How Client Capabilities, Vendor Configuration and Location Impact BPO Outcomes

Despite the increasing use of onshore and offshore business process outsourcing (BPO), a comprehensive literature review [38] finds that there has been limited empirical research on BPO outcomes. This article responds to the call for research by developing and testing a conceptual model for BPO outcomes using data from 50 firms publicly traded in the U.S., including 38 firms in the Forbes Global 2000. We find that client firm capabilities, vendor configuration, and country location lead to interesting tradeoffs in the BPO quality, cost, and time outcomes. For example, while multi-sourcing offers advantages such as risk mitigation, client firms encounter reduced BPO time benefits when they use multiple vendors. While onshore BPO can lead to an improved quality, higher onshore labor costs result in lower BPO cost savings. And while offshore destinations such as India offer lower labor costs, time zone differences lead to reduced BPO time benefits

Offshore Business Processing Outsourcing by Australian Enterprises to Service Providers Located in India

The primary research question for this PhD was: “What are the key factors that contribute to the success of offshore business process outsourcing (OBPO) by Australian and international organisations to service providers located in India and the Philippines?” A qualitative research design in the positivist paradigm was adopted, involving longitudinal case studies of five client companies. A primary contribution was identification of critical success factors for management of OBPO at the individual company level

Effective Strategies for Managing the Outsourcing of Information Technology

More than half of information technology (IT) outsourced projects fail, primarily due to a lack of effective management practices surrounding the outsourcing end-to-end process. Ineffective management of the IT outsourcing (ITO) process affects organizations in the form of higher than expected project costs, including greater vendor switching or reintegration costs, poor quality, and loss of profits. These effects indicate that some business leaders lack the strategies to effectively manage the ITO process. The purpose of this single-case study was to apply the transaction cost economics (TCE) theory to explore strategies 5 business professionals use to manage an ITO project in a financial services organization located in the Midwestern region of the United States. Participant selection was purposeful and was based on the integral role the participants play on the ITO project. Data collection occurred via face-to-face semistructured interviews with the participants and the review of company documents. Data were analyzed using inductive coding of phrases, word frequency searches, and theme interpretation. Three themes emerged: vendor governance and oversight, collaborative strategic partnership, and risk management strategies enabled effective management of ITO. Identifying and executing appropriate outsourcing strategies may contribute to social change by improving outsourcing infrastructure, which might support job creation; increasing standards of living, especially within emerging markets; and heightening awareness of different cultures, norms, and languages among people living in different regions around the world to establish commonalities and gain alignment with business practices

The construction of client organisations and contract structures in outsourcing within dynamic contexts: a longitudinal case study approach

This explorative study investigates how bureaucratic public sector client organisations deal with information technology (ITO) and business process (BPO) outsourcing in terms of internal management. To supplement the lack of studies emphasising pre-existing client organisational structure and the contextual and internal changes intertwined with and required for outsourcing, the thesis develops theoretical underpinnings that incorporate change, time, dynamism and context. These consist of a structuration theory-informed formal organisation perspective and a processual analysis-informed multidimensional outsourcing configuration framework. This thesis primarily seeks answers to 'why' and 'how' questions such as: why bureaucratic client organisations are concerned about IT outsourcing or BPO; in consequence, how they construct or change their strategy, organisational arrangements and outsourcing contracts; and, what are the contexts and social processes that let those constructions go forward? Studied by means of a longitudinal case study approach, with elements of comparison, the two cases are the IT outsourcing of the Public Procurement Service of Korea‘s e-government procurement system and the BPO of the Teachers‘ Pension Scheme administration of the British Department for Children, Schools and Families. Through contextual and micro-level analyses, the research found that client organisations appear to work at transforming outsourcing-related strategy, contract structure, and their own organisations—which are mutually interrelated—in the context of five IT governance concerns: strategic alignment, delivery of business value, performance management, risk management, and control and accountability. Institutionalised human behaviours were found to be strongly involved with these processes. The thesis provides rich data on how the organisations decomposed and recomposed existing bureaucratic structures and processes. This thesis also found three standards emerging as rationales for the strategic choices of the client organisations when they moved to outsourcing. These were: core vs. non-core perception of outsourced functions; high vs. low supplier switching costs; and high vs. low variability of business and applied IT. Against expectations, explicit distinctions such as cultural differences between two government environments and differences between ITO and BPO, did not sufficiently explain the core phenomena regarding outsourcing and client organisational change. In practice, core/non-core perception was found to be the key shaper of the outsourcing contracts and client organisation construction, though each outsourcing arrangement emerged as distinctively different in terms of relevant decisions, context, and processes. Overall, the research supports Kallinikos's formal organisation perspective for explaining outsourcing as an enabler of organisational change, and provides an enriched and extended outsourcing configuration framework for disaggregating and studying, and for practitioners helping to manage, outsourcing arrangements in depth

