It is always necessary to seek service providers demonstrating technical competence and experience in the application area. The services a client is sourcing here is expertise, credibility, and application experience leading to results. If the service provider does not possess the fundamentals, it is highly recommended to move on and not to begin the process of review and selection until and unless the fundamentals are present and demonstrable by the service provider. After identifying qualified service providers, the following process allows for thorough review and success in implementation:
§ Survey and analysis including current workflow charts compared to any changes the outsourced solution would entail; the quantity and types of data that are to be captured online or converted, managed, and/or printed; a detailed solution based on current operational needs analysis, combined with an outline of proposed changes for improvement.
§ Scope of work showing volume and cost comparisons of current methods as opposed to outsourced solutions; input constraints, hours of operation, committed resources; output constraints, data and image release to the application and image storage requirements; hardware and software needed and count for optimal results.
§ Data interchange involving tests including standard targets to ensure the data will effectively be converted from its current format into the desired format. These are engineering tests to validate that the data or documents can be transformed from one format to another. These tests will confirm that the data will be usable and recognizable as described in the original proposal.
§ System design that demonstrates the capture of information from the Internet and paper-based data. This will include data capture, application software, total number of scanners needed, data distribution server, file customization if needed, customer intranet, mainframe and terminals, and the information vault solution.
§ Proposal including targeted results that lists the total amount of documents to be scanned or how data capture will be deployed and managed. A listing of eliminated redundancies and reduced costs where applicable. This can be people or software and hardware.
§ Service agreement including specific levels of performance outlining the amount of data to be processed or converted in a specific time frame. It also includes how the data or documents are to be routed to the service provider and the quality of the end result.
§ Project plan explaining in detail the starting and completion dates and milestones reporting; the amount of workers needed, the hours of operation and types of reports to be generated; the project length and contingency plans as needed.
§ Implementation plan including what is expected of both the customer and the service provider with regard to location, equipment needed, plans for accessing data during a project or process and all aspects of the people and technologies needed in advance to implement a project.
§ Audit and review procedures assuring quality control during a project or process. This will be accomplished through prescheduled meetings, on-going process analysis a physical inspections of workflow and results as anticipated in the original project proposal.
