Outsourcing

Outsourcing or outsourcing referred to in the economy the delivery of corporate tasks and structures to external service providers. It is a special form of external procurement of a previously internally provided service, whereby contracts fix the duration and the subject of the service. This distinguishes outsourcing from other partnerships.

In Germany, the term outsourcing is often understood to mean the outsourcing of jobs to more cost-effective (because they are often not subject to collective bargaining) subsidiaries .

The term

There are two explanations for the origin of the word outsourcing :

Derived from the English terms out and source ("obtain from outside")
Summary of the English term Out side re sourc e us ing ("Use of external resources")

The second explanation, however, can be found almost exclusively in German-language literature and is criticized as a purely German and flawed invention. The term itself is also used inconsistently in the literature. For example, some authors understand any third-party procurement of services as outsourcing, others only refer to external procurement of services that were once created in-house. Outsourcing is also partly defined according to the material content and only the outsourcing of services is considered to be outsourcing.

This refers to all activities that lead to the outsourcing of services or parts.

The term was initially applied to IT infrastructure or IT-intensive processes and was known in the 1980s in connection with large IT outsourcing contracts from General Motors ( EDS ) and Eastman Kodak. Service and production companies from all sectors have been using it for a long time (since 2000) .

The relocation of the provision of services outside the company occurred to a larger extent first in the 1960s in the manufacturing industry, which outsources its production to mostly Asian contract manufacturers. Outsourcing began with products that were technologically easy to manufacture, such as textiles. In the course of time more and more demanding production tasks were outsourced to so-called "contract manufacturers". In the production area, one usually speaks of " reducing the depth of added value " or generally of " value networks ". One example are the “Electronics Manufacturing Services” (EMS) or “Mechanic Manufacturing Services” (MMS) from so-called manufacturing service providers . Another classic example of outsourcing is facility management .

Since the transition of processes also includes the takeover of personnel and company values (" assets "), the boundary to a company takeover ( Mergers & Acquisitions ) is fluid, especially if the part of the company taken over has its own legal form . Therefore, the competence to integrate and manage personnel is a key success criterion.

Outsourcing also takes place in the form of joint ventures - especially in the public sector, in which the public-private partnership (PPP) model has established itself (see e.g. Toll Collect , WIVERTIS). A variant of outsourcing in corporations is the establishment of a "shared services" organization. Here the governance responsibility and the control are incumbent on the respective service provider. Work steps can also be transferred directly to the customer, for example transporting the furniture at IKEA or tearing open the bulk packaging at discounters like Aldi .

For some years now, market test procedures have been used primarily in the public sector , through which a systematic market comparison of in-house (secondary) services or in-house services is made. The market test procedure provides economic criteria that can serve as the basis for outsourcing as well as insourcing decisions.

Forms of outsourcing

In general, the following basic forms of outsourcing are conceivable:

Outsourcing (transfer of business , partial business transfer)
cooperation

Examples:

In-house outsourcing:
- Within a group to other companies (omission only for the releasing company)
- Spin-off into your own company (e.g. GmbH)
- Outsourcing in your own company (temporary work, etc.)
External outsourcing:
- Assignment to external companies (provision of services in the company)
- Assignment to external companies (regional)
- Assignment to external companies (global)

Special types of outsourcing are distinguished, although the definitions vary considerably; Outtasking and selective outsourcing are often synonymous:

Out-tasking

External service providers take on individual tasks during out- tasking . In contrast to BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), the commissioning company retains process control such as personnel responsibility or assets. It only assigns individual functions. Typically, tasks include software development, data processing , web design , internet research, digitization of documents, creation of slide presentations, translation of texts, etc. B. to companies in India ( offshoring ) or to Slovakia ( nearshoring ). In the management consulting industry, there is a growing trend towards outsourcing slide presentations, data entry and internet research to India and Romania - (i.e. in low-wage countries ) - in order to significantly increase productivity.

Selective outsourcing

With selective outsourcing , special parts of an area are outsourced to a third party. The primary goal is usually not cost savings, but rather to compensate for a lack of knowledge or a lack of critical mass in the company. Does a company run e.g. B. an IT application, this is often the reason to outsource the operation of these solutions to a third party and not to build up the specialist knowledge.

