eSCM – With more and more organisations across the globe changing their strategies to outsourcing their non-core activities, it has opened a world of opportunity for the software outsourcing service providers.

India, with a large pool of skilled and talented manpower is the number one choice of most countries. This has led to the mushrooming of small outsourcing companies who are endeavoring to get their share of the pie. In this scenario, it has become a necessity for small companies who have the skills and the expertise to prove their capabilities to the clients worldwide.

The clients on the other hand are having difficulty recognising the chaff from the grain and has often ended up in unsuccessful sourcing relationship. eSCM-SP seems to be the ideal solution to both. It gives service providers the guidance to improving their capabilities through a set of 'best practices' standards and provides clients with an objective means of evaluating the capabilities of the service providers

It had become inevitable for us to stand out as a quality service provider to gain competitive advantage. eSCM-SP being a capability model seems different from other quality models which laid more emphasis on documenting the process, appears best suited and a feasibility study was conducted.

The study conducted at the Indian Institute of Management involved assessing the current processes of the capability area, relationship management against objectives defined. To gauge the success of the present sourcing relationships, a survey was conducted based on the practices in relationship management, using a semantic differential scale, and open-ended questions asking for suggestions for improvement if required.

The actual rating was compared with the desired rating to learn whether we have met our objective. The result of the study has proved that we have a fairly high capability in the area of relationship management and can be considered to be at Capability Level 3.