The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has been adopted as the de facto standard for IT Service Management (ITSM). This Paper discusses the value of ITIL-based maturity assessments for the IT service recipient in an outsourcing arrangement. It presents the Client Outsourcing Maturity Model (COMM), a three-dimensional framework and provides an example of its assessment methodology results. The benefits from using COMM as a pro-active tool for understanding and defining outsourcing needs are discussed.