Dante's Bumper Book of Outsourcing

I spent much of today getting to grips with the latest Project. This involved a trip in to the Nearest Circle of Hell to meet up with the Sales Exec and many hours pouring over a long document thinking "How the Hell am I going to get that information ?"  ...

... Basically I have been brought in at the very early stages of an Engagement where the prospective client is looking for information on Supplier Capabilities rather than priced solutions. They have just provided us with a very long list of questions and all but a handful of them require detailed responses from Subject Matter Experts.

As is usual we have very little time available to complete this task and key resources are required on other activities. Hence it is the all too frequent story of bad man fighting to get the resources he needs. As the title suggests, the client is looking for a tailored edition of Dante's Bumper Book of Outsourcing in order that they can reassure themselves that we are suitable prospective partner. After all you wouldn't want to be at the point of signing a contract with  Steve's Right Price Outsourcing and be thinking "can they actually manage data centres across the Globe?"

This Sales process is a standard way of initiating an outsourcing deal and you would think that Dante's Nine Circles of Hell would have a honed  set of processes and a team of Geniuses ready to tweak intellectual capital so that this would be little more than a formality ...

... How fucking wrong is that? The words of the day are "indifference", "disinterest" and "nebulous"...

... Christ, I wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing. Ah well, in the absence of clear instruction I will just do something. It has to be better than doing nothing.