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Identifying Reliable Service Providers
August 2007Entrusting another company with your finances and other strategic assets has become inevitable in today’s business world.
With outsourcing, insourcing and globalization, service has increasingly become a business model for most businesses or a delivery channel for physical goods companies. Due to the increasing emphasis on service, most companies have to form an alliance with professional service providers or temporarily employ their services for various reasons. Customer service experts, lawyers, accountants, book-keepers, security officers, cleaners, teachers, secretaries are just a few of those professionals that are in demand, these days.
The Venturer’s June edition posed an important question for most businesses today: ‘How do you know which companies you can trust?’ Is it really possible to sieve the wheat from the chaff? How can you tell a good book-keeper from one who says he is? Worse still, how can you tell a good book-keeper from one that an online company claims is efficient? Some burden is taken off your shoulders with companies checking on prospective service providers, true, but we get back to the same issue. If we cannot trust companies that provide services, how can we trust the companies that vet them? Are we sure they have conducted a rigorous assessment and not just accepted anyone who is prepared to pay a subscription to join?
This is not in anyway intended to undermine the competence of various organizations or businesses that recommend service providers but are their standards the same as those that each company desires. How objective is the evaluation process and how extensive is the knowledge about each service- provider. The fact that one company finds an accountant competent in dealing with tax returns does not qualify him to effectively manage forecasting and budgets, even though Company ‘A’ find him excellent.
The most effective way is for a company to conduct a thorough independent search itself. With this, you can explore several sources and only stop when you are satisfied that you have sufficient information pertaining to peculiar needs – your first source might be sufficient; for another it might require many sources. An online research company may provide professional qualifications of service providers and feedback from those who willingly publicize their opinions, but that is only one source. Get information from websites of prospects, trade references, testimonials and referrals from personal contacts and professional networks, as well as other sources such as the chambers or governing bodies; admittedly you may discover subjective information but at least it tells you something about a provider. Once you have done your research, shortlist and interview preferred suppliers. Meet the owners of the business and more importantly, those individuals who will actually be working with you. Be wary of those who are the cheapest and seek confirmation that there are no hidden costs or chances that the price may rise immediately you have selected the supplier.
The most important point is not to depend on one single source –even yours. The cost of getting it wrong can far outweigh the initial cost of selecting a supplier, hence spend time and get it right first time.
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