Decision-making model for business process outsourcing of enterprise content management

Abstract

Business process outsourcing (BPO) of enterprise content management (ECM) is a growing though immature market. BPO of ECM focuses on pursuing market transactions in the process of managing all types of content being used in organizations. However, inferior sourcing decisions lead to organizationally sensitive content exposure, high transaction cost, poor outsourcer performance, and low flexibility. ECM BPO in general is rarely discussed in academic literature with any discussion being found on decision-making strategies in ECM BPO. In this paper, we present a decision-making model for ECM BPO that will fill the knowledge gap and thus guide industry practitioners with ECM sourcing decision-making strategies. Our proposed decision-making model includes two parts. Part 1 involves an ECM functional framework that shows what functionality component or functionality combinations can be outsourced. Part 2 involves a decision-making model that provides guidance for decision making in ECM BPO. We apply the model in two case studies, the results of which indicate that the model can successfully guide the sourcing decision-making process for organizations, and determine the factors when considering sourcing alternatives in ECM.