You have done all required pre-work, understood the processes to be moved to your unit, figured out what is needed from technology, identified and recruited your core team, made a connect with at least a few key people at your client’s end.

You need to plan your visit now. Pick some of your best resources for the on-site transition. One key question, how many resources need to travel? This travel cost is a major transition cost. This is very relevant for a shared services unit, since in my experience, the planners usually presume this. In case of off-shoring engagements, this cost has to be a part of the RFP / scoping exercise and fairly good structures are defined by experienced organizations.

Normally the total size of the engagement in conjunction with the ticket size will define the travel team size. “Ticket-Size”? A new term? We simply mean the size of each function being outsourced. If you have a few functions being outsourced, with a large headcount being outsourced for each function, you will send a smaller team. If you have a larger number of functions, with a small ticket size, you8 will need a larger team. It will also depend on the geographical spread. Different business units may be executing the same function in a different manner, so you may need a different set of people to visit these locations, or the same set of resources visiting different units sequentially, thereby elongating the transition. Availability of relevant resources will also be critical.