Information Technology Outsourcing Service Research Articles

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE PECAN NUT PRODUCTION: CASE IN PARANA STATE, BRAZIL

The aim is to assess the insertion of information technology in properties of pecan nut producers of the Western Region in Parana State, in Brazil. A questionnaire was applied to 21 pecan producers in the West Region of Paraná. Significant difference was tested using Kruskal Wallis in relation to the age of the farmer, working time, property size and use of information technology (IT). In the PDCA analysis, suggestions for continuous improvement were presented. In the findings, differences in the use of IT in properties of pecan nut producers are statistically significant in variables of property size and working time. The size, working time, number of computers, IT service outsourcing, and quality of data access are significantly and positively correlated. The practical implication is to use the implantation of IT in companies, as a methodological lens to evaluate the scenario of pecan producers of the Western Region in Parana State.

A Continuous Dispatch Decision Model for Sustainable IT Service Assignments

Information technology (IT) services are indispensable in the enterprises' sustainability program nowadays. For the outsourcing of IT services, many companies use the contract service model and set up a project to implement timely IT requests which constantly arrive at different IT sites. The demand for outsourced IT services and related workforce coordination is a permanent decisional process, yet existing studies mainly focus on the one-time assignment or the centralized service model. Hence, this paper bases on the multi-period and multi-service allocation requirement to develop a sustainable assignment model. The model handles continuous service requests and decentralized worker assignments to optimize overall costs under the fixed-price contract type of IT service. A real industrial service case is reported to illustrate the model. A comparative review with related works is also provided to discuss the contributions of the model and to outline its future research and development.

The impact of outsourcing information technology services on business operations

Background: Organisations outsource Information Technology (IT) services in order to keep up with the IT evolution and to remain competitive. Although the IT operations department is responsible to manage service provider service quality, they are not in a position to evaluate IT services performance because of the loss of control and capability in the IT environment.Objectives: This article investigated the impact of outsourcing in-house IT services on the performance of IT operations and how it affects the performance of the organisation.Methods: The qualitative approach was used in this research. Data was collected using structured interviews and were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: Outsourcing of IT services was found to have negative and positive impact on the organisation. Knowledge of the operating environment proved to be significant in the provision of relevant services that add value to the organisation. The results of the analysis revealed that in-house IT and the quality of IT services provided have a direct impact on the performance of the organisation.Conclusion: The study demonstrated that outsourcing IT services impacts the quality and the performance of the organisation positively and negatively. The study recommended that in-house IT and outsource service providers need to collaborate to ensure smooth service delivery, process alignment and also to equip in-house IT with skills to handle first-line support.

A systematic review of the literature on information technology outsourcing services

Services outsourcing information technology is a strategy he has adopted today for information technology governance. The decision to opt for this strategy be take in order to maximize the benefits to the organization in terms of efficiency, profitability, sustained reductions in costs and utilization of available resources. But nevertheless, these decisions have not always been successful, as the process to achieve successful results, it is lacking in most of the time of formality and methodology to guide activities to be undertaken by both the customer and the supplier. This document aims to make a brief review of the literature in the area of information technology outsourcing, specifically in aspects such as models, methodologies and their governance. Analysis of the information collected allowed evidence that although there are models and good practices information technology outsourcing, none of them covers the activities necessary for the client and the provider, in defining specific roles, tasks for each of the phases of the process, useful deliverables for each, or a measurement system that has tools to evaluate it.

A Latent Class Regression Approach to IT Maintenance Outsourcing Service Management

Although information technology (IT) maintenance outsourcing is widely used by today's organizations to improve IT productivity, client satisfaction of IT outsourcing service differs among various clusters of service incidents. Using a dataset collected from a leading Chinese steel group, this paper investigates how client satisfaction in IT maintenance outsourcing varies with service time and user involvement by means of a latent class regression (LCR) approach. Distinguished from traditional clustering and regression methods, the LCR approach can simultaneously classify reported incidents into multiple clusters based on incident attributes and examine the influences of service time and user involvement, together with the latent number of class on client satisfaction in each cluster. Our results identify four incident clusters within which influences of service time and user involvement on client satisfaction differ. Thus, we provide empirical evidence of heterogeneity in information system maintenance outsourcing incidents.

Optimising IT outsourcing services by managing the balance between standardisation and customisation - A providers’ perspective.

