Evaluation of the Outsourcing Services Customer

Rating

Bilous N.

Department of Computer Science

Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics

Kharkiv, Ukraine

bilous.n.v@gmail.com

Semerkov V.

Department of Computer Science

Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics

Kharkiv, Ukraine

semerkoff@gmail.com

Abstract—The given work is devoted to a series of issues

related to the potential, requirements and appropriate ways to

provide a successful outsourcing IT services to university

department with marketable IT expertise. University is IT

outsourcing partner which could catch special IT related needs

and tasks of the companies or business and provide through the

students those services for a profitable quantity/price ratio for

both sides.

The main question is how to figure out the real needs in IT of

a partner company and how to make sure that these needs are

not too difficult for the students within an university department

that is working for becoming a reliable IT outsourcing partner.

This work focuses on suggestions on how to classify the IT related

outsourcing possibilities to university. In the work represented

formula for ranking companies regarding the potential that their

outsourcing IT requirements will be within a low range solvable

by a university as subcontractor.

Keywords—outsourcing of IT services; questionnaire; rating;

customer; ranking formula.

I. INTRODUCTION

Outsourcing is the transferring of some industrial functions

or business processes from organization to a subcontractor

which specializes in necessary field. On outsourcing functions

on professional support of operability of separate systems are

transferred, as opposed to support having one-time or

incidental nature.

IT-outsourcing on base of technical universities nowadays

is one of the most perspective IT-industries directions as just

universities were and remain a place of concentration of

progressive ideas and are capable to react flexibly to a

changing situation, effectively implementing modern

technologies, including, in the field of IT-outsourcing. The

first such center in the Ukraine became the Outsourcing

Scientific Training and Production Center in Kharkiv National

University of Radio Electronics which was opened within the

international European project 530319-TEMPUS-1-2012-1-

DE-TEMPUS-JPHES “Innovation hybrid strategy of IT-

outsourcing partnership with enterprises” [1]. The outsourcing

center in university performs the package of measures which

directed on enhancement of educational system for training of

IT-specialists and also establishes stable relations with the

business for implementation on their base of the outsourcing

projects they need to work.

The implementation of hybrid strategy of partnership

between universities and the entities assumes increase of level

of practical training of students who are trained who are

trained in areas such as Computer Sciences, Program

Engineering and Computer Engineering. Direct participation

of future graduates in outsourcing projects, providing them of

additional opportunities of mastering knowledge will promote

finally to IT-market saturation by the educated specialists with

experience in outsourcing. By issuing a contract with the

university (in the composition of which includes outsourcing

center), the customer can be sure that the project is not a

“startup” on one specialist. At any time, the project could be

extended by any skilled specialist that removes the human

factor, in this case on the first place professionalism and

quality of service guarantees in their concurrency value.

In addition, outsourcing center is ready to provide

customers with complete IT-producing outsourcing services.

This is very important because different information

technology, which introduces small and medium business, it is

advisable to introduce in the complex. Otherwise, there is

duplication of automation of business processes and, as a

consequence, their appreciation of, on the one hand, and the

separation and the difficulty of implementation, on the other.

Ordering a comprehensive IT-support of outsourcing center

experts, customers can be sure of the effectiveness of

information to support the business processes of them

enterprises [2].

II. HOW TO FIND SUITABLE CUSTOMER

One of the main objectives of university outsourcing

training center is find of the suitable customer of outsourcing

services. Solved tasks should be provided to students. The

customer should know that the completed project will not have

such quality as the project completed by the professional

outsourcing company. More time will be spent for project

implementation. Due to this, the final cost of projects carried

out by a team of the outsourcing center, lower than that of IT-

companies. For the outsourcing center it is also important to

find a partner which also supports the university in aspects

related to project management.

To find the suitable customer, a questionnaire and a

formula to make a ranking score for the companies has been

designed.

III. USING THE QUESTIONNAIRE

The main approach for solving the problem of choosing a

partner-customer for IT-outsourcing is to carrying out survey

of potential customers of outsourcing center services to find

out that requirements of the customer to the implementable

project meet the capabilities of students to its successful

implementation.

The questionnaire should consist of the following parts:

1) Basic information

2) Minimum evaluation information

3) In-depth information

Each part contains a set of questions, which are divided

into the questions with and without impact on the assessment

of the customer. The questions which don't have influence are

used for administrative purposes or for provision of

information for adaptation of the questionnaire according to

knowledge and experience of outsourcing center students.

The questions influencing to the customer's assessment

have coefficients. The question coefficient usually equal to 1,

but can change depending on importance of the question.

Answer options in such question have scales which values

depend on nature of an answer option. The more strongly the

question affects the execution of future project, the greater

must be its coefficient, the more strongly the answer to the

question affects the execution of project, the greater must be

its weight.

IV. FORMULA FOR RANKING COMPANIES

The questionnaire should include as much as possible

factors affecting the possible future cooperation of the center

of outsourcing with the customer. A formula for ranking

companies easy to use and it can be easily implemented in a

computer-aided system to calculate an evaluation which

allows the outsourcing center manages to rank the possible IT

outsourcing partners.

The customer ranking is calculated by the following

formula:

(1)

where – customer evaluation, – question index, –

question coefficient value, – customer answer option value,

– number of quantifiable questions. Customer evaluation is

the sum of products of questions coefficients and weights of

answers to these questions.

Next, it is necessary to know what customer project can be

executed by team of students depending on the evaluation. For

this purpose on a formula (1) the greatest possible value

( ) of an evaluation is calculated. Compare the maximum

evaluation to customer evaluation:

– it is recommended to work with this

IT outsourcing partner;

– caution, working

with this IT outsourcing partner may be not suitable for the

outsourcing center;

– definitely not recommended; its

requirements are too high.

Some projects of customers are difficult or impracticable

for the center of outsourcing as the team of students of training

center has maturity level on the CMMI [3,4] equal 2 which

will raise during execution projects and training.

V. CONCLUSION

Thereby, questioning process which directly begins with

creation of the questionnaire can be applied to an assessment

of a rating of the customer of outsourcing services. Collected

information is divided into two main groups: classification and

estimative. Classification information contains information

that allows customers to divide into categories. The analysis of

estimative information allows revealing the possible customer

of services of the outsourcing center.

IT-outsourcing to the university outsourcing center can

enhance the practical training capability of university for IT

students and does increase their qualification for the IT

market. Further, it can help the IT-outsourcing partners to

keep track of the IT-trends without high expenses.

REFERENCES

[1] Бондаренко М.Ф., Белоус Н.В., Слипченко Н.И., Тучин О.В., “Концепция построения партнёрства между университетами и предприятиями Украины в области аутсорсинга”, Radioelectronics & Informatics, 2013. - №1. – С. 6-10.

[2] Bilous N. Outsourcing Training and Production Center (OSTPC). About us. Center Missions [Online]. Available: http://ostpcen.wordpress.com/about-us-center-missions/ [Accessed: Sept. 14, 2014].

[3] Watts S. Humphrey, “Managing Technical People. Innovation. Teamwork and the Software Process”, 5 print, Addison-Wesley, Reading MA 1999.

[4] Grausberg P., Kyamakya K., “On the classification of companies for a possible outsourcing of IT related services to universities”, Radioelectronics & Informatics, 2013. - №1. – P. 17-21.