Finding recomfort in work coming back?

Often I meet with companies in the services business who at the first occasion will tell me the work they do is work their client was not satisfied when done Offshore. I'm not sure what to think of that. It's good for them, to have the business. I'd like to better understand their business to be able to assess if it is really a good thing. The questions that go through my mind are:

• Is the work high end value work, or is it repetitive tasks, automatable mid-term?
• What did they have to do to sign up the work, show a price difference not small enough to justify the move on the client's part?
• Or is maybe this is real solid work, worth investing time and sweating bullets building an expertize in because the long term return potential is good?

Then I go back to who the heck has the time to evaluate all of this and make a thorough business case for every opportunities. Strategically executing is difficult, compared to opportunistically running a business. On one hand you act according to carefully chosen priorities, on the other you react to what is in front of you. Yet I don't think it's one or the other, we need to have a good mix of the two to thrive as a business.

So to understand which opportunitistic deals are worth taking a long term view on, I realize more and more than a company needs to know where it is going strategically. Anyhow the global services business is competitive, landing accounts has a lot to do with differientiate yourself but not at any price!