A comparable checklist for Swedish SMEs BPO to China : How to tame the Chinese dragon

Abstract: The purpose of this research was to examine the Swedish SMEs outsourcing behavior and the Chinese outsourcing vendors’ service offering to compose a comparable checklist. The comparable checklist is used to match the needs from the Swedish side with the offerings from the Chinese side. Due to the recent increase of adopting the concept of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), a focus towards this concept was chosen. With this, a comparable checklist was composed that can be used by Swedish SMEs to secure their offshore investment in China.The research was conducted through a mixed method methodology, with a self-administered questionnaire conducted towards Swedish enterprises and semi-structured interviews with Chinese outsourcing vendors. The Swedish enterprises were mainly small enterprises, involved in the service industry. The Chinese outsourcing vendors were mainly involved with BPO and related IT-solutions. The gathered empirical data was analyzed using a comparative design, this to validate the theoretical findings.The research resulted in findings about the Swedish SMEs outsourcing behavior; to what extent they are interested in outsourcing a business process and what their perspective is on the BPO concept. It also resulted in receiving the Chinese outsourcing vendors’ perspective on how they target the Western market in order to achieve a successful outsourcing relationship which in turn resulted in the final composed comparable checklist.