It's also important to create incentives and rewards-both individual and group-based-to give the heroes a stake in the implementation of process discipline. They can feel threatened by an initiative to instill consistency and repeatability, because it can make them less visible.

CIO.com: Why is it so hard for corporate IT groups to embrace standardization? Is that changing?

Mathers: Standardization can be seen by clients as constraining unless the benefits are clearly laid out. They need not only to understand how they will need to work differently, but what the benefits of that change are.

We're seeing clients take the time up front to map out what a standardized service model can look like, including leveraging utility-based services, demand management and appropriate tensioned pricing mechanisms to quantify the size of the prize. The benefits can be significant; some have reduced costs 30 or 40 percent. The level of savings the organization should target depends on their appetite to make some of the changes. For some more conservative organizations, savings may be 15 to 20 percent. The largest savings will be reserved for those that are truly willing and able to transform how they deliver services to users, and how users consume those services.

in CIO's Outsourcing Drilldown.