NEW YORK, March 1, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- The January/February 2005 issue of HRO Today magazine featured an in-depth interview with Eva Schmatz, the co-founder of the Reference Standards Board. The interview was the focus of the magazine's widely read Cuppa Joe Influencer Interview Column. This column interviews the leaders of the outsourcing industry who have made significant contributions to the advancement of outsourcing as a strategic management tool for building shareholder value.
The Reference Standards Board is an independent organization that works closely with outsourcing service providers to provide client references that help corporate buyers make informed decisions in the highly competitive RFP process. The Reference Standards Board was co-founded by Eva Schmatz, the CEO of SUMMUS Research and Joe Vales, the Senior Partner of the Vales Consulting Group.
"Our mission is to establish and maintain high standards for the way that executive references are used in the sales proposal process," said Eva Schmatz. "We provide independent and objective reports, with our established strict standards for the interview process and criteria for selecting client reference givers. In the end, our goal is to give corporate buyers much more useful information, enabling them to select the right firms to meet their needs and requirements."
"Buyers who review references will have efficiencies and a higher level of confidence if they have the ability to look at them in a standardized form," said Joe Vales. "We believe that the methodology used by the Reference Standards Board will set the bar and expectations on how references should be handled in all stages of the reference gathering process."
About the Reference Standards Board
Headquartered in New York, N.Y., the Reference Standards Board serves the Information and Technology and Business Process Outsourcing services industry. The Board fills a real need for corporate buyers to receive more complete, accurate, and timely information on service providers' client references, often a critical deciding factor in major outsourcing contract awards that can run in the tens or hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars.
The Reference Standards Board is organized as a central reference source or utility for the outsourcing industry. The Board has established strict standards for the interview process, scope/content of interviews, reference qualifications, and its proprietary research methodology, based on hundreds of interviews with corporate buyers, providers, and strategy consultants in the outsourcing community.
For more information, the Board is located at 708 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017, and can be reached by telephone at (212) 777-7671 or by e-mail at info@referencestandardsboard.org.
About the Co-Founders
Joseph Vales, Senior Partner, Vales Consulting Group, has 30 years of line management and consulting experience with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citibank, and Booz Allen Hamilton. He is the recognized marketing guru of the outsourcing industry. Vales Consulting is the most widely used marketing and proposal support firm in the ITO and BPO industries. Joe is a Founding Trustee of the HR Outsourcing Association, and a Special Advisor to the Shared Services and Business Process Outsourcing Association (SBPOA). He has contributed many thought leadership articles on IT/BPO outsourcing to these organizations, as well as to Montgomery Research Outsourcing Project, Outsourcing Journal, Outsourcing Institute, and ITSMA publications; and he is a featured speaker at the Sourcing Interests Group and major outsourcing conferences.
Eva Schmatz, President of SUMMUS, a preeminent market research firm, is well known for the pioneering market research work she has conducted to guide companies in corporate branding, marketing/sales strategies, and new business development. Eva has directed several hundred market research studies for Global 1000 companies, and interviewed thousands of C-level executives on enterprise-wide programs including outsourcing. Eva developed the firm's proprietary methodology, ValueStructuring(R), to evaluate customer wants and needs, their buying motivations, and why and how their purchasing decisions are made. This proven methodology, based on more than 10,000 executive interviews over 15 years, has been adapted for use by the Reference Standards Board.