Outsourcing is becoming more important, more sophisticated and more challenging:

• As organizations attempt to enhance their effectiveness and productivity they are using outsourcing as a key tool to achieve these outcomes. Outsourcing is now also seen as a response to capacity shortages resulting from demographic change.
• Outsourcing is being used for a broad range of services and the scope of outsourcing agreements is much broader than in the past, sometimes incorporating entire processes and functions.
• Outsourcing agreements are becoming more sophisticated and complex, with outsourcing being used to achieve transformational improvements, and service providers often being paid on the basis of business outcomes.
• Outsourced services are now often performed through a "global delivery model" where work is sometimes spread across several regions or even continents.
• Survey after survey shows that many outsourcing relationships fail to deliver expected results.