During the last decades, information technology (IT) outsourcing gained considerable management attention being considered a strategic decision to promote success. IT outsourcing providers deliver services using complex service systems composed by people, technology, and information, resulting in operational contexts displaying multi-input and output variables that many times originate high degree of variance between contracts and clients. Consequently, service providers have an operational context to be improved. The focus of this research is to study the balance between standardisation (mainly for productivity increase) and customisation (primarily for client satisfaction) that is a major issue for providers serving multiple clients. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a linear programming technique used to manipulate multiple inputs and outputs. Design science research allowed was to develop and test an artefact based on seven service dimensions, with 24 service items applicable to a single service or a multi-service configuration. The results obtained allow identifying the best operational strategy to follow. Future research is possible as adapting the artefact to other service sectors.

Making Impact in the Health-care Sector with Outsourced Information Technology Services: An Interview with Day Veerlapati, President and CEO, Seven Seas Technologies Inc, Chesterfield, USA

This interview provides insights into technology and management of IT outsourcing service providers. It identifies the advantages that global delivery centers offer firms in the outsourcing sector....

Adoption and risk management of bimodal IT outsourcing service: review and directions for future research

The rapid pace of technological change in the internet age has fundamentally transformed information technology (IT) outsourcing. Thus, organisations should be able to re-imagine their IT outsourcing strategies to meet the needs of increasingly turbulent business environments. Bimodal IT requires the shaping of IT services to be either agile oriented or efficient oriented, thereby bringing new demands to an organisations' adoption strategies. On the basis of the review of traditional IT outsourcing service research, this paper presents the traditional and nonlinear modes of IT outsourcing service, discusses risk-based IT outsourcing service adoption strategy, relationship and contract management strategies from the static and dynamic perspectives and provides several directions for future research.

Adoption and risk management of bimodal IT outsourcing service: review and directions for future research

The rapid pace of technological change in the internet age has fundamentally transformed information technology (IT) outsourcing. Thus, organisations should be able to re-imagine their IT outsourcing strategies to meet the needs of increasingly turbulent business environments. Bimodal IT requires the shaping of IT services to be either agile oriented or efficient oriented, thereby bringing new demands to an organisations' adoption strategies. On the basis of the review of traditional IT outsourcing service research, this paper presents the traditional and nonlinear modes of IT outsourcing service, discusses risk-based IT outsourcing service adoption strategy, relationship and contract management strategies from the static and dynamic perspectives and provides several directions for future research.

Can Outsourcing of Information Technology Foster Innovations in Client Organizations? An Empirical Analysis

There is a substantial body of literature on information technology (IT) outsourcing. However, little is known about employing IT outsourcing to generate innovation. In this paper, we articulate the ex ante as well as ex post contracting challenges that could preclude firms from realizing such business value through outsourcing. We develop and test a model linking innovation in IT outsourcing (process innovation and service innovation) to two complementary solutions to the contractual problems: credible commitments and contingent control rights. Alternative empirical estimation approaches support the basic thesis that contractual solutions are complementary in their association with enhanced innovation performance. Our study suggests that portfolios of complementary contractual provisions need to simultaneously address ex ante and ex post hazards through contract design in the outsourcing of innovative tasks. Theoretical and practical implications are explicated.

An iterative mathematical decision model for cloud migration: A cost and security risk approach

SummaryThis paper presents an iterative mathematical decision model for organizations to evaluate whether to invest in establishing information technology (IT) infrastructure on‐premises or outsourcing IT services on a multicloud environment. This is because a single cloud cannot cover all types of users’ functional/nonfunctional requirements, in addition to several drawbacks such as resource limitation, vendor lock‐in, and prone to failure. On the other hand, multicloud brings several merits such as vendor lock‐in avoidance, system fault tolerance, cost reduction, and better quality of service. The biggest challenge is in selecting an optimal web service composition in the ever increasing multicloud market in which each provider has its own pricing schemes and delivers variation in the service security level. In this regard, we embed a module in the cloud broker to log service downtime and different attacks to measure the security risk. If security tenets, namely, security service level agreement, such as availability, integrity, and confidentiality for mission‐critical applications, are targeted by cybersecurity attacks, it causes disruption in business continuity, leading to financial losses or even business failure. To address this issue, our decision model extends the cost model by using the cost present value concept and the risk model by using the advanced mean failure cost concept, which are derived from the embedded module to quantify cloud competencies. Then, the cloud economic problem is transformed into a bioptimization problem, which minimizes cost and security risks simultaneously. To deal with the combinatorial problem, we extended a genetic algorithm to find a Pareto set of optimal solutions. To reach a concrete result and to illustrate the effectiveness of the decision model, we conducted different scenarios and a small‐to‐medium business IT development for a 5‐year investment as a case study. The result of different implementation shows that multicloud is a promising and reliable solution against IT on‐premises deployment.

