Stakeholder alignment
Who inside your practice owns this relationship, and do they have authority to approve the lane and its exceptions?
Prepare your own side before a delivery partner starts.
Most onboarding guides describe what the delivery partner does. This one is about the internal work your practice should finish first — the decisions and materials a new partner will ask for on day one.
Eight decisions to close before day one.
Access and identity plan
What access does delivery actually need, how is it granted, and who removes it if the arrangement ends?
Tooling and integration decisions
Which systems does delivery need to see or use, and which stay internal to your practice?
Documentation handoff
What does delivery need to know about this client group that is not covered by the standard service profile?
Brand and communication guide
What identity, tone, and escalation language should delivery use when speaking with your clients?
Escalation contacts
Named people for technical, commercial, and relationship decisions — not a shared inbox nobody owns.
Pilot scope
Which client group, or which slice of one, starts first, and for how long before a decision to expand?
First review checkpoint
When does the first operating review happen, and what would make it a success?
What stays with your practice during onboarding.
| Client communication about the change | Your practice, unless you have specifically agreed delivery will speak directly. |
|---|---|
| Credential and access provisioning | Shared — your practice approves, a controlled process executes it. |
| Final sign-off to go live | Your practice. |
| Documentation of what was agreed | Both sides, in writing, not left as a verbal understanding. |
This checklist and the delivery swimlane run in parallel.
Once a partner is selected, its own onboarding process still runs — profiling the client group, designing intake and access, validating representative work, and holding an early review. This checklist is the internal preparation that makes that process fast instead of improvised.
See the delivery onboarding swimlaneA pilot is only useful if you defined success first.
- What volume or request mix counts as a fair pilot test?Too small a sample makes any read unreliable.
- What would make you pause or reverse the pilot?Decide this before you need it, not while it is happening.
- Who reviews the pilot, and against what?The readiness inputs, the escalation matrix, or both.
- Is the first review date on a calendar?Not just "sometime after it settles."
Ready to test a specific candidate?
Use the same due-diligence method for MSP Whitelabel or any other delivery organization you are considering.