Several analysts say that after the intial excitement about potential savings, savvy companies focus on business metrics like productivity, profitability, and employee satisfaction.

I advise people to think about not what you want on Day One but what do you want in Year Four, Year Five, Year Six—and think about how you’re structuring the deal that will allow that to evolve or develop over time," Merritt says. "If you focus solely on cost, you’re going to find vendors out there who can run your basic services quite well and quite comfortably. But if you want some of these other things of value-added planning and improvements, you have to structure the deal a little differently to not have expectation gaps in Year Two or Year Three.