Knowledge transfer success factors in IT outsourcing environment

Due to the advancement of technology, organizations depends more and more on information technology in order to stay competitive. Thus, there is an increase of IT outsourcing (ITO) activities especially for a non IT companies. There are many types of IT outsourcing namely complete outsourcing, facility management outsourcing and system integration outsourcing. Many of these outsourcing projects are reported facing with risk due to the technology and market shift when exercising ITO. This include loss of knowledge when the outsourcing consumer (OSC) are left with little or no knowledge on the product developed, implemented and maintained by the outsourcing service provider (OSP). Thus, this paper addresses the importance to protect and ensure the organizational knowledge is transferred and shared throughout the organization in order to stay competitive. In doing so, some influencing factors were identified in the success of knowledge transfer processes (KTP) within the context of ITO environments. Seventeen attributes are proposed based upon the predetermined key factors. The key factors are Knowledge provider (vendor), Knowledge to be transfer, Knowledge Receiver (client) and the Knowledge Infrastructure. In order to validate the framework, data are collected using survey and later statistically analyzed. The refined framework incorporating best practices yielded four key factors with two influencing attributes specified for the first factor, three influencing attribute for the second factor, two attributes for the third factor and six attributes for the fourth factor. This framework can be seen as an integration of several important elements involved in KTP, which need to be considered as an important aspect in facilitating KTP in an ITO environment.