A Systematic Literature Review on IT Outsourcing Decision and Future Research Directions

During the recent decades, some academic research on the subject of information technology outsourcing (ITO) decision has appeared in different outlets, which may impede the use of such resources and as a result, repetition of research by various researchers is very likely. The purpose of this paper is then to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) pertaining to research on ITO decision. Then, this review intends to 1) classify ITO decision literature, 2) provide a list of factors affecting ITO decision, and 3) identify ITO strategies. To this end, 91 ITO articles published between 2000 and 2018 in 51 unique journals were reviewed. The results yielded three kinds of descriptive, relational, and comparative ITO decision studies. The determinants of ITO decisions are classified into technological, organizational, environmental and user adoption factors. Furthermore, the trend of studied ITO strategies in the reviewed literature is analyzed, and future sourcing varietals are proposed. Finally, some insights and future research directions are proposed based on the review results.During the recent decades, some academic research on the subject of information technology outsourcing (ITO) decision has appeared in different outlets, which may impede the use of such resources and as a result, repetition of research by various researchers is very likely. The purpose of this paper is then to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) pertaining to research on ITO decision. Then, this review intends to 1) classify ITO decision literature, 2) provide a list of factors affecting ITO decision, and 3) identify ITO strategies. To this end, 91 ITO articles published between 2000 and 2018 in 51 unique journals were reviewed. The results yielded three kinds of descriptive, relational, and comparative ITO decision studies. The determinants of ITO decisions are classified into technological, organizational, environmental and user adoption factors. Furthermore, the trend of studied ITO strategies in the reviewed literature is analyzed, and future sourcing varietals are proposed. Finally, some insights and future research directions are proposed based on the review results

Service design from staffing to outsourcing

The term outsourcing has become a conventional means of describing anything associated with the transaction of services that enables client organisations to blur core activities and thereby reduce their internal workforce and costs. The main objective of this study is confirming a gap in detailed and spe-cific reviews of formats and economic transactions through non-standard forms of employment, namely in a service design model from Staffing to Outsourcing. The literature review was performed using text mining and topic modelling techniques to group relevant topics and decreases the likelihood of human bias, while bringing robustness to the analysis. The results are reflected in a conceptual state of the art diagram that will serve as a basis to new discussions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

How Does Customer Service Offshoring Impact Customer Satisfaction?

Information technology (IT) plays a vital role in customer relationship management (CRM), because CRM processes include the collection and analysis of customer information, firms use technology tools to interact with customers, and IT created the conditions under which firms can offshore CRM processes. Customers have negative perceptions toward offshoring, which suggests that firms might be reluctant to offshore IT-enabled CRM processes. However, firms have significantly increased offshoring for CRM processes, presenting a conundrum. Why would firms increase offshoring for CRM processes if there could be a risk to customer satisfaction? This paper helps to resolve the conundrum by studying the impact of CRM sourcing on customer satisfaction with the firm’s products and services, as measured by the American Customer Satisfaction IndexTM. We analyze data for 150 North American firms and business units over a nine-year period. Front office offshore outsourcing and front office onshore outsourcing are both negatively associated with customer satisfaction, which suggests that negative customer perceptions may be due to the firm boundary dimension rather than the geographic location dimension. Front office offshore outsourcing is not statistically significant for services firms, which suggests that customers are more accepting of offshore providers in a service setting. Over time, the coefficient for back office offshore outsourcing has become more positive, which suggests that firms may expect to see a similar improvement for front office offshore outsourcing in the future. Our empirical results provide a basis to understand why firms have increased IT-enabled CRM offshoring despite short-term risks to customer satisfaction

