Information Systems Outsourcing - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 423

Table 6. Risks rankings for the three panel

Risks Rank

Clients Service Providers Opinion Makers

Existence of deficiencies on the contract. 1st 1st 1st

Unexpected costs and other hidden costs. 2nd 4th 4th

Organizations perform a poor cost-benefit analysis.

3rd 2nd 2nd

Table 7. Benefits rankings for the three panel

Benefits Rank

Clients Service Providers Opinion Makers

Focus on core business functions. 1st 1st 1st

IS/IT service levels assurance. 2nd 6th 5th

IS/IT risks sharing. 3rd 9th 12th

For the Clients group unexpected costs and
other hidden costs was the second top risk com-
pared with Service Providers and Opinion Makers
where it was ranked fourth. The risk of an orga-
nization performing a poor cost-benefit analysis
was the third top risk for Clients and was ranked
second for Service Providers and Opinion Makers.
This classification of the second risk seems
to indicate a certain consciousness of Client
organizations about their “lack of experience
with Outsourcing or lack of expertise with the IT
operation that is intended to outsource”.
On the other hand the Service Providers and
Opinion Makers second risk infers they have a
better perception that “on an Outsourcing decision
process there are costs that organizations don't
consider on the cost-benefit analysis”.

the slogan to outsource is “Outsourcing allows
organizations to focus on their core competences”,
which in a way may have had a strong influence
on the present study findings.
Besides the first top benefit the Portuguese
market players don't share the same opinion about
the other listed benefits.

future reseArch directions

Both the findings and some limitations of the study
are referred, pointing out opportunities to future
investigations. Since the existence of deficiencies
on the contract is the most feared risk it would be
useful to carry out case studies about IS Outsourc-
ing contracts which failed and its lessons learned.
Likewise as the organization focus on core busi-
ness functions was considered to be the benefit of
most importance it would be valuable to exploit
ways of evaluating its accomplishment. In view
of the fact that the present study involved bigger
organizations it would be interesting to broaden
the scope to smaller firms. In addition it is relevant
to undertake a deeper analysis to understand to
what extent the risks and benefits associated to

Outsourcing Benefits

The Portuguese market players also share a com-
mon view about the most important benefit as-
sociated to Outsourcing (Table 7). They consider
the focus on core business functions as the benefit
of most importance.
On different web sites of some Service Provid-
ers as Accenture, Capgemini, IBM or Novabase