EQUATERRA TO PRESENT F&A AND “MULTI-TOWER” OUTSOURCING CASE STUDIES WITH FEDERAL MOGUL AND THE WILLIAMS COMPANIES AT THE SOURCING INTERESTS GROUP (SIG) 27TH SEMI-ANNUAL CONFERENCE

NEW YORK (April 18, 2005) —EquaTerra, a multi-national outsourcing and insourcing advisory firm, today announced that it will be co-presenting case studies with clients Federal Mogul and The Williams Companies at the Sourcing Interests Group (SIG) 27th semi-annual conference, being held May 24-27, 2005, in Scottsdale, Arizona.  The case studies will focus on business process transformation via FAO and multi-tower (F&A, HR and IT) outsourcing, respectively.

How Federal-Mogul Took Finance & Accounting to the Next Level of Performance through BPO – In this case study,Tim Trenary, Director of Corporate Finance, Federal-Mogul Corporation; Bob Cecil, Vice President, Finance & Accounting Practice, EquaTerra; and Bill Peters, Partner, O’Melveny & Myers LLP, will demonstrate to delegates how Federal-Mogul achieved cost savings and mitigated business risks in establishing its F&A outsourcing relationship with its external service provider.  Specifically, it will provide insights into how Federal-Mogul:

• Established a clear set of objectives for evaluating the BPO option
• Created a clear "walk-away" negotiation strategy to ensure business objectives were met while protecting its downside risks
• Defined broad, but clear scope across seven F&A business processes in North America and Europe
• Collaboratively worked with its service provider to evaluate and develop the right multi-shore delivery solution that matched economic objectives to the company's tolerance for risk
• Established a contractual basis for future scope expansion to minimize incremental scope creep and renegotiations 
• Created a governance organization and process that promotes a productive working relationship with the service provider while ensuring the relationship remains market-competitive 

The Williams Companies’ BPO Journey – In this session, Cathy Hyatt, Client Executive for EquaTerra, and Marcia MacLeod, VP of BPO for The Williams Companies, will discuss Williams’ recent embarkment on a highly comprehensive outsourcing journey as they outsourced elements of finance and accounting, human resources and information technology to an external service provider.  This session will describe the process Williams utilized to evaluate its internal organization and better understand the capabilities of the service provider community, as well as discuss how it employed a benchmarking review, financial analysis, solution design, capability assessment, risk analysis and other critical decision-making methodologies and tools. Specific discussion topics will include: BPO Premise, Highlights and Conclusions, BPO Project, Scope and Cost, Governance and Relationship Management Approach, Service Level Agreements, and Lessons Learned.

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