You wouldn’t hire a senior finance manager after one sales call and a brochure. You’d interview them properly, check their references and ask how they’d handle a bad month. Then you’d watch their first few months closely before handing over the keys.
An outsourced partner that takes over a core process is doing a senior person’s job. Treat the decision the same way.
Meet the person who’ll do the work
The salesperson who pitched the service won’t be the one doing your work. Ask who will actually handle your account day to day. Find out how long they’ve done this kind of work, how many other clients they look after and who checks their work before it reaches you. Then ask to meet them before you sign. Ten minutes on a call with the real person will tell you more than the pitch deck did. You’re about to trust this person with part of your business, and you should know their name.
Ask what happens when that person leaves
They will leave eventually. People resign, get promoted and move cities. The question is what that does to your service. Ask how the provider records what it knows about your account, beyond the memory of one employee. Ask who the backup is today, and whether that person has actually worked on your account. Ask how long a replacement takes to get up to speed, and whether you’ll be told when the handover happens.
A provider with a real answer has written processes and more than one person who knows your business. A provider that says “don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere” has just described the risk you’re trying to avoid.
Ask how you’ll see progress
With an employee, you can walk past their desk. With a partner, you need to agree up front how you’ll know things are on track. Settle which reports you’ll get and when they’ll arrive. Ask the provider to describe a normal month from their side, step by step, so you know what to expect and when. Agree how problems get raised and how quickly you’ll hear about them. Find out whether you’ll see the work itself or only a summary of it, because a summary tells you what the provider wants you to know. Get all of this in writing. It’s the first thing that gets vague once the contract is signed.
Check references properly
Ask for two references: a client who has been with the provider for years and one who joined recently. The long-standing client tells you whether the service holds up. The recent one tells you what onboarding is really like. Ask both what went wrong and how the provider fixed it. Every service has bad months. You want to know what happens in them.
Run both setups side by side
This is the step businesses skip, and it’s the one that protects you. During the handover, keep your team doing the work the way they always have, and have the partner do the same work in parallel. Compare the outputs every cycle.
Differences will appear. Some will show where the partner has misunderstood your process. Others will show where your own process had errors nobody noticed, which is a useful thing to learn before you hand it over. Agree up front how long the parallel run will last and what the outputs need to look like before you switch off the old process. Yes, it means paying for the work twice for a short while. That’s cheaper than finding out six months later that the new setup was wrong from day one.
Let go in stages
Trust should be earned, and a handover is where it gets earned. Hand over one part of the process first. Once the outputs match and the partner has handled at least one awkward exception well, hand over the next part. Keep someone on your side who understands the process until the partner has proven itself across a few full cycles. By the time you let go completely, you should have evidence the service works, and a signature on a contract doesn’t count.
Then manage them like a senior hire
The work doesn’t stop once the handover is done. Hold regular reviews. Give feedback when something’s off and credit when it’s done well. Revisit the scope once a year. A partner managed like a valued senior employee has every reason to behave like one.
If you’re considering Commspace’s managed service, bring these questions with you. Start at www.commspace.co.za.
