Client Visits

Anyone working in any  IT services company in India will tell you how common it is to have "client visits" - these are visits of high profile CIO, VP-Procurement, Operations Heads and their likes to India to evaluate potential partners in their quest for offshoring IT services.

All these visits have few things in common:

• Client teams will typically visit at least 4-5 service providers criss-crossing between at least Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi. Surely Bangalore though as it is the Mecca of offshoring IT services
• If the team consists of first-timers to India, visit schedules and agendas are often at the mercy of the service providers who vie for maximum connect time often at the cost of other service provider's time. Extending allocated time is very common, moreso when the client's intend to move from one service provider's office to others the same day.
• The visits consist of "floor walkthroughs" where the client teams are taken to the Offshore Delivery Centers where the existing clients are serviced. Many clients (rightly so) insist before starting for the trip from their home country, that they do not want conference room presentations but more of floor walkthroughs - but most vendors will have  that elusive "one more last slide" in the conference room sessions
• Dinners are most sought after by service providers as it gives good "off the guard" time to connect and also strike a rapport which is just not possible to do when in their home country. Just imagine, trying to get an hour of a CIO's time in his office in his home country .. and how when in India he is literally at the mercy of the service providers with a solid 8 hours (most of them are at least a day visit) to connect. 
• Many such visits also have parallel tracks where a large team from the client's side is split into various sessions to make most of the time.
• Most visits are invariably delayed and run over allocated time
• Travel time on roads is heavily underestimated
• Each service provider gets the client teams to meet at least 35-40 individuals for various sessions with big teams from their side for each session "just in case a question in that area comes up" 

On the lighter side:

• No one from the client's team wants to sit in the front seat of the cars after seeing the traffic and how close the traffic moves
• Client teams often run out of cards by day 2 or 3 having to give out to everyone they meet and with each visit needing at least 20-25 exchanges with the huge team fielded by the service providers

From a recent example when I hosted a senior team from a major US bank earlier this week: the team had split going rounds of various service providers in major cities. Some of them could not make it to some visits due to burn-outs.  They were meeting us in that particular location in addition to a major day long session they already had with our company. They had planned to visit at 6 PM and go up to 9 PM that evening. The team we met was very tired, up that morning at 3 AM for a flight and due to catch another one next morning. Off that flight they were to go direct to another service provider's office for meetings till 8 PM next day. From there they had to rush to the international airport and take the 1 AM flight out back to US!! They finally decided to cut short the visit, dinner and all and head back to their hotel for the much needed sleep.