What are the US rules for hiring a foreign company?

October 17, 2016 10:56 AM

We are a US based company that is in discussion with an EU based IT software development company. Are there any rules/regulations required by our company to be able to hire the EU company? This would be a B2B relationship, not an employer/employee relationship.

I have a call with my lawyers later this week, but before that call I wanted to find out more general info that the hive mind may be able to point me to. My google foo has failed, as everything points to sites talking about hiring foreign workers. This is NOT that. We are going to be entering a B2B relationship between two companies, one in the US and one in the EU.

I also know enough about contract law to know that choice of venue is critical, but I'll discuss that with my lawyers. I'm more concerned with any burdens on us, such as knowing if the EU company is legally allowed to operate in the US, etc.

posted by herda05 to Law & Government (4 answers total)

Best answer: It'll be pretty straightforward if your lawyers know what they're doing. This is a pretty common arrangement nowadays.

You'll want to be sure the contract is clear, very, very clear, on SLAs. I work in an EU-based IT consulting company that has a development arm (they develop their own software, not just for clients) and also do contract management for a big company that hires other software development companies, and boy let me tell you, the number one thing contractors do is use all the wiggle room they have on SLAs. Be crystal clear on your workflows and RACI. Deliverables, how and when schedules are defined, how and when acceptance is done, which deliverables validate acceptance and thus delivery, what a late delivery entails, how all of this ties into a quality/audit process (SOX for instance if you're required to comply on that end), and as a quality control person, require that sort of thing throughout the workflow. It's got to be tight because they are going to cut corners; that's their SOP.
posted by fraula at 11:52 AM on October 17, 2016

Response by poster: Thanks fraula. I've dealt with outsourcers before and you're comment is dead on when it comes to dealing with them. Thanks.
posted by herda05 at 2:47 PM on October 17, 2016

I've had a very good experience with a B2B software relationship exactly as you describe, and the only aspect out lawyers were concerned about was the aforementioned choice of venue.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 7:49 PM on October 17, 2016

Response by poster: Thanks for the responses. I think I have enough info to make my discussion with the law team productive.
posted by herda05 at 9:39 AM on October 20, 2016