Interesting to note that although outsourcing is becoming more popular, the day of the megadeal with a single outsourcing partner appears to be over. Analyst firm Gartner defines a megadeal as a contract with a total value of more than $1bn – last year only 10 deals of this magnitude took place, down on 12 the year before.

Partly this is because more and more companies are using outsourcing as a business practice, so at all levels of the company it’s more usual to work in this way. So it’s more likely for smaller deals to be struck that don’t end up reported as megadeals.

Also, there is an increasing trend to multisource and break up requirements across a basket of suppliers – offering access to best-in-breed services, rather than just going to a monolithic one-stop-shop.

The combination of multisourcing and increased automation of services is highly likely to result in reduced contract sizes – but it is likely there will be more contracts as these solutions become more and more popular. Don’t write off the outsourcer just yet because megadeals are on the decline…