Service Providers - How Do You Find Good Ones

Within a few hours of each other, I received two requests for referral to service providers. One request was for eLearning development providers from fairly large 5,000+ employees based in the US.

We've looked at a few eLearning vendors and haven’t been thrilled. We found the three US vendors expensive and/or light on good ID and the India-based vendors (Tata and Brainvisa) are priced really well, but would require more extensive project, quality and ID management. So the 50K question is do you have any really high quality referrals – that might also be able to come in at reasonable prices and would be able to to turn a 2 or 3-hour ILT into a simple yet sophisticated CBT all the way up to eventual simulations and online custom leadership content?

Likely they would want to have a provider who is fairly local, but not sure about it. They are fairly new to eLearning design and development.

The other request is for providers of new-hire orientation outsourcing companies:

My boss wants me to look up the three (or so) best-in-industry new-hire orientation outsourcing companies. Does anyone have experience in this area to help me out, or at least direct me where to search? That would be MUCH appreciated!

I have a few thoughts on where you might go to search for this, but I would be curious how people who read this blog would go about finding service providers for themselves, or how they would advise these two people to go about it?

For thoughts about this, but from the service providers perspective (especially service professionals such as accountants, attorneys, consultants, etc.) take a look at Social Media for Service Professionals and Social Media to Build Reputation and Reach Prospects – More Ideas.