Increasingly businesses are looking to improve their service or cut costs by outsourcing or conducting all or part of their business through a joint venture.  Properly managed, these relationships can work well and be profitable.  However, care must be taken to ensure that the arrangements are explicit in who does what, how costs and profits are managed, how the arrangement is to be financed and how the relationship between the parties is managed.

These agreements can often require employees from both parties to be involved in the outsourcing or joint venture arrangement or for the technology or data of one party to be available to the other.  All these matters must be clearly documented to ensure that each of the parties knows what is expected and when the objective has been achieved, how the arrangement can be unwound without one party being advantaged over the other.