Quantifying the cost impact of the hero culture specifically is difficult, but the cost impact of the related issues that culture drives - process inefficiency, duplicated effort, ambiguous roles and responsibilities-can add up to 10 to 20 percent of total costs.

CIO.com: How can IT outsourcing customers avoid this culture clash in the first place?

Mathers: Outsourcing works best when the internal organization has already been working with a process-driven model the outsourcing happens. IT personnel and the business have already gone through the pains of moving from relying on heroes to relying on processes. The outsourcer may have even more rigorous processes, but at least the client has some appreciation for what it means to work within a standardized environment and what some of the benefits can be. If organizations don't do this, the move to an outsourced model will be painful, and the outsourcer will be seen as inflexible and difficult. Those perceptions can be corrosive to the relationship and take a long time to fix.

CIO.com: What can IT service providers do to remedy this on their end?

Dreger: It has to be a collaborative effort on the part of both parties, and it has to include executive-level support. What we've often seen is that, after a transition, there's some maturation and some implementation of process discipline. But then it stalls. At that point you need to come in and do a baseline, see where you're at, and get both parties to reassess and re-commit to the need for process discipline. Being able to quantify the benefit of that change is essential.