Key Drivers for the Successful Outsourcing of IT Services

Abstract: Background: Services are without doubt the driving force in today’s economies in many countries. The increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies and its productivity rates are testified by the fact that the current list of Fortune 500 companies contains more service companies and fewer manufacturing companies than in previous decades. Many products today are being transformed into services or have a higher service component than previously. In the development of this increasingly important bundling of services with products, outsourcing and offshoring play a key role. Companies have been outsourcing work for many years now appointing the latter a well-established phenomenon. Outsourcing to foreign countries, referred to as offshoring, has also been fuelled by ICT and globalization, where firms can capitalize on price and cost differentials between countries. Constant improvements in technology and global communications virtually guarantee that the future will bring much more outsourcing of services, and more specifically, outsourcing of IT services. While outsourcing and offshoring strategies play an important role in IT services, we would like to investigate the drivers that affect the successful outcome of an offshore outsourcing engagement. Purpose: The principle aim of the present study is therefore twofold: a) to identify key drivers for the successful outsourcing of IT services seen from the outsourcing partner’s perspective and b) to investigate how the outsourcing partner prioritizes these drivers.