However, successful outsourcing processes have been given surprisingly scant attention in the literature. Lacity and Willcocks (2001)” describe a siX—phase outsourcing process model. However, this work focuses primarily on the contract, with processes only delineated at a high level. The importance of the contract in this model may also be overstated compared to its importance in practice. For example, legal and other literature suggests that outsourcing is more relational in nature than the Lacity and Willcocks model implies.12