ABSTRACT
Business process outsourcing is considered the logical next step after IT service outsourcing (Willcocks et al. 2004; Click and Duening, 2005; Yang et al. 2007; Gewald and Dibbern, 2009). And market analysts like Gartner expect it to show strong growth in the near future (Singh et al. 2009). The subject therefore deserves our attention. Let us look at some definitions first. Davenport defines a business process as ‘a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome’ (Davenport 1993). Business process outsourcing may then be defined as ‘[involving] the delegation of an entire business process to a third party provider, including its supporting services’ (Gewald and Dibbern 2009: 249). Gartner suggest ‘the delegation of an IT enabled business process to a third party that owns, administers, and manages according to a defined set of metrics’ (Singh et al. 2009: 4). So effectively, business process outsourcing means letting a third party carry out part of your value chain. Doing so is obviously of much greater impact than just outsourcing one’s IT services.