Transitional Outsourcing

With transitional outsourcing , a company transfers a process during a technology change to a service provider with competencies in both the current and the target technology.

Comprehensive outsourcing

With Comprehensive Outsourcing (also: Complete Outsourcing ) an entire company division is outsourced, for example a company hands over the EDP to an IT service provider for a contract period of 10 years. Not only do the “assets” change to the third-party company , but also large parts of the affected workforce .

End of life manufacturing

The End of Life -production is a special form of outsourcing. Here, products that are at the end of their life cycle and are therefore only manufactured in small numbers are handed over to production service providers. These take over at this stage of the product life cycle, i. H. from the transition of series production to discontinuation (post-series phase), for the original manufacturer the phase-out and spare parts production.

Application Service Providing (ASP)

With Application Service Providing (ASP), services such as the operation of ICT applications (ERP, CRM, MS Office, e-mail, etc.) are made available to companies at their location from an external data center. ASP uses the technology of server-based computing. The companies only have devices for recording and displaying the results. All processing, maintenance and upkeep work as well as all data backups take place centrally in the data center.

Cloud computing

For several years now, the term cloud computing has been defined as a further evolution in outsourcing. Contrary to what is often claimed, “cloud” is not a completely new form of collaboration. In the “cloud”, too, server and storage services are offered to potential customers via a network. So far there is no essential difference to classic IT outsourcing. In addition, "cloud computing" is characterized by higher scalability, mostly lower costs based on pay-per-use pricing models and dramatically faster provision of resources. Disadvantages cited are the less flexible types of service and the sometimes non-transparent provision of services (e.g. with regard to the location of data). As an advantageous hybrid, one likes to speak of the so-called "hybrid cloud" which brings together the advantages of both worlds (on premises and cloud).

Business Transformation Outsourcing / Transformational Outsourcing

Business Transformation Outsourcing / Transformational Outsourcing means the integral connection of business consulting and outsourcing. A part or process that has been taken over is reorganized according to "best-in-class" methods and then either operated or transferred back. In contrast to classic business consulting, the service provider takes responsibility for realizing the optimization potential that has been identified. An intermediate form between transformational outsourcing and business process outsourcing is sometimes also discussed under the heading “Business Innovation and Transformation Partner” (BITP). Business transformation outsourcing is sometimes incorrectly referred to as next generation outsourcing.

Next generation outsourcing

Next generation outsourcing aims at a consistent separation between the business processes of the departments and the support of these through IT services or IT services. In the case of an NGO, the sourcing interface no longer runs between the IT department and IT service provider, but between the specialist department and an IT product supplier (usually in the form of a general contractor). The drafting of the contract consequently no longer refers to technical delivery units, but rather to conformity and quality in the support of business processes. In Germany, this form of outsourcing is actively promoted by the IT industry association, the Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM) (see also the literature section at the end of the article).

Business process outsourcing

With business process outsourcing , an entire company process goes to a third party. For example, the corporate process of purchasing can be outsourced, i.e. the third-party company negotiates and provides the outsourcing company, for example, with more favorable terms for procurement. Further examples are HR management, payroll processing, call acceptance or transaction banking. Often these are IT-intensive processes that are passed on to correspondingly specialized service providers.

Knowledge process outsourcing

Compared to Business Process Outsourcing, Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) outsources more complex and labor-intensive tasks. KPO service providers employ employees with specific skills and precise knowledge of a specific domain, technology or industry. The expert knowledge and the high-quality training of the employees represent the essential difference to business process outsourcing. Typical areas of responsibility that companies outsource to KPO service providers include market research, business research, legal services, intellectual property services and medical services. Creative processes such as design or animation can also be taken over by KPO service providers.

Out-servicing

With out-servicing , based on the business process outsourcing, business processes or aggregations of business processes are outsourced, which were designed according to the paradigm of service-oriented architectures (SOA). Services - encapsulated, reusable and loosely linked operational functional units - can be outsourced in different degrees of detail, ie very finely as an elementary function and more roughly as an overall business process. Out-servicing can be understood as outsourcing or out-tasking using the paradigms of SOA.

Out-Sourcing (occasional usage)

Sometimes the term in the German speaking out-sourcing as a synonym for spin-off used (swapping of assets in ownership). Strictly speaking, this is incorrect because it involves two different, not necessarily sequential, steps.

