KPMG, the public accounting firm, recently published a survey of outsourcing. Nearly three out of four companies in the survey do not measure the value of their outsourcing arrangements. Yet paradoxically, KPMG concludes outsourcing is working because 89% of their survey participants plan to maintain or increase their use of outsourcing.

The survey leads me to ask a few questions:

• Is satisfaction with outsourcing based on notions of comparative efficiency, or do organizations have performance metrics?
• How do companies apply business process management and integrate control plans into their outsourcing arrangements?
• Not all outsourcing arrangements are created equal. Do companies use Quality Function Deployment or other techniques to (re)design their outsourced processes?
• Are any organizations using Six Sigma in an inter-enterprise fashion to improve overall performance of outsourced processes?
• Do contract terms and conditions create high barriers to leveraging Six Sigma within an outsourced process?

Any insights would be appreciated.