eDiscovery Daily Blog
Working Successfully with eDiscovery and Litigation Support Service Providers: Questions to Ask when Checking References, Part 2
Yesterday, we started a list of questions to ask when you are doing a reference check. That list included general project questions, questions about communicating with the vendor, and questions about costs. Here are some questions aimed at uncovering information on the quality of the vendor’s work:
- Were you satisfied with the quality of the vendor’s work and did it meet your expectations?
- Were you involved in initial project training of the vendor’s staff? Do you recommend that with this vendor?
- Did you do quality control checks of the vendor’s work? How did you check the work? How much of the work did you check?
- Did you spend time checking work at the vendor’s facility? Do you recommend that with this vendor?
- Did you provide feedback to the vendor on quality? How was that received? Did the vendor incorporate your feedback and did the work quality improve?
- If there were quality problems, were they dealt with quickly? Was it necessary to escalate problems above the project manager to get them resolved?
- Do you know what quality control procedures the vendor used? How much work did they check? What quality control was done manually? What automated checks were done?
- Do you know if the vendor needed to do rework? Was rework precipitated by issues you brought to their attention? Did you have to ask the vendor to do any work over?
- If you had the technology tools and resources to do this work yourself, do you think you could have done a better job? If so, in what way?
- Do you feel that the vendor had a good grasp on your requirements and the experience to do the work efficiently?
- Did the project manager have the right background and experience to handle your project?
In the next issue, we’ll continue this list with questions aimed at getting a handle on a vendor’s ability to meet schedule requirements and some closing questions aimed at assessing overall performance.
Do you get good information when you check vendor references? What questions do you ask? Please share any comments you might have and let us know if you’d like to know more about an eDiscovery topic.
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