Managed Services

With managed services , services that are assigned to the information or communication area are provided for a fixed period of time by a specialized provider via a framework agreement . The services defined in advance can then be called up by the customer at any time as required.

On site management

When on-site management is taking over the function of a department or part of a business the customer's premises in the premises of the customer by an external service provider under partial or complete retention of the existing resources .

In contrast to pure outsourcing, the means of production and / or staff of the customer company can remain in use. So here is not z. B. the entire department is outsourced from the company, but primarily the organization, possibly using additional external resources if necessary. In contrast to project management or temporary management ( interim management ), a long-term or permanent takeover aims to improve performance or reduce costs by using synergies at the service provider.

Examples:

Takeover of the internal works traffic by a shipping company (use of the shipping department and forklifts, support from employees, forklifts, trucks and IT of the shipping company if necessary)
Assumption of accounting functions by a tax advisor (use of IT / accounting, support from employees and IT of the tax advisor before and after the transfer point of the accounting)
Takeover of HR management functions by a personnel service provider (coordination and deployment of in-house and external staff)

Since regular and external staff often perform the same tasks in the same rooms with different pay, this can lead to disaffection and negative motivational effects.

Sales outsourcing

The aim of sales outsourcing is, on the one hand, to make the costs of sales variable and, on the other hand, to increase sales and margins sustainably through the use of experienced sales professionals. Sales is often divided into the individual process steps (cold calling by telephone / making appointments with decision-makers, keeping appointments, concluding contracts, customer care, etc.). There are specialized service providers who take over the individual sales steps and thus enable partial or complete outsourcing of sales activities. As a rule, considerable cost advantages and sales increases are realized here.

Fields of application

Outsourcing in credit and financial services institutions

In accordance with the requirements of the Minimum Requirements for Risk Management (MaRisk), strict requirements apply as to which areas and under which conditions credit and financial services institutions in Germany can outsource areas of the company. MaRisk differentiates between significant and insignificant outsourcing. The institutes must determine the materiality of the outsourcing as part of their own risk analysis . The risks must be controlled appropriately and the execution of the activities and processes properly monitored.

There is also a special feature for banks and insurance companies in terms of sales tax. The service of the outsourcing provider is subject to VAT . However, since banks and insurance companies are not subject to sales tax in their core business, they can only claim the tax paid as input tax within the framework of the banking code , unless it is possible or economically sensible for them to assign the input services to specific output services in complex procedures they invoice customers with VAT.

In order to still make outsourcing possible, the outsourcing services were exempted from VAT by the Federal Ministry of Finance through administrative channels. This decision, which was intended to anticipate a statutory regulation, was criticized by the Federal Audit Office , as there was no legal basis. Two legislative procedures by the Federal Government and the Federal Council to exempt banking and insurance outsourcing from VAT came to nothing.

Outsourcing of IT services / online outsourcing

Online outsourcing is the internet-based version of outsourcing, the outsourcing of a department or a work area to a third party.

Online outsourcing mainly involves outsourcing IT services and marketing tasks that can be performed over the Internet. Examples include programming and web design jobs, multimedia productions, the creation of company logos and signets, and search engine optimization . But corporate services such as translation work, research activities and the writing of articles are also outsourced. Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) without their own development department as well as companies with peak loads have the option of e.g. B. to find an available service provider for your software development projects promptly via an online exchange as part of a tender.

The German Institute for Standardization (DIN) published a DIN specification for the outsourcing of technology-oriented services in 2010 (DIN SPEC 1041)

Outsourcing to low-wage countries

Sometimes companies use outsourcing for simultaneous offshoring in order to relocate jobs from their original locations to more cost-effective locations - usually to low-wage countries. Depending on the geographical orientation, this is called nearshoring or offshoring. An example of this is the outsourcing of IT application development to India or Eastern Europe ( Slovakia , Belarus , Hungary , Romania , Ukraine , Bulgaria ). Outsourcing in IT development mostly has cost reasons; In Eastern Europe and India there is also a large number of well-trained and highly qualified IT specialists, so that a measure against the shortage of skilled workers may have played a part.

However, experience shows that there is an enormous amount of work involved in communication and coordination between the client and the contractor, so that outsourcing to low-wage countries, at least in project work, is decreasing.

