EquaTerra to Bring Business Process Management and Governance Application to Global 2000 Marketplace Using Microsoft Business Intelligence Technology.

HOUSTON & LONDON -- EquaTerra, a multi-national outsourcing and insourcing advisory firm, today announced it will use Microsoft business intelligence (BI) technology to make an outsourcing and business process governance solution available to the marketplace. This solution will enable organizations to more efficiently and effectively govern and manage the performance of their internal business processes, such as HR, IT, Procurement and Finance & Accounting.

Research by EquaTerra and others has proven that organizations lacking effective outsourcing governance risk losing up to 20 percent of the anticipated value from their business process transformation initiatives. While there are point solutions that provide robust functionality in a single or multiple governance processes, there is no single, comprehensive governance solution. This solution is being developed by EquaTerra with the help of Microsoft Consulting Services in response to this increasingly vital market need.

As an over-arching business process governance solution, this solution doesn't replace other business process intelligence and outsourcing management tools. Rather, it provides an enterprise-wide view with plug-ins to a wide range of these tools to ensure that companies are taking full advantage of existing technology investments.

The new offering combines EquaTerra's outsourcing governance processes and methodologies with Microsoft's Office system products, specifically Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (BSM), Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to provide Global 2000's with an enterprise-wide management view of all its internal business processes. Via this "Business Services Dashboard", which is designed utilizing the above mentioned Microsoft tools, organizations will be able to view the current status of each business process, and measure and manage provider performance. The EquaTerra governance solution provides drill-down details into six critical business process governance areas: Financial Management, Issue Management, Contract Management, Performance Management, Compliance Management and Relationship Management.

Mark Toon, President and CEO of EquaTerra, said, "The trend toward utilizing a complex blend of outsourcing, offshoring and internal shared services creates an increasing requirement for end-to-end business process performance monitoring. Due to its position as the leading Business Intelligence platform provider, Microsoft was the optimal partner to help us fill this critical market need."

"EquaTerra's Business Services Dashboard solution provides a highly compelling and comprehensive solution which combines Microsoft's powerful end-to-end BI offering with EquaTerra's innovative service advisory and management expertise," said Chris Caren, general manager of Office Business Applications, Microsoft Corp. "When two leading organizations work together to develop a critical new business intelligence solution, the marketplace wins."

This outsourcing governance solution is currently being piloted at a variety of buy-side corporations. It will be available in March, 2007.

About EquaTerra

EquaTerra sourcing advisors help clients achieve sustainable value in their business processes. With an average of more than 20 years of industry experience in over 600 global transformation and outsourcing projects, our advisors offer unmatched industry expertise. EquaTerra has deep functional knowledge in Finance and Accounting, HR, IT, Procurement and other critical business processes with advisors throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. We help clients achieve significant cost savings and process improvement with outsourcing, internal transformation and shared services solutions. For more information on EquaTerra, please contact Lee Ann Moore at [phone]; [e-mail]; www.equaterra.com.