Exploring the effects of liminality on corporate social responsibility in inter-firm outsourcing relationships

This article draws on the evidence gathered from a corporate social responsibility (CSR) research project in the area of global information technology (IT) outsourcing to examine the impact of liminality. IT outsourcing offers a novel context to study this phenomena, as it operates across the boundaries of both firm and country. The case study focuses on the specific project of a school in India, as the liminal space found ‘betwixt and between’ the client and provider of IT outsourcing services. Three stages of liminality are identified: separation (divestiture), transition (liminality) and incorporation (investiture); through the interpretive analysis of the empirical material. The construct of communitas is proposed for analysing the impact of liminality on the relationship between an outsourcing client and the provider. The understanding of liminality and communitas has both theoretical and practical implications, and contributes to the understanding of relationships and the wider role of CSR in global IT outsourcing.

A framework to study vendors’ contribution in a client vendor relationship in information technology service outsourcing in India

Purpose– The information technology (IT) industry has been continuously expanding. This has resulted in promoting outsourcing of work by clients to vendors. Most of the published research has focussed on when clients should start outsourcing, what to outsource, criteria for vendor selection, etc., however the vendor side of the relationship has been mostly ignored. The purpose of this paper is to delve deep into the vendors’ side and what aspects a vendor needs to consider in order to maintain a good relationship with the clients.Design/methodology/approach– The research design of the paper is to use literature survey to define the components of the client vendor relationship (CVR), identify the parameters impacting the relationship, establish correlation between the independent variables and the dependent variable; subsequently to propose a framework for the CVR.Findings– The findings have been that – communication, technical value addition, knowledge sharing and client vendor adaptability are vital to any outsourcing engagement and if the vendor is able to get good knowledge transfer of the application at hand and the business domain, it can perform better. Vendors, which proactively resolve issues, ensure stable deliveries before time and identify improvements in the software outside the work assigned maintain better relationship. Further a vendor must be adaptable to clients, cultural, time zone differences, should provide a good project manager and be ready to change tools, resources as per client needs. As long as the vendor is able to ensure the above, the stability of the client country and need for information security is not as important to vendors.Research limitations/implications– The study has limitations as it focusses on the vendors’ side and is inclined toward Indian vendors’ perspectives. Future research can include client as well and can be conducted for a different geography.Originality/value– The research work is original and adds value to the IT service outsourcing industry by identifying the parameters which need to be monitored for a sustainable CVR.

The Assessment of Outsourcing IT Services using DEA Technique

This article proposes a model to make an assessment of efficiency in Information Technology (IT) outsourcing in research centers through data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this research input and output variables of DEA model for assessment of IT outsourcing efficiency distinguished. The decision-making units (DMUs) include 36 research centers in Iran. Expenses and capabilities of contractors represent the inputs and the satisfaction of users, risks, and quality constitute the outputs. In order to calculate the input and output values, a questionnaire has been conducted to DMUs. Afterwards, BCC model has facilitated the calculation of the efficiency of the DMUs and classifies efficient and inefficient units. In addition, Anderson Peterson's model is used for ranking efficient DMUs. This research has brought us to the conclusion that the variables of risk and quality account for the biggest shares in efficiency improvement of non-efficient DMUs.

Antecedentes da Retenção de Clientes Pós-Falha e Recuperação de Serviços de Tecnologia da Informação em Ambientes Business-To-Business

The competitiveness of markets has forced companies to become more efficient every day and in this context, the activities related to Information Technology (IT) are great allies, becoming a key differentiator to ensure sustainable growth. Since the 90s it has been increasingly common to adopt business models in which IT support activities are provided by third party companies, thus creating a relevant context to provide B2B services. However, as with any services, the occurrence of failures in the provision of IT services is inevitable, making it vital to providing services companies, the adoption of efficient recovery actions in order to ensure the maintenance of good levels of trust and commitment in the relationship customer/supplier, reinforcing and extending thus the relationship between the two companies. Additionally, to ensure customer retention, it is essential to evaluate, concomitantly, aspects such as the perceived value and the switching costs in order to be able to properly manage the relationship with the client companies. The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical model that shows how the relationship between the variables trust, commitment, switching costs and perceived value by customers and its retention in contexts of providing outsourced IT services, after the occurrence of a service failure and recovery. Finally, 10 theoretical propositions are presented and a final discussion of the nature of the constructs and relationships propose.

