More than 650 organizations in 32 countries participated in the survey with over 60 percent of respondents C level executives. Nearly half of respondents have an annual turnover of more than US$1 billion and 143 Australian companies participated in the research.

"Sourcing is completely a people's business; only 13 percent blamed technology when the contract went bad," he said.

"It's not about contracts but having the right people; the worst offenders are those with massive SLAs, they fail to keep it simple.

"Typically costs will initially go down when organizations outsource but two years later costs are higher than they were before outsourcing."

Zarella blames lack of vendor management claiming it is a full-time job to manage an outsourcing provider.