large Tier-1 players: IBM, Cap, Accenture, etc.
Client Captive centers Offshore + Client Onshore (Onshore): This interaction exists whenever there is a captive center. The interactions are mostly driven due to business reasons and exists for business purposes. The captive center role becomes relevant mostly when there are multi-vendor/partners on the deal. The relationship most often is driven to get work done from multiple vendors. This is not well detailed here, but they share common interest of saving their jobs and roles under the guise of project management and control.
IT Service Provider (Onshore) + IT Service Provider (Offshore): Normal relationship that exists and they pair up to protect the interests of the overall contract with IT Service provider. The relationship becomes complex in light of other interactions in the game.

But is there a right interaction and right stakeholder model that one can choose depending on the requirements? What is the optimal stakeholder and interaction model? We will discuss and cover this in the upcoming blogs.

Working with IT Services clients in offshore-onshore-captive centres: The Master: order-givers and Slave: order-takers

In the IT Services world the new manifestation of slavery seems to be client-service provider relationships. But who plays the master: order-giver is often a contention, but never a doubt on who is a slave:order-taker…

It seems that generally the offshore service provider team is the slave: order taker, but the masters: order-giver can be many. Why is the IT offshore service provider takes that place is due to fact that this is where the real work gets done. Then there are different masters: order-givers as they mistakenly believe they have got Gods gift of mankind of intellect, budgets, and/or I-Know-all: ego that drives them to always give orders. Let us look at the Order giver: players/teams in the engagement to understand this better:

Client at Onshore: They have the budgets to pay for the services and the budget themselves are provided by business. This often gives them the benefit of always playing the masters: Order giver role.

Client at offshore: This entity is relevant usually when client has captive centre near offshore service provider. They usually don’t have budgets and/or arguably the intellect/skills too, but get the deemed merit to give orders without knowing what it means.. Examples of such captive centres in high-tech: Cisco, EMC, Vmware, etc.

Service Provider at Onshore: They have proximity to budget provider and often work with the clients business stakeholders and get a unique position to know all, but arguably the intellect to know how to get things done. Sometimes this onshore service providers are either body shopped by pure play vendors in India: TCS, Wipro, Infosys, etc. and/or hired in local markets to serve their political/government constituencies. Usually, these players are ment to be order-takers but often not doers and therefore love to become order-givers.

The order-takers does not need so much description as these are the doers and make things happen. They have the intellect/skills that make sure the value for the budgets gets delivered. Often there is a misconception of their intellect: lack of intellect to understand business requirements, do not have discipline and structure to execute the orders and/or ability to deliver value for the provisioned budget. These are the Service Provider at Offshore.

The number and location of order givers may vary, but the order taker is mostly service provider at offshore. The more the number of order givers the more complex the IT Services engagement. Lets look at this continuum to understand the engagement complexity based on who the players are:




How will the challenges in different stakeholders present in the team? What are the dynamics of the engagement? What are the characteristics that make the engagement complex? In subsequent blogs we can see further details.