Are you really going to wear that?

No matter how it is structured, outsourcing is disruptive because it is a change.

Businesses are run by human beings, and most human beings are resistant to change, even if the change is for the better.

One of the interesting phenomena I noticed while working at a large technology services company - and with other service providers since then - was that RFP’s for services frequently contained verbiage about how the enterprise wanted to “transform”, “get to the next level”, “obtain leading edge technology” etc.

However, when provided with a proposal that did this, more often than not an enterprise balked, and would choose a proposal that in the end was significantly less innovative, but was more comfortable if it slightly nudged the status quo.

The successful service provider understands this and frames its proposal so that it balances the RFP’s rhetoric with the reality that change cannot be too drastic or they will not win the deal.

The party issuing the RFP needs to understand the level and pace of change it can actually accommodate, and tailor its assessments of proposals accordingly.