Outsourcing Center Studies Outsourcing Relationships and Selects the Six Best for Awards

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DALLAS, TX (May 26, 2005) -- Outsourcing Center, the world's premier source of information on all aspects of outsourcing, announced the six 2005 winners in the Outsourcing Excellence Awards at an Oscars-like ceremony May 25 in Scottsdale, Arizona, in conjunction with Sourcing Interests Group's conference.

A panel of industry experts selected winners of the prestigious 2005 awards sponsored by Outsourcing Center, Everest Group, and Forbes after a rigorous review of all components of relationships among nominations from a wide range of companies across the globe.

Remarked John Funk, Esq., Partner at Jones Day, "This year's group of finalists reflects the rich and growing diversity of functions and processes -- from traditional IT functions to innovative business processes -- where outsourcing can reduce costs and create value. Funk added, "I was impressed this year by the number of finalists whose partnerships are well into the second half of long-term contracts. These relationships have withstood the test of time and epitomize the best of what outsourcing offers."

Stories of the winning and runner-up relationships will be published in the June 1 issue of Outsourcing Journal (www.outsourcing-journal.com) and mentioned in the June 20 issue of Forbes. Jerry Bowles, Producer/Writer for Forbes eBusinessSections, said, "The nominated outsourcing relationships were uniformly outstanding, so picking a winner was extremely difficult this year. Both customers and service providers have become much more adept and sophisticated in forming partnerships that are built to last."

The six winning relationships are:

Best First Steps: Bank of India and HP
Best Governance: Westpac and EDS
Most Transformational: KeyBank and ABN AMRO
Most Innovative: Fairmont Hotels and Avendra LLC
Best Partnership - Government: QinetiQ and Accenture
Best Partnership: Johnson & Johnson and Hewitt Associates

Said Barry Wiegler, Founder and CEO of Sourcing Interests Group, "The Outsourcing Center is to be commended for its continued service to the outsourcing industry by conducting this awards program. The quality with which the team conducted the Outsourcing Excellence Awards is at the very top. It is clearly evident that a tremendous amount of time and significant funds are invested in this program."

The Center discovered six prominent trends in today's outsourcing relationships:

1. Cost is no longer the only key driver; an important emerging driver is
the need for process expertise.
2. Full-service human resources outsourcing is gaining acceptance.
3. Offshoring is here to stay, but still only has a small presence.
4. The deal sizes are getting smaller; there were significantly more
small deals than mega-deals.
5. Few buyers want a mid-term contract of seven or eight years; most
buyers prefer less than five years or more than ten.
6. Companies are moving away from complex service level agreements;
fewer, more effective metrics are becoming more popular.

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