Abstract

Information systems outsourcing has become one of the most important aspects of strategic management. It is becoming the rule, rather than the exception in today’s globalized business environment. Many countries and regions have done numerous reforms to become the best offshore information systems outsourcing destinations in the world. For a long time, developing countries remained outside of this competition, but recently the trend has been changing. More developing countries are positioning themselves as viable alternatives to the traditional offshore destinations like India, Ireland and Czech Republic. Selecting an outsourcing provider is a daunting, delicate and very important task for organizations, and can be the cause of an outsourcing failure if not properly addressed. This paper proposes a model based on PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation) for selecting the best offshore information systems outsourcing provider among a list of developing countries. A case study of 8 African countries is presented in the last part of the paper to illustrate the model. Our model differs from others as it deals with the provider selection problem at country level while most of the existing models deal with the problem at firm level. Another particularity of this model is the set of criteria chosen to analyze the suitability of a country for being the right offshore information systems outsourcing destination.

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