تصمیمات راهبردی با استفاده از PROMETHEE فازی برای برون سپاری سیستم اطلاعاتی

Outsourcing has become a common strategy in the information system/information technology (IS/IT) field in recent years. Many organizations attempt to enhance their competitiveness, reduce costs, increase their focus on internal resources and core activities, and sustain competitive advantage by IS/IT outsourcing. Selection of appropriate outsourcing partners is an extremely important goal for organizations. This study presents the fuzzy Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluation (fuzzy PROMETHEE) to evaluate four potential suppliers using seven criteria and four decision-makers using a realistic case study. Rankings results provide a reference that assists decision-makers or organizations seeking to improve the efficiency of the IS/IT outsourcing decision processes.

Outsourcing has become a common practice since the 1980s. Outsourcing typically transfers production functions of goods or services to external providers (Araz, Ozfirat, & Ozkarahan, 2007). Outsourcing is defined as ongoing purchasing of services and parts from an outside company that is already provided by the outsourcing company (Linder, 2004). Companies outsource for various reasons. For example, in many instances a third party can provide efficient procurement services. Outsourcing can also provide access to specialized technology and operational platforms. Additionally, outsourcing can reduce the staffing levels. Current advancement in technology has made procurement a very specialized service (Camperi, 2005). One of the most outsourcing practices is information system/information technology (IS/IT) outsourcing. Notably, IS outsourcing first developed as a unique area in IS management in literature (Barki, Rivard, & Talbot, 1993). Dhar and Balakrishnan (2006) indicated that IS/IT outsourcing can transfer some or all of IS/IT-related decision-making rights, business processes, internal activities, and services to external providers, which can more effectively manage time and costs, and improve productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. Many studies have analyzed the reasons most often leading to IS outsourcing. Smith, Mitra, and Narasimhan (1998) classified the drivers of IS outsourcing into the following five categories: cost reduction; focus on core competencies; liquidity needs; IS capability factors; and, environmental factors. Ngwenyama and Bryson (1999) underscored that fact that the primary objective of managers making IS outsourcing decisions is to minimize total cost (service and transaction costs) and maximize total value for the firm. Claver, Gonzalez, Gasco, and Llopis (2002) identified the following reasons for IS outsourcing: reducing costs; increasing the flexibility of the IS department; focusing on IS strategic issues; eliminating troublesome, everyday problems; reducing technology costs; improving IS quality; increasing access to new technologies; and, decreasing risk. In sum, most organizations seek to improve their competitiveness, reduce costs, focus internal resources on core activities, and sustain their competitive advantage by IS/IT outsourcing (Parry, James-Moore, & Graves, 2006).

An increasingly common trend today is to outsource IT functions that are outside a company’s core competencies. Thus, IS supplier selection is one of the most critical steps in the outsourcing process; the success of outsourcing is highly dependent on the selection of IS suppliers. A significant contribution to this study is the proposed fuzzy PROMETHEE, a mathematical model for that accounts for the presence of vagueness, uncertainty, and imprecision of information in the supplier selection problem. For future research, we suggest that other multicriteria approaches, such as fuzzy preference relations (Herrera-Viedma, Herrera, Chiclana, & Luque, 2004) and fuzzy linguistic preference relations (fuzzy LinPreRa) (Chen, 2008, Wang et al., 2005, Wang and Chen, 2008 and Wang and Chen, 2010), be used and compared for the outsourcing supplier selection problem.