A recent survey conducted by HfS Research shows that buyers of outsourcing services are looking for more than low cost when it comes to outsourcing relationships. The survey asked purchasers of outsourcing services what they thought was important and compared their responses to what providers of outsourcing services thought buyers wanted from them.

It's no surprise that some metrics like pricing aligned pretty well between providers and buyers. What is surprising is the degree of difference between the two groups when it came to the soft lever of transformation such as governance and change management. The survey revealed that buyers placed a higher level of importance on these soft transformational levers. Shown below is a graph which summarizes the survey results:

Source: HfS Research

What is surprising is that outsourcing providers underestimate how much help clients would like in managing change in their organizations. This is obviously an opportunity for those providers, but they'll need to make their capabilities clear so that buyers clearly understand the value these providers are rendering over the contract lifecycle.

You can read the entire post at The Undisputed Facts of Outsourcing Part 7: Service Culture is the New Differentiator.