With a focus on business transformation outsourcing, Accenture is pioneering a type of outsourcing deal in which it will share gains from customers' business advantage, along with risks. Martin Cole, whose office is in Hartford, Conn., is managing partner for outsourcing at Accenture, with executive offices in Dallas, which last year had $11.8 billion in revenue. Last week, Cole explained Accenture's approach to the changing landscape of outsourcing with eWEEK Executive Editor Stan Gibson.

How do you define business transformation outsourcing?

Outsourcing covers a broad range. There is infrastructure outsourcing, maybe the most prevalent over the last 10 years, where companies have outsourced things like data centers and disaster recovery. There is application outsourcing, and there is business process outsourcing. Then there is a unique offering that brings many of those elements together: business transformation outsourcing. Through business transformation outsourcing, we cover strategy as well as operations.

Is business transformation outsourcing like re-engineering, which was a popular term several years ago?

Business transformation outsourcing includes a re-engineering component. We do not believe in taking the current environment as is, lifting it up and dropping it on Accenture. That's not going to get the optimal results. We want to go beyond that and improve overall performance.

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