Accordingly, hybrid models are now preferred by service providers, which then operate under rightshoring or best-shoring. Here, customer-intensive areas are left close to the customer, but background activities within the outsourcing company are then relocated to corresponding countries with lower workplace costs. This tends to reduce the risk of cultural differences.

Outsourcing projects in low-wage countries are currently suffering from high employee fluctuation and rising wages in these countries. For the client, the project risks increase significantly.

Outsourcing will, for example, also move further inland within China in the future, where a large number of potential workers will be available if wages rise on the coast. German mechanical engineering is still exporting , but it is estimated that in-house know-how will make this superfluous in around four years.

A decisive further development of the outsourcing idea is the development of new price and delivery models that enable needs-based use of the services purchased (well-known buzzwords are, for example, “ cloud computing ”, “on demand”, “pay per use”, “business” Flexibility ”or“ breathing infrastructure ”).

Outsourcing assessments

Reasons for Outsourcing

backgrounds

Since the 1990s, especially in the Anglo-Saxon popular procedure is intended mainly business processes streamline , process complexity reduce releasing capacity management, the company more flexible and to the core business focus ( english "Do what you can do best - outsource the rest" ). The company hands over expensive or even inefficiently executable tasks that are in addition to its core business to specialized service providers. Mostly, outsourcing is carried out for reasons of cost or accounting (avoidance of high investments and commitment of funds, improvement of credit ratings, etc.). One current form of cost reduction is what is known as offshore outsourcing (see below). The outsourcing can also have quality, security and know-how reasons, or result from a rapid growth of the company. Outsourcing is then a make-or-buy decision. For example, the operation of the IT infrastructure is often transferred to competent IT service providers. The third-party company therefore partially bears the risks of failure. Outsourcing is also often considered if a company is growing very quickly and does not want to invest in time-consuming development of its own infrastructure or processes.

Strategic decision-making reasons for outsourcing / ASP

Greater concentration on your own core competencies
Lack of know-how or qualified employees
Better performance and better performance
Optimal scalability
Lower capital commitment by converting fixed to variable costs
Cost effectiveness / cost reduction through lower total cost of ownership
Clearly calculable IT costs
Mobility of jobs and data
Faster response to changes
No own investments (software, hardware, new technologies)
Clearly defined contact persons
Simpler clients, longer lifecycle of the currently installed clients
Productivity gains for the end user

Savings potential with outsourcing / ASP

Lower labor costs due to the focus and specialization of the labor force
Lower labor costs at the service provider due to location advantages, e.g. B. in Poland or India
Elimination of external maintenance and upkeep costs for your own server infrastructure
Loss of ongoing software assurance with the ASP software license model
Clearly limited total operating costs can be budgeted per user and month
Lower TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) through the use of server-based computing technology
Care and support expenses for the operation of the server
Space costs for server room
There are no costs for data backup and external outsourcing
Avoiding follow-up investments in hardware, software and support
Benefit through simplified access to the applications via remote access by authorized users
Avoiding investments in security and data protection that may be necessary locally

Economical meaning

The IT outsourcing market in Germany has a volume of around € 8–10 billion (non-captive, i.e. through service providers not belonging to the group). Average market growth ( CAGR ) from 2002 to 2008 is around 10–12 percent. While the focus was initially on infrastructure-oriented outsourcing, application and process-oriented forms of outsourcing are currently growing, starting from a small base: Application management on average by around 30%, business process outsourcing by 35-38%. According to analyst estimates, the market for BPO will already be over € 1 billion in 2008. It is part of the globalization of corporate structures.

Profitability of outsourcing projects

The profitability calculation should be the basis of every IT outsourcing decision. The actual development in the project should be continuously compared with the assumptions of the profitability calculation in order to identify possible deviations. In practice, however, hardly any economic calculations are carried out. According to a study by the Warwick Business School, less than half of the CIOs surveyed tried to quantify the profitability of IT outsourcing. Only a fifth of the CIOs who carried out profitability calculations trusted the result.

The calculation of the profitability of an outsourcing project is based on numerous parameters and a complex model and is accordingly time-consuming.

More than half of the outsourcing relationships in Germany with a contract volume of three million euros or more do not meet the expectations placed on them.