Risk Factors in IT Outsourcing Partnerships: Vendors’ Perspective

In recent years, information technology (IT) outsourcing is a widespread practice in the global business today. Business organizations decide to transfer such kind of services to other firms (vendors) in search of cost-related and other competitive advantages. Identification and handling of risks appears to be crucial for IT outsourcing success. The objective of this article is to identify the main risk factors related to IT outsourcing partnerships from the perspective of Bulgarian vendors on the basis of empirical study. The analysis is based on theoretical grounds provided by the specialized literature and utilizes selected results from a survey of outsourcing relations between Bulgarian vendor organizations and their clients (outsourcers). The study is focused on the risk factors that could potentially hinder the formation and development of strategic outsourcing partnerships. Some of these risk factors act as threats for outsourcing success and their potential effects need to be considered within the risk mitigation strategies of IT outsourcing service providers.

An empirical comparison of pricing models in information technology service outsourcing in Indian context

Purpose – The information technology (IT) outsourcing has been inexorably growing in spite of its downsides. The main reasons are financial gains and cost reductions, as well as it allows companies to focus on their core selling areas. Within IT outsourcing, offshoring has become a big success because it greatly reduces costs. Countries like India, China and Philippines are attracting a lot of IT outsourcing work. In order to save costs, companies have to work out the best pricing models with the vendors so enable profitability at both ends. The main pricing models prevalent in the industry are Time and Material (TnM) and Fixed Time Fixed Price (FTFP) alternately also referred as Fixed Price. There are various other pricing models now, which are mainly variations of these. The purpose of this paper is to show an empirical comparison between these models from the vendor’s perspective to see which of them has greater acceptability. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is an empirical paper in which literature survey has been done to study various pricing models in the IT service outsourcing industry, on the basis of same, two most used models have been identified, namely, FTFP and TnM, hypothesis were formulated, Likert scale questionnaire was formed. Subsequently data were collected and Wilcoxon signed-rank test was carried out to compare the variables defining the FTFP and TnM models of pricing. In total, 68 firms were targeted and 120 responses were received. The two models were studied against parameters like usage, profitability, risk, deliveries meeting project schedule, good quality code, the pricing model used by respondents’ majority of times and whether either of them lead to increasing costs. Findings – This study has found that TnM is less risky for vendors, more profitable and vendors are able to manage better quality delivery compared to FTFP. Also it has been statistically proven that the pricing models TnM and FTFP do not impact the usage and schedules in any way. These are important findings as there have been no earlier research papers which have compared the pricing models with reference to Indian IT service outsourcing industry. Research limitations/implications – The two major pricing models TnM and FTFP are studied in the paper below. Data were gathered from 68 companies. As per results, TnM is more profitable, less risky, does not lead to increasing cost and produces good quality code as compared to FTFP also it has been statistically proven that the pricing models TnM and FTFP do not impact the usage and schedules in any way. The implications bridge a gap between theory and practice, as theoretically many pricing models exist, however, what are practical applications and justification vis-à-vis different aspects has not been approached statistically so far in the given context. Further research can be done on other variations of pricing models and to establish which one should be the preferred model and in which circumstances. Practical implications – There are major practical implications of the paper as it fills the gap between the theoretical discussions of pricing and identifies and statistically proves importance of various aspects of pricing in practice. Originality/value – The paper is original and adds value in terms of advising the IT service outsourcing companies as to which pricing models to use.

Impact of pricing and outsourcing models on Indian information technology service outsourcing

