Off-shore
& 2007 JIT Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved 0268-3962/07 $30.00 palgrave-journals.com/jit Teaching case
Crafting and executing an offshore IT sourcing strategy: GlobShop’s experience
C Ranganathan1, Poornima Krishnan1, Ron Glickman2
1 2
Department of Information and Decision Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; The Glickman Group LLC, California, USA
Correspondence: C Ranganathan, Department of Information and Decision Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2402 University Hall, 601 South Morgan Street, Chicago, IL 60607-7124, USA. Tel: 312 996 2847; Fax: 312 413 0385; E-mail: ranga@uic.edu
Abstract This teaching case discusses the decisions facing GlobShop, a global travel-retail company, in its efforts to offshore a significant portion of its information technology (IT) work. In response to the business challenges that arose due to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the company decided to outsource many of its IT activities to an Indian vendor. This case traces the key decisions made by the CIO and the challenges that were encountered during the planning and execution of the company’s offshore sourcing strategy. These decisions pertain to the choice of tasks to be offshored, decisions about the vendor and the nature of sourcing arrangement, managing the vendor relationship and change management issues induced by offshoring. As GlobShop nears the completion of its 3-year agreement with the offshore vendor, the CIO is faced with decisions regarding continuing offshore outsourcing, extending the contract and related implications for the future of IT organization at GlobShop. Journal of Information Technology (2007) 22, 440–450. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000113 Keywords: offshore outsourcing; sourcing strategy; retail industry; IT outsourcing; vendor relationship; outsourcing governance; offshoring decisions; change management
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