| • Skills: Managing a complex, multi-year relationship is different than managing an in-house function. Aside from subject matter expertise, what skills are critical for outsourcing professionals? How can companies best equip their teams with these skills?
• Tools: Collaborating effectively across organizational boundaries, and often across geographies, can be one of the most difficult aspects of outsourcing. How have tools improved the way you and your partners (vendors, customers) work together?
• Roles: How can the governance team, retained organization, and delivery teams be structured for success? How should roles vary across different types of deals?
Governance Across the Lifecycle Concurrent sessions in this segment will include presentations focused on topics of interest to individuals in different places along the lifecycles of their deals, for example: • Transition: How can companies use effective governance to get through the dreaded “valley of despair” more quickly, and less painfully?
• Ongoing Management: Maintaining interest and focus can be a challenge in multi-year deals. How can companies keep leadership engaged? How should governance change and evolve over time?
• Remediation: Despite best efforts on both sides, most outsourcing deals encounter challenges. How can buyers and providers address underperformance effectively? What can the parties do when change hasn’t happened as anticipated?
Special Topics Concurrent sessions in this segment will include presentations on special interest topics, such as: • Managing Offshore Relationships: How is governance different when managing an offshore arrangement? What are the unique challenges and how are they addressed?
• Centers of Excellence: Many customers that have outsourced functions across different business units and geographies have struggled with how to manage all of the disparate relationships. Not all relationships should be managed in exactly the same way, but managing each independently has drawbacks, as well. How can Centers of Excellence help to address this challenge?
• Multi-vendor Governance: As the use of “selective” outsourcing grows, customers have found themselves needing to manage multiple vendors that each provide different services in different ways, all of which must be coordinated. How have customers addressed governance in a multi-vendor situation? What do customers need from vendors to ensure the arrangement is a success for all?
• Risk Management: Risk management has drawn intense interest in recent times. What are various risk management approaches used by both the customers and service providers? What are some of the lessons learned?
| 
