What Future Emerging Outsourcing Countries Should Companies Evaluate for Expansion?

[Excerpt] With the rise of globalization and rapid advancements in technology, companies have looked at alternative measures such as outsourcing to keep capital and labor costs low, increase efficiency, improve revenue and profitability, gain competitive business advantages, focus on core business and reduce risks. Also, outsourcing can help companies tap into unexplored territories and talents that the increasingly globalized workforce has to offer. The role of human resources professionals is to decide what and how to source, and manage supplier coordination and development. In this research paper, these questions will be answered: 1) how to make outsourcing decisions, 2) how to manage outsourcing decisions, and 3) what are the potential markets

The development of service provider's BPO-IT framework

Purpose The decision to operate BPO-IT organisational model by a business process outsourcing (BPO) service provider has far reaching benefits. The purpose of this paper is to develop a service provider’s BPO-IT framework that provides in-house IT function (software) required to process client services. Design/methodology/approach The multi-case study adopted an exploratory sequential mixed method research approach. In the first instance, seven BPO service provider organisations were investigated in the qualitative phase and 156 in the quantitative phase, respectively. Findings The adoption of the developed framework indicates that it could reduce failures in BPO relationships through reduced turnaround time in processing client services, improved quality of service, reduced cost, improved client and provider’s competitiveness, and confidentiality of client operations. Outsourcing clients could lay the foundation for a successful relationship by adopting a selection process that could choose the right provider. Originality/value The paper reveals BPO-IT organisation’s operation towards in-house provision of software required to process client services. A research exploring BPO service providers from a top outsourcing destination like India could provide offshore outsourcing clients the information to move towards onshore outsourcing. </jats:sec

The impact of business process outsourcing on firm performance and the influence of governance : a long term study in the German banking industry

Does BPO pay off at the firm-level? Although there are several studies which analyze the potential benefits of BPO, there is a virtual absence of research papers on BPO outcomes. Based on an analysis of 137 Business process outsourcing (BPO) ventures at 254 German banks in a period between 1994 and 2005, we found that the outsourcer's financial performance in terms of profitability and cost efficiency was increased significantly compared to industry peers without BPO. The increase stems not from workforce reductions but rather from increased employee productivity. Further, we show how BPO governance ensures BPO success: individually negotiated outsourcing contracts help to improve cost efficiency and profitability measures. Relational governance based on trust has only positive effects on profitability. Keywords: Business Process Outsourcing, firm performance, firm characteristics, banking, German banks, governance JEL Classifications: G21, L14, L21, L2

ONTOLOGY-BASED INFORMATION EXTRACTION FOR ANALYZING IT SERVICES

Service Level Agreements (SLA) for multi-service Information Technology (IT) outsourcing contracts contain vast amounts of textual information. The SLAs provide details about a specific service, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to measure its performance; as well as process elements, such as activities, events, and resources that are integral in achieving performance goals. However, KPIs and the process elements may be interrelated. The knowledge of such interrelationships is often tacitly present in the SLAs. The aim of our research is to extract this hidden information from IT service contracts and analyze them to empower customers of IT services to make better performance management and incentive decisions. We apply an Ontology- Based Information Extraction (OBIE) approach in developing a prototype decision support framework, named SLA-Miner. The results, obtained from analyzing a set of Industry SLAs, demonstrate the utility of SLA-Miner in identifying KPI interrelationships, deficiencies, and impacts of various process elements on individual KPIs

Exploring SOA’s Potential For Business Process Outsourcing

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) represents an organizational change which results in an e-Business relationship between a firm and an outsourcing service provider. This paper analyzes whether and how a modular IT architecture - service-oriented architecture (SOA), in particular - contributes to the potential of BPO by increasing the benefits and reducing the costs. This research question is investigated using a multi-case study approach based on six different firms which have adopted SOA. Three of them have already made BPO experiences based on SOA and all confirm SOA’s positive impact on BPO. Besides identifying success factors, counter intuitive results and new research opportunities are identified

Competing in the Business Process Outsourcing Industry: A Call Center Case Study

In this paper, we study the business model of a call center in the business process outsourcing industry through case study research method to understand its business model and critical success factors. We found that the case company employed a concept of “virtual call center” and has developed “standard service processes” and “reused” them across various industries, product lines, and countries with only minor adjustment and customization. The case company leaned from Intel’s Copy Exactly technology transfer method and TSMC’s smart copy to take advantage of the experience curve. Its business model, and deployment and integration of information and communication technologies makes it possible to shorten the time for developing new services, reduce CSR training cost, and maintain competitive advantages such that it continues to grow rapidly and is profitable. Therefore, the company can provide streamlined and professional service for their business clients to keep excellent customer relationship. We have observed the new phenomena, “Service Sector Manufacturization” through the analysis of the case data collected

Information Systems Change and Social Interaction: A Research Agenda

As the investments in IT are still growing and organizations are more dependent on IT than ever before practitioners as well as researchers are still lacking theories or models that help and explain if and when IT has to be adapted, partly exchanged or entirely implemented. In this paper we claim that one major reason for IS change lies in the interaction of human agents while using IT to solve tasks. Human agents cooperate within and simultaneously build a social network that is partly selforganizing, dynamic and uncontrollable from the outside. This dynamic can cause unintended pressure on the use and the usability of IT and therefore may force organizations to change the IS. This article discusses the Structurational Model of IT and concepts of the Social Network Analysis and draws several implications of examining the impact of social interaction on IS change

Understanding Outsourcing Commitment—An Integrated Model Combining The Resoruce-Based View And Knowledge Management

The understanding on how a service provider’s (SP) process capabilities, in terms of aligning and adapting resources to deliver value to its service recipient (SR) in business process outsourcing (BPO), affect its commitment is limited. To address this, building on a strategic perspective and related theories such as the resource-based view and knowledge management, we develop a theoretical model and test it empirically. Specifically, we posit that a SP’s process capabilities, in terms of process alignment, offering flexibility, and partnering flexibility, positively affect its SR’s commitment and the above relationships is negatively moderated by the SR’s behavior control. Besides, we also examine the influence of interaction effect between antecedents of process capabilities on commitment, such as how does process alignment interact with its partnering flexibility and offering flexibility to affect commitment. Finally, we assess whether process capabilities are influenced by the SR’s absorptive capacity and the SP’s task-knowledge coordination. We test our model using survey data collected from 183 firms, supporting most proposed hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of how to increase the value offered to a SR by levering resources, in terms of process capabilities and knowledge management