How to Support Clients and Vendors in IT Outsourcing Engagements: The Different Roles of Third-party Advisory Services

Abstract

The outsourcing of information technology to external providers has been a phenomenon for organizations around the world since decades. The main reasons for this trend are, for example, cost reductions through scaling, the temporary inclusion of specific skills in the own organization as well as the joint development of innovative solutions with an external partner. The client organization ''RetBa,'' a major private insurance company, was facing serious quality and performance issues in the delivery of the workplace services. Hence, in 2005 they decided for an outsourcing solution aiming at moving the responsibility for managing IT workplace services for over 50,000 seats worldwide to the external service provider ''EuTu.'' Over the years, the outsourcing project faced several problems due to the lack of performance and delayed delivery of services by the service provider EuTu. To solve these quality issues and avoid further failures, in 2011 RetBa appointed Scaleit Consulting, a third-party advisor. Scaleit Consulting had the responsibility to identify the causes for these issues, revise the workplace strategy, and support RetBa in the communication with the service provider.

Sustainable Project-Oriented Careers: A Conceptual Model

“…Organizations increasingly are hiring temporary workers when needed; some in-house services are contracted to external contractors to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency; by having non-core activities performed by contractors to allow an organization to focus on core activities. However, some organizations choose the outsourcing model to bring in highly skilled contractors to bring innovation to core areas of business (Erdogmus et al, 2018). The global demand for outsourcing in 2015 was $524.4 billion and rose to $565 billion two years' later.…”

“…This growth has been primarily in logistics, IT (information technology) and business processing such as financial, human resource and call centers (Ikediashi & Aigbavboa, 2019). Indeed, IT outsourcing on a global level is expected to grow; such as in 2017 when outsourcing grew by 5.7 percent in that single year (Erdogmus et al, 2018). Indeed, some industries prefer the outsourced model rather than relying on in-house services: by 2020, 72 percent of all global clinical trials of pharmaceutical products is expected to be conducted by contract organizations with an annual growth rate of 6.9 annually (Wilkinson et al, 2019).…”

Lifting the veil on HRIS adoption: the role of vendors and consultants in the diffusion of HR innovations

“…In particular, they rarely investigate the work that HRIS consultants and vendors due to pressure organizations to adopt HRIS. The absence of these actors in HRIS studies is all the more surprising since organizations are notoriously outsourcing information technology (IT) skills and knowledge in many cases (Erdogmus et al. , 2018) and commonly resort to technology vendors and consulting companies for implementing new information systems (Kavanagh et al.…”

“…In particular, they rarely investigate the work that HRIS consultants and vendors due to pressure organizations to adopt HRIS. The absence of these actors in HRIS studies is all the more surprising since organizations are notoriously outsourcing information technology (IT) skills and knowledge in many cases (Erdogmus et al, 2018) and commonly resort to technology vendors and consulting companies for implementing new information systems (Kavanagh et al, 2009;Peled, 2001). Given their experience both in designing and implementing ever-evolving technologies, HRIS vendors and consultants hold a unique yet under-researched positioning at the intersection between the HR function and innovative technological solutions.…”