The role of benchmarking and service level agreement (SLA) practices in IT outsourcing success
conference contribution
posted on 2005-01-01, 00:00authored byAnne Rouse
Despite claims in the trade literature that a number of recommended practices have been proved to lead to IT outsourcing success, few of these practices have been subject to disconfirmatory research. Even fewer have been tested statistically to determine whether they generalize to wider populations, or to determine the magnitude of their effect. In this paper, several recommended outsourcing practices associated with service level agreements (SLAs) and benchmarking are investigated. These practices are recommended extensively on the basis of case study research, yet they do have downsides, and they add substantially to the transaction costs of outsourcing. Based on a large survey of organizations engaged in IT outsourcing, this paper established that developing detailed SLAs did improve cost and service outcome, and that clients who met with vendors more frequently to renegotiate service levels reported greater outsourcing success. The research also established that benchmarking both before outsourcing commences, and once the outsourcing contract is in place, led to improvements in cost and service outcomes. Benchmarking during the outsourcing contract had the greatest effect, accounting for 10% of the variance in a success vector that included strategic, technical, cost-related and service outcomes plus an overall evaluation of satisfaction and value.
History
Event
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (9th: 2005: Bangkok, Thailand)
Pagination
670 - 682
Publisher
PACIS
Location
Bangkok, Thailand
Place of publication
Bangkok, Thailand
Start date
2005-07-07
End date
2005-07-10
ISBN-13
9789889855437
ISBN-10
9889855437
Language
eng
Publication classification
E1 Full written paper - refereed
Editor/Contributor(s)
C Wei, B Yen
Title of proceedings
Proceedings of the Ninth Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS)