Sebastian F. Martin

Determinants of Outsourcing Success in the Financial Industry: The Impact of Importance

How does the overall importance of a particular outsourcing deal, as perceived by the provider, affect the quality and, subsequently, the performance of an outsourcing relationship? This work contributes to outsourcing research by investigating the role of relational governance and its drivers for achieving more successful outsourcing relationships. We focus on the impact of a particular contextual variable which describes the importance of the outsourcing deal to the vendor, thereby turning the traditional perspective of resource dependency theory on outsourcing upside down. Using a case study approach, we show the significance of the importance of a deal between an IT outsourcing provider and its client to both the relationship quality and overall outsourcing success. Clients whose relative deal sizes are large compared to

Organizational Readiness for Business Process Outsourcing: A Model of Determinants and Impact on Outsourcing Success

In innovation adoption literature, the important role of the organizational context as a determinant of information systems (IS) success has long been pointed out. Various factors such as top management support, process formalization, and availability of resources have been shown to contribute to the successful implementation of new information systems. By drawing on relevant insights from IT innovations literature, our conceptual piece of research aims at identifying organizational context factors which are critical for the success of business process outsourcing (BPO) as part of a firms overall business process management activities. More specifically, process readiness, IT readiness and business management readiness are proposed to be important dimensions of organizational readiness for BPO. Furthermore, IT business alignment, as a routine-based process of knowledge sharing and creation, is proposed to be a driver of organizational readiness for BPO.

Added Value and Challenges of Industry-Academic Research Partnerships – The Example of the E-Finance Lab

The financial service industry is believed to be on the verge of a dramatic [r]evolution. A substantial redesign of its value chains aimed at reducing costs, providing more efficient and flexible services and enabling new products and revenue streams is imminent. But there seems to be no clear migration path or goal which can cast light on the question where the finance industry and its various players will be and should be in a decade from now. The imperative necessity for action taking has been recognized by practitioners as well as the academic world. This is why the E-Finance Lab (EFL) was founded in 2003 as a cooperation of the Universities Frankfurt and Darmstadt together with industry partners Accenture, Bearing- Point, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Borse, Deutsche Postbank, FinanzIT, IBM, Microsoft, Siemens, T-Systems, as well as DAB bank and IS.Teledata. The mission of the EFL is the development of industrial methods for the impending change process of the financial service industry. Important challenges include the design of smart production infrastructures, the development and evaluation of advantageous sourcing strategies, and smart selling concepts to enable new revenue streams for financial service providers in the future. The overall goal is to contribute methods and views to the realignment of the financial supply chain.

Explaining the Adoption of Value Metrics in Retail Banks' Customer Management

A competitive customer management system requires the use of adequate metrics for performance controlling and management. This is of particular relevance for industries focusing their value creation on marketing and sales as it is the case in retail banking. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and related metrics are well-accepted solutions in scientific literature, but the diffusion into bank practice has not fully taken place yet. Adoption modeling can help explaining the use of CLV and identify major factors of influence for its adoption. In analogy to the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework which structures influential factors for the adoption of technological innovations, we developed an Innovation-Organization-Environment model, transferring the TOE approach to the adoption of a generic innovation. The competitive pressure is identified as a dominating driver, but perceived ease of use is also of high relevance, whereas a negative link from firms’ profitability to the adoption of CLV is revealed.