A decision model for IS outsourcing

Information systems outsourcing has been one of the critical issues facing IS management recently, but it still stays in the stage of conceptual discu ssion about how to outsource the IS activities. The determinants used so fa r, for instance, transaction costs and "strategic" or "commodities" charact eristics, are too narrow to help the end users determine if their system sh ould be outsourced. This paper argues that five factors, including manageme nt, strategy, economics, technology and quality, should be considered for o utsourcing decisions, Furthermore, the paper proposes a decision model, whi ch uses the analytic hierarchy process (AHP! method to help users in struct uring the outsourcing problems. The decision model generates numeric values for users to decide whether they should adopt the outsourcing strategy for each IS systems under consideration. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All ri ghts reserved.