Innovations in outsourcing: the emergence of impact sourcing

Newly emerging information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) models are not just about business . Some of these models are also guided by a strong underlying social mission to do good and create social value . Collectively they are now being referred to as impact sourcing (ImS) models. In brief, ImS is a social innovation in outsourcing that aims to bring digitally-enabled outsourcing jobs to marginalized individuals. The ImS model of outsourcing consciously provides employment opportunities to communities and groups whose life chances are deemed poor. In this thesis we study ImS companies, i.e., IT-BPO vendor firms, which aim to create a significant impact (hence the term impact sourcing ) on the lives of hitherto disadvantaged and deprived communities by giving them gainful employment and thereby improving their material conditions. Using qualitative methods, the thesis takes multiple approaches to study the ImS model. The thesis is comprised of three empirical chapters, each exploring a different aspect of the ImS model. Chapter 2, using a multiple case-study approach, draws on concepts from social entrepreneurship to study the triggers of ImS entrepreneurship and the process through which ImS entrepreneurs build and operate ImS companies. The chapter also looks into the institutional influences that have shaped the ImS model. Most importantly, the findings demonstrate the inherent difficulty of scaling and sustaining the ImS model, as it is the individual entrepreneurs intense personal experiences, not market-based considerations, which play a crucial role in launching new ImS companies. Drawing on the initial findings of Chapter 2, Chapter 3 explores the challenges of operating ImS companies in marginalized communities. Specifically, the chapter analyzes how ImS companies frame their ventures to the local community, drawing on frame alignment literature. The findings from this chapter suggest that local communities are not passive recipients of ImS companies framing work and may indeed resist ImS company activities for reasons such as the perceived incompatibility of the ImS model with local norms and belief systems and perceptions of inequality stemming from the merit-based recruitment strategies underpinning the model. The chapter finds that deployment of progress, family, material-benefit and egalitarianism frames may help ImS companies to overcome resistance, and gain the acceptance of local communities. While Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the ImS companies and their founders, Chapter 4 analyzes the challenges faced by marginalized individuals as they transition into the ImS workplace from their relatively traditional community spaces. The findings suggest that the distinct norms and values embodied in the community space and the ImS workplace create challenges for ImS employees. In response to these challenges, the findings show that ImS employees craft a variety of coping strategies such as integration and compartmentalization to manage work and non-work boundaries. ImS employees were also found to create fictive kinships, experiment with provisional selves and craft jobs to cope with the socioculturally alien environment of ImS workplaces. Overall, the thesis makes theoretical and practical contributions to the small but growing business and management literature on the ImS phenomenon. The thesis also makes theoretical contributions to the literatures on social entrepreneurship, frame alignment and organizational studies

Global sourcing of business processes: history, effects, and future trends

We review key drivers, trends and consequences of global sourcing of business processes – the sourcing of administrative and more knowledge-intensive processes from globally dispersed locations. We argue that global sourcing, which is also associated with ‘offshoring’ and ‘offshore outsourcing’, has co-evolved over the past three decades with the advancement of information and communication technology (ICT), a growing pool of low-cost, yet often qualified labor and expertise in developing countries, and increasing client-side global sourcing experience. We show how this dynamic has led firms to develop new global capabilities, governance and business models, changed the geographic distribution of work and expertise, and promoted the emergence of new geographic knowledge services clusters. We further introduce three new trends – the emergence of global delivery models, ICT- enabled service automation, and impact sourcing – and discuss future directions for research

Exploring Strategic Innovation in a Business Services Outsourcing Context: Client and Provider Perspectives

Business services outsourcing engagements, typically comprising the transfer of information technology and other supporting business functions, are traditionally leveraged for cost savings. Recently, there has been a shift in demands towards strategic innovations that may substantially improve a client’s competitive position. Two research questions are addressed: (1) How has existing research conceptualised the strategic innovation through outsourcing process and how have reference theories been applied?, and (2) how can high degrees of organisational readiness be created for strategic innovation initiatives in outsourcing from a (a) client perspective and (b) provider perspective? A conceptual study in form of a theoretical literature review is developed to respond to the first research question. The fragmented research landscape is consolidated by capturing insights from 95 papers, published between 1998 and 2020. Thematic analysis findings are integrated in a four-phase framework. Based on the review, the gap tied to the second research question is carved out. Specifically, virtually no research has yet explored the formation of organisational readiness for strategic innovation initiatives in an outsourcing context. Responding to the second research question requires the exploration of notable factors in the outsourcing project, organisational and market environment, that influence the readiness of organisational members to support the implementation of strategic innovation initiatives. Two qualitative case studies are conducted, one involving a care hospital, the other involving a service provider. Organisational change readiness theory is used as theoretical lens. A framework is developed that accommodates identified readiness-influencing factors. Findings further indicate that readiness levels evolve and may decline during an initiative’s implementation due to unforeseen disturbances. Corrective measures are then required. This thesis offers two major contributions to the Information Systems sourcing research stream, namely a comprehensive theoretical review of existing innovation through outsourcing literature, and the identification of readiness-influencing factors from a client and provider perspective