In an increasingly global economy, collaboration with other businesses is becoming more widespread and more important to a company's business strategy, whether to control costs, enter new markets, or expand product and service offerings. Accordingly, the finance function is being called upon more and more to evaluate and monitor an entire range of different business relationships with third parties, from traditional sourcing and procurement agreements to business process outsourcing to alliances and joint ventures in sales and marketing, R&D, and production and delivery.

In June 2008, CFO Research Services (a unit of CFO Publishing Corp.) conducted a research program among senior finance executives in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia to examine these shifts. Through an electronic survey and a series of interviews in each region, we looked at what kinds of alliances companies are forming, and how finance sees itself working with internal and external partners to establish and assess successful alliances. The research revealed three major themes, which are discussed in this report.