Welcome to the Outsourcing Journal’s most exciting issue of the year, our annual Editor’s Choice Awards Issue. We encourage both best practice and thought leadership in the outsourcing world. In this issue, we recognize outstanding outsourcing relationships. We believe that sharing stories that illuminate beneficial, innovative and productive outsourcing relationships is a worthwhile exercise. Learning from others’ successes can help you, our readers, apply their valuable lessons to your own businesses. Follow their leads to simulate their effects.
Last month in our Forecast Issue we invited suppliers and analysts to present their views of the future in this new millenium. In this companion issue, we give buyers an opportunity to express their opinions.
We take the selection of our award recipients very seriously. We invited a panel of five industry experts to join me in selecting our seven winners. This year’s panel included:
- Peter Bendor-Samuel, Editor, OutsourcingJournal
- Michael Corbett, Corbett & Associates
- Mary Lacity, Ph.D, University of Missouri, St. Louis
- Dennis McGuire, Technology Partners International
- Rita Terdiman, Gartner Group
- Barry Wiegler, Sourcing Interests Group
Throughout the year we accepted nominations from a variety of sources. Customers nominated their relationships, analysts told us about winning combinations, and suppliers mentioned pairings that they felt were especially beneficial to both parties.
The process is painstaking. We researched each of the nominations, interviewing both the supplier and the customer. Then we sent the information to the judges, who used two major criteria to ferret out the best. First, they insisted that the relationship benefited both parties. Second, the unions had to be long term, displaying continuing and increasing value over time. And, if they forged into new territory, like e-commerce, so much the better.
All too often the business press spotlights the outsourcing stories that don’t work. From our vantage point, the industry is replete with outstanding relationships where suppliers are adding value to their contracts and helping their buyers become more profitable and more competitive.
We are proud to present our awards to these outstanding relationships. Here are seven useful business models to emulate in your own outsourcing endeavors.
Peter Bendor-Samuel is president of the Everest Group, Inc. and editor of the Outsourcing Journal.
