A pilot with a delivery partner is a short, small version of the full programme: a handful of seats, a fixed period and criteria agreed in advance. Its purpose is to let both operations find out how well they work together while the commitment is still small.
Most of what decides whether a pilot launches well happens between signature and the first live contact. This is the order it runs in.
Before signature: discovery, design, due diligence
Discovery establishes the facts of the work: headcount, coverage hours, channels, languages, who owns training, and how much of the management sits with each side. Solution design turns that into a recommended model and a shift plan mapped to the prime's time zones.
Due diligence runs alongside. The prime's vendor-management team reviews security and data handling, business continuity, access and device policies and the escalation structure. A partner that has this pack ready shortens the stage considerably. A partner that has to assemble it on request will cost you weeks.
The sequence after signature
- 1
Scope signed
The statement of work fixes the model, hours, success criteria and protections. Nothing below starts until it exists.
- 2
Access provisioned
Logins, VPN, licences and telephony routing for each agent. This step belongs to the prime's IT team and the partner's together.
- 3
Recruiting
Hiring for the specific campaign profile begins now. Recruiting ahead of a signature that slips leaves trained people with no work.
- 4
Foundation training
Language, service norms for the market and systems basics. Owned and delivered by the partner.
- 5
Client-specific training
Product, process and compliance for this programme. Designed by the prime, delivered by the prime's trainer or the partner's.
- 6
Nesting
Agents take live contacts with close supervision. Both quality teams score the same interactions and compare notes.
- 7
Go-live
Calibration is daily for the first week, then weekly.
Why dates are quoted from access
Two items on that list sit outside the partner's control: systems access and client-specific training content. Both are on the critical path. An honest timeline is therefore stated as a number of weeks after signature and access, not as a calendar date. If a prime needs a fixed date, the way to protect it is to start the access request the day the scope is signed.
Training in layers
It helps to separate who owns each layer of training, because the ownership differs. Foundation training is the partner's responsibility and happens whether or not a particular campaign exists. Client-specific training exists because of the campaign, and its content can only come from the prime. Compliance training covers data handling, recording, access and incident reporting, and ends with a pass mark. Nesting is shared.
The same split applies later. When the end client asks for more seats, the training for that growth is a consequence of the client's request. When an agent leaves and is replaced, the training of the replacement is the partner's to absorb. Agreements that keep those two cases apart avoid most later arguments about training.
The 30, 60 and 90-day reviews
A pilot should end in a decision. At each review both sides look at the criteria they agreed at the start, typically quality scores, attendance and service level, and choose one of four outcomes: expand, correct, maintain or exit. Writing the criteria down before go-live is what makes the review a short meeting instead of a negotiation.
In practice
Checklist for the prime: a named operations owner, access requests raised on signature day, training materials or a trainer confirmed, the QA scorecard shared, calibration sessions booked, and a rolling forecast in place before nesting.