Purpose – The information technology (IT) industry has grown owing to the increase in IT outsourcing prompted by the need for cost reductions in organizations. The IT industry contracts are based on pricing models, which establish the terms and conditions of payment to be made to vendors by clients. The pricing models followed in the industry are mainly Fixed Time Fixed Price (FTFP) and Time and Material (TnM) and the remaining are mostly variations of these. Using the information collected from vendors, the purpose of this paper is to draw a comparison between these pricing models to see which one is more acceptable to vendors along with researching on the reasons behind that. The outsourcing engagement is also based on a set of processes to be used during the contract time and that is known as the Outsourcing Model (OM) being used. This research also derives how pricing models, OMs and Client Vendor Relationship (CVR) being developed are related. Design/methodology/approach – Hypothesis have been formulated on the basis of the literature survey conducted by the authors, subsequently questionnaire was formulated and data were collected from – a total of 500 people were targeted, out of which 70 people responded. Out of these 70 only 50 were usable responses. The respondents were at the manager and above level in different organizations classified on the basis of number of employees. Statistical tests were conducted on these data to check the reliability, prove the hypothesis and establish the mediation and moderation relationships between the pricing model, OM and CVR. Findings – The following paper has established through statistical analysis which pricing model is more befitting to the IT service outsourcing industry and has also demonstrated the moderation and mediation relationship between pricing model, OM and CVR variables. Research limitations/implications – The major reserach limitation is that it is for only IT vendors in Indian geography. The research can be extended to different businesses and geographies. Practical implications – The paper has practical implications for the IT service outsourcing industry in India and for their clients to understand the comparison between the pricing models and to study the impact of pricing and OMs on the CVRs. Originality/value – The research presented is original as no similar work has been found to be published in the journals so far specifically in the Indian context.

Analisys of IT outsourcing contracts at the TCU (Federal Court of Accounts) and of the legislation that governs these contracts in the Brazilian Federal Public administration

Information technology (IT) outsourcing has for a long time been a major trend in business and government. Accountability of IT outsourcing contracts in the public administration is recognized as an important factor contributing to government transparency and public services quality, given the legislation governing these contracts and the amount of related expenditures. Considering the trend towards open government data publishing, including data on outsourcing contracts, there is an interesting opportunity for citizens to participate in the open auditing of these contracts as a means to assess the good application of public resources. In this study we explore this possibility by analyzing open data published by the Brazilian Federal Court of Accounts (TCU is its acronym in Portuguese), an interesting case since this agency has a paramount role in auditing the whole Brazilian Federal Public Administration. To this end, we gathered open data from the TCU regarding all outsourced IT services contracts maintained by the agency during the years 2000-2013. This data is analyzed to verify, from an external point of view, the related duration and values, identifying diferences between the predicted and actual amounts spent and evaluating the administration of such contracts regarding legislation. This analysis is based on a detailed survey of the relevant legislation as well as the verification of original contract terms and their addendums. As a result, we observed substantial differences in the amount spent on execution with respect to those predicted in the original contracts. Also, we identified the utilization of special justifications prescribed by law to sustain the extension of some contracts. Given these results, it is possible that IT outsourcing is not necessarily proved to be the best solution for the public sector problems regarding the lack of skilled personnel, which implies the need to assess the cost-benefit of maintaining these contracts. Also, it is possible that the existing legislation needs development in order to provide more flexibility to outsourcing contract management.

A Network Perspective on the Dynamics of Market Structure for Outsourced IT Services: A Bayesian Inference Approach

While considerable evidence exists on contract design for outsourced information technology (IT) services, limited work has systematically examined the partner selection strategies of firms seeking to outsource their IT services in tandem with overall dynamics in the market for IT outsourcing. Conceptualizing the set of vendor firms as an organizational field, we consider several mechanisms that influence the dynamics of vendor selection by a client firm in the market for IT services. First, we consider preferential attachment by which firms tend to prefer to contract with central vendors. Second, we consider prior interactions, which serve as an important source of information for both clients and vendors about the reliability and capabilities of their partners. Third, we consider the experience and diversity-based exchange logic, whereby client firms’ benefit through the depth and breadth of experience of vendors. Finally, we consider multi-connectivity based logic of exchange wherein a client can benefit from the heterogeneity of information sources. Analyzing the dynamics of vendor selection poses a number of statistical and computational challenges in examining partner selection for a large set of vendor-client pairs. We employ big data methods to develop a new method based on discrete choice models with reduced choice sets, the Randomly Reduced Choice set with Bayesian Inference (RRCBI) to analyze the dynamics of vendor selection in the market for IT services. We employ a dataset that consists of 22039 unique contracts between 8072 client firms and 2569 vendors over a 20-year period. We find that clients seek deep relationships through continuing interactions with vendors as well as vendors with diversity and depth of experience in terms of their knowledge of market conditions, customer-facing interactions, and organizational processes. We also find evidence for preferential attachment and multi-connectivity based logic of exchange. Our study is the first to investigate the impact of network structure on the client’s vendor selection for IT outsourcing using a longitudinal dataset. Our results strongly suggest that a network-based logic of exchange provides insight into the systematic pattern in which vendors build their competitive position and market segmentation strategies and the manner in which clients build their outsourcing portfolios. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.