Towards a set of capabilities for orchestrating IT-outsourcing in the retained organizations

Abstract

Managing outsourcing processes requires a retained organization to orchestrate an organization’s IT functions into a concerted whole. Nowadays multiple outsourcing vendors need to be managed. The purpose of this research is to identify capabilities affecting orchestration of outsourced IT functions. An existing framework for outsourcing capabilities is used as a starting point. Due to the scarcity of research a qualitative research approach based on two case studies is taken. The findings shows that the core IS capabilities as found in the literature are found to be too abstract, ambiguous and that several essential capabilities are missed. A framework containing a refined and extended set of capabilities is derived. Four new capabilities were found including: demand, financial, (service) delivery and service portfolio management.