Our ranking methodology

As the information technology outsourcing market diversifies into ever-growing subsets of services, Vendorland's mission is to help potential buyers navigate this complex landscape and make informed choices based on well-defined selection criteria. Our research into these essential criteria and client expectations, mapped against vendors' offerings, peaked in the formulation of the Vendorland Leaders Board. Here, we dynamically aggregate and visualize vendors' positioning across the groups of Rising Stars, Strong Players, Contenders, and Leaders.

There are Leaders Boards for each respective service segment, offering guidance on which vendors might be potentially better equipped to deliver based on the maturity and scale of their expertise compared to other providers.

Vendorland offers rankings in 20+ identified service categories, further divided by focus, technology stack, and verticals. These service categories are typically characterized by steady demand and supply, along with established use cases for the underlying technologies.

Vendorland examines vendors that have established a sizable presence in respective service categories, as evidenced by their portfolios, availability of specialized talent, and other criteria as described below. Vendors are included based on the verified information submitted in their Vendorland profiles, as well as qualitative market research conducted by Vendorland's analysts.

Vendorland assesses vendors against a set of standard criteria divided into two macro groups: Category score and Overall score. The results of this assessment are then aggregated and mapped onto Leaders Boards to visualize vendors’ current standing in their service category.

This macro group of ranking criteria focuses on vendors’ proven experience in the respective service category and includes:

Core service focus: Evaluating the scale and depth of the vendor’s offering in the service category, as evidenced by the size of the respective department/team. The higher the number of professionals on the vendor’s team with the required competencies to deliver the named service, the higher the vendor scores on the Leaders Board.

This macro group of ranking criteria describes the vendors’ viability as service providers in general, based on their business and service execution strategy, as well as past clients’ testimonials:

Client & Experience: Evaluation of previous clients, encompassing both big brands and lesser-known companies, project budgets, the number of projects undertaken, and the overall portfolio. This criterion provides insights into a vendor's client base, diversity of projects, and the depth of their experience.

Reviews: Past clients’ reviews and verified references, where recent reviews (e.g., published within the last 30 days) are valued higher. The total number of reviews per vendor is also a key ranking factor — the more reviews, the higher the ranking.

Brand recognition: The vendor’s brand visibility is measured by the number and sentiment of online brand mentions.

Track record: The vendor’s achievements, such as awards, high-value partnership statuses, and others.

Geographic strategy: The vendor’s geographic presence, consisting of the number of offices located internationally, as well as the maturity of the company’s distributed/remote service delivery framework.

The assessment against the ten criteria described above culminates in generating a Leaders Board with the Overall score plotted on the horizontal axis and Category score on the vertical one. The vendors’ aggregated scores are used to position them within the four categories of Rising Stars, Contenders, Strong Players, and Leaders to visualize the vendors’ current levels of maturity and viability:

ContendersThis group comprises vendors armed with a specialized talent pool and widespread geographic presence, enabling them to navigate markets with agility. Despite these strengths, they grapple with effective execution. Their skilled workforce tailors solutions, but challenges persist in translating vision into reality. This blend of expertise and struggle positions Contenders on the precipice of success, poised for growth if they can surmount execution hurdles.

Rising Stars: This group consists of emerging service niche players that have earned a consistent customer base. While not necessarily new to the market, they might face challenges in establishing a strong foothold due to their limited talent pool or geographic presence. Rising Stars demonstrate motivation for growth and are actively mobilizing their resources to compete with Contenders.

Leaders: This group features vendors that possess both financial and reputational maturity, coupled with talent availability and the strategic vision necessary to stay at the forefront of the market. Leaders are recognized as prominent service providers with high brand visibility and a well-established global customer base.

Strong Players: This group is populated with vendors who have established themselves as proven service providers, demonstrating current execution excellence or dominance in a sizable segment, but they may lack a comprehensive grasp of the market's future direction.

Each of our rankings presents an aggregated snapshot of an IT market service category for guidance only, in no way constituting an exhaustive list of all potential vendors. The goal is to support your choice with carefully selected criteria and fact-based information, which you can then weigh against your own project needs and requirements.

We encourage you to analyze all the featured vendor categories on the Leaders Board without focusing solely on Leaders and to study the vendors’ profiles listed on Vendorland for more nuanced details.

To get listed on Vendorland, please create and complete your vendor account. Upon registering, you can invite your clients to leave reviews to increase your chances of getting ranked on the respective Leaders Board.

Please note that being listed on Vendorland doesn’t automatically qualify for inclusion in a Leaders Board. To be featured in the ranking, your company needs to satisfy the requirements described in the ranking criteria above.