Risks, problems and typical mistakes in implementation

Outsourcing projects are sometimes initiated under the wrong auspices. Sometimes no objective profitability calculation is carried out. A comprehensive profitability analysis not only takes into account the costs that the service provider charges, but also all relevant costs, such as B. possible costs for the retained organization or for the termination of a project.

Trend forecast

According to analysts, the trend towards outsourcing has not yet reached its peak. Nevertheless, a turnaround can increasingly be observed. Many companies have found that although costs can be reduced immediately, it will still be more expensive in the medium or long term. Often the calculation had neglected or, in the worst case, forgotten factors in the comparison. The motivation for outsourcing is increasingly shifting from a pure cost orientation ("run my mess for less") to a quality, growth and innovation orientation.

Alternatives

When a company brings together processes of the same type from different areas in one headquarters, it is called shared services .

The offering body or department is usually called the “ Shared Service Center ”, or SSC for short. The departments that use their services have a kind of customer-supplier relationship with him. It's a kind of internal outsourcing. If, for example, certain processes are not outsourced for data protection reasons , this can lead to increased efficiency. Recently, however, there have been a few larger examples of shared service centers being bought up by external service providers, so that an SSC can often be a first stage to be later outsourced.

Selection criteria for service providers

The choice of the right service provider depends very much on the market situation, the size of the service recipient and the type and nature of the service elements.

In principle, however, the following selection criteria play a role:

Contractual construct - is there room for maneuver for changes during the term? This is particularly important in more dynamic industries, whereas in more static organizations, e.g. B. Insurances or authorities there is less need for flexibility here, which in turn can result in other cost aspects.
Service provider business cycle. Depending on the market situation, it is possible that until recently very aggressive companies first had to work through the recently acquired business, which shows a certain saturation in the way they do business.
Quality of the customer care team (engagement teams). Leading outsourcing consultants recommend defining the customer care team by name as part of the contract.
Cultural fit between customer and service provider.
Fit of the financial model - Depending on the business situation of the customer and the service provider, an advance payment or a subsequent payment history curve may make more sense, for example.
Skills of the service provider in the countries served by the client himself. Especially with international clients, it makes sense to consider the extent to which the service provider should have a similar international focus, or how far a subcontractor can seamlessly handle certain business areas.
Matching the service level agreements (SLAs).

Legal

Outsourcing contracts usually run for between two and ten years. When outsourcing the collection, processing or use of personal data , the data protection requirements for data processing on behalf ( Section 62 of the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG)) must be observed. The quality and quantity of the services to be provided by the contractor are specified in so-called service level agreements . After this period, only some of the outsourcing contracts are extended without an invitation to tender (analysts estimate approx. 20% in Germany); usually a new invitation to tender takes place. In an estimated two thirds of the cases, however, it is a benchmarking that is only intended to determine the market prices. Since outsourcers rarely make too much effort in benchmarking due to commercial interests, benchmarks disguised as tenders are hardly taken seriously from the outset, even by the benchmarked outsourcer. Due to the high switching costs , switching providers was initially rather the exception in Germany, but has now become more frequent, as the greater standardization of processes, e.g. B. Thanks to ITIL, the service elements are easier to compare. It is also possible for the outsourcer to reintegrate the sub-area into their own company (backsourcing as a special case of insourcing ) .

Language criticism

When the jury chose the German word of the year in 1996, the term “outsourcing” was described as an impressive word that tries to give the outsourcing / destruction of jobs a serious look .

