Outsourcing/offshoring may be staying closer to home these days to take advantage of plentiful surplus talent. Meanwhile, overall outsourcing growth will slow due to reduced spending and global uncertainty, according to the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals. Outsourcing vendors, however, continue to rack up big wins in 2009. For example:

• IBM will handle the management and storage of most of Kaiser Permanente’s data.

• Wipro Ltd. won a 9-year outsourcing contract from Unitech Wireless.

• HP won a 10-year, $1 billion data center services contract from Aviva, a large U.K. insurer, to retool and operate data centers there.

Outsourcing is not a surefire way to reduce IT spending, as we noted here previously. Before you consider outsourcing, which can demoralize and disrupt your organization and still not produce the results or savings you want, try the five steps below to revitalize your current IT operation and make it competitive with outsourcing vendors. more

In 2008, companies spent about $12.5 billion on cash management services with their banking partners, according to the 2008 Cash Management Monitor by Phoenix Hecht.

Treasurers and CFOs searching for opportunities to shave expenses will want to consider the banking fees they pay. Too often, they review just total costs, without digging into the numbers, says Stacey Gilmore, treasury management consultant with Chesapeake System Solutions, Inc. By analyzing just what services their firms are using and the fees they’re paying, they can cut costs and streamline the services they receive. Bank “account analysis statements are a gold mine for the economy today,” Gilmore adds. more

In an all-day, closed-door meeting today, lawmakers are discussing policy options for financing health-care reform. A Senate Finance Committee document circulated before the meeting makes for some odd reading; it’s a hodge-podge of proposals for savings within the current health-care system cobbled together with a bunch of health-care-related and “lifestyle-related” revenue raisers.

If your organization offers a health plan or makes contributions to employees’ health savings accounts — or if you happen to like sodas — you might want to take a look at what the senators have in mind. more