Abstract
Information systems outsourcing has become one of the most important aspects of strategic management. It is becoming the rule, rather than the exception in today’s globalized business environment. Many countries and regions have done numerous reforms to become the best offshore information systems outsourcing destinations in the world. For a long time, developing countries remained outside of this competition, but recently the trend has been changing. More developing countries are positioning themselves as viable alternatives to the traditional offshore destinations like India, Ireland and Czech Republic. Selecting an outsourcing provider is a daunting, delicate and very important task for organizations, and can be the cause of an outsourcing failure if not properly addressed. This paper proposes a model based on PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation) for selecting the best offshore information systems outsourcing provider among a list of developing countries. A case study of 8 African countries is presented in the last part of the paper to illustrate the model. Our model differs from others as it deals with the provider selection problem at country level while most of the existing models deal with the problem at firm level. Another particularity of this model is the set of criteria chosen to analyze the suitability of a country for being the right offshore information systems outsourcing destination.
Highlights
According to Gartner (2010), many organizations that choose to move IT services to lower-cost countries are daunted by the task of determining which country or countries would best host their operations
Methodologies that are often used for provider selection include Cost Theory, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Multiple Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) (Chen et al, 2011)
This study contributes to the theory of information systems (IS) outsourcing by providing a different approach of outsourcing provider evaluation at country level based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative criteria
Summary
According to Gartner (2010), many organizations that choose to move IT services to lower-cost countries are daunted by the task of determining which country or countries would best host their operations. The importance of developing countries as outsourcing destination was evidenced by Ian Marriot (2010), research vice president at Gartner, who stated that for that year, the top 30 outsourcing destination countries were exclusively emerging nations. He added that as the pace of change was slower in developed countries, they have chosen to focus on those locations that are still maturing and developing, domestically and internationally. Most previous research on offshore IS outsourcing destinations ignored Africa for the most part, it is becoming more evident that this continent is catching up very fast to become one of the most attractive regions for IS outsourcing This proposed model is more suitable for developing countries because they present very incomparable criteria. The terms provider and supplier are used interchangeably
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