How to Shortlist IT Outsourcing Companies: A 12-Point Scorecard

By the ITDS team · Lisbon and Warsaw

You have a list of IT outsourcing companies that all look the same. Every website promises senior engineers, fast delivery and great communication. The sales calls blur together, and the decision ends up resting on whoever sounded most confident or quoted the lowest rate.

This guide gives you a better way to shortlist IT outsourcing companies: a 12-point scorecard you can run in about 20 minutes per vendor. It explains why most shortlists go wrong, what to score and how, the red flags that should end a conversation and the questions to ask references. You can download the scorecard as an Excel file and use it straight away. For how ITDS itself works, see our page on nearshore software development from Poland and Portugal.

Why most shortlists of IT outsourcing companies are wrong

Most shortlists fail for three reasons. They compare hourly rates instead of total cost. They take claims at face value, so "senior" and "fast" mean whatever the vendor wants them to mean. And they score every vendor differently, because each call follows a different conversation.

A scorecard fixes all three. You ask every vendor the same questions, ask for evidence rather than adjectives, and give each answer a score before you compare. The vendor with the best pitch no longer wins by default.

The 12 criteria for IT outsourcing companies

Not every criterion matters equally to every company. A bank will weight data protection heavily. A start-up racing to launch may weight speed and seniority. The scorecard lets you set a weight from 1 to 3 for each criterion before you start.

How to score IT outsourcing companies

Give each vendor a score from 0 to 3 on every criterion:

• 0, no answer. The vendor avoided the question or answered with general claims.
• 1, weak. An answer, but no evidence.
• 2, solid. A clear answer with some evidence, such as an example or a number.
• 3, proven. Clear evidence you can check: data, references or documents.

Multiply each score by the criterion's weight and add them up. The Excel scorecard does this for you, for up to three vendors side by side, and shows each vendor's result as a percentage of the maximum.

Two rules keep the scoring honest. Score during or straight after each call, before you talk to the next vendor. And when two people join the calls, score separately first, then compare.

Red flags that should end the conversation

• CVs before questions. A vendor that sends a pile of CVs before understanding the role is guessing, not matching.
• No one technical in the process. If nobody who can assess an engineer is involved, the vetting is a formality.
• Vague speed claims. "We can start next week" with no shortlist, no names and no process behind it.
• No references in your field. Or references who turn out to be from a very different kind of project.
• Bait-and-switch risk. The engineer you interviewed is not the one who starts. Ask how they prevent it.
• Hidden costs. Rates that exclude replacement, onboarding or account management, discovered only in the contract.
• Unclear data handling. No straight answer on where engineers work and how your data is protected.

Reference checks that actually tell you something

References are only useful if you ask questions a sales script can't answer. Ask each reference:

1. How long did it take from your request to an engineer working in your team?
2. Was the engineer as senior as promised in the first month?
3. Did anyone leave? What happened next, and how fast?
4. What was the hardest moment in the relationship, and how did the vendor handle it?
5. Would you hire them again for a harder role?

The fourth question is the most revealing. Every vendor looks good when things go well. You learn the most from how they behave when something goes wrong.

Where ITDS fits

We built this scorecard from the questions good clients ask us, and we expect to be scored on it too. ITDS is an IT staffing and nearshore company with teams in Portugal and Poland, part of House of HR. Roughly one in five candidates passes our vetting, and on average a client goes from starting a search to an integrated engineer in about 20 days. If you put us on your shortlist, ask us all twelve questions.

Shortlisting IT outsourcing companies: FAQ