literature

Heike Bruch : Outsourcing: Concepts and strategies, opportunities and risks. Gabler, Wiesbaden 1998, ISBN 3-409-18863-0 .
Deutsche Bank Research: IT outsourcing: between starvation and nouvelle cuisine. In: e-conomics. No. 43, April 6, 2004. (.pdf; 711 kB)
Daniela Eschlbeck: The Effects of Outsourcing in the IT Area on Entrepreneurial and Spatial Structures · An empirical analysis of medium-sized companies in Bavaria. Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-8316-0884-3 .
Dietmar Fink, Thomas Köhler, Stephan Scholtissek: The third revolution in value creation. Econ, 2004, ISBN 3-430-12799-8 .
Christoph von Gamm: Multi-National and Intercultural Services Organizations and the Integration in front of Global Clients. Peter Lang Verlag, Bern 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-61600-0 .
Christian Ganowski, Johanna Joppe: The outsourcing trap: How globalization can lead to ruin. 1st edition. Redline, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-636-01552-5 .
Torsten Gründer: IT outsourcing in practice, strategies, project management, profitability. 2nd Edition. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-503-09015-0 .
Malte Grützmacher: Outsourcing contracts. In: Munich contract manual. Volume 3: Business Law II. 6th edition. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57474-0 .
C. Oecking, R. Jahnke, H. Kiehle, M. Weber: Industrialization in Outsourcing, What benefits outsourcing users and providers can derive from industrialization. CMP-WEKA, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7723-1471-1 , pp. 57-65.
Thomas Söbbing: Handbook IT Outsourcing. 3. Edition. CF Müller, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-8114-3320-2 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Outsourcing - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

BITKOM Federal Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media eV: Specialized Committee on International Labor Law and Outsourcing
Outsourcing. Information from the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)
VDI study on the transcontinental relocation of production
Outsourcing explanation with graphic of the process model
Computerwoche: “Are you ready for outsourcing?” - Profitability of IT outsourcing projects

Individual evidence

↑ Christian Mair: Outsourcing <Outside Resource Using? A German Folk Etymology for an English Neologism. In: Alwin Fill, Georg Marko, David Newby, Hermine Penz (Eds.): Linguists (don't) only Talk about it: Essays in Honor of Bernhard Kettemann. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2006, pp. 105–115.

↑ Circular 15/2009 (BA) - Minimum Requirements for Risk Management - MaRisk. ( Memento from December 10, 2011 in the web archive archive.today )

^ Hermannus Pfeiffer: Going it alone, the department head. In: TAZ. May 3, 2012.

↑ Plixos online exchange for IT outsourcing

↑ Computerwoche: A Global Market for Software Services

↑ DIN SPEC 1041 "Outsourcing of technology-oriented knowledge-intensive services (T-KIBS)"

↑ computerwoche.de: “Outsourcing is standardized” , accessed on March 15, 2020.

↑ zdnet.de: "DIN specification 1041 should pave the way for SMEs to outsource" , accessed on March 15, 2020.

^ Christian Thiel, Marc-Oliver Cawelius: Outsourcing - History and Explanation of Terms . ( Memento of March 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Magazine of the INFO Institute No. 1-2007.

↑ Badly managed cultural differences can account for up to 15 percent loss of margins. Retrieved March 24, 2013 .

↑ Warwick Business School - Business leaders 'not sure' about contribution of outsourcing (eng.)

↑ Torsten Gründer: Partnership design for secure IT outsourcing. The difficult relationship between users and service providers. In: Bededikt Bucher, Dirk Fox, Britta Alexandra Mester, Helmut Reimer (eds.): DuD - data protection and data security . No. 10/2016 . Springer Gabler Fachmedien, Wiesbaden October 2016, p. 667 ff .

^ Cognizant acquires UBS Indian BPO Unit. Retrieved March 24, 2013 .

↑ Global Outsourcing Advisory Services. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 11, 2013 ; Retrieved March 24, 2013 .

↑ The previously chosen non-words. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 25, 2016 ; Retrieved April 29, 2016 .

[1] Christian Mair: Outsourcing <Outside Resource Using? A German Folk Etymology for an English Neologism. In: Alwin Fill, Georg Marko, David Newby, Hermine Penz (Eds.): Linguists (don't) only Talk about it: Essays in Honor of Bernhard Kettemann. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2006, pp. 105–115.

[2] Circular 15/2009 (BA) - Minimum Requirements for Risk Management - MaRisk. ( Memento from December 10, 2011 in the web archive archive.today )

[3] Hermannus Pfeiffer: Going it alone, the department head. In: TAZ. May 3, 2012.

[4] Plixos online exchange for IT outsourcing

[5] Computerwoche: A Global Market for Software Services

[6] DIN SPEC 1041 "Outsourcing of technology-oriented knowledge-intensive services (T-KIBS)"

[7] uterwoche.de: “Outsourcing is standardized” , accessed on March 15, 2020.

[8] zdnet.de: "DIN specification 1041 should pave the way for SMEs to outsource" , accessed on March 15, 2020.