Fuzzy approach to outsourcing of information technology services

ABSTRACT

The paper proposes a new approach for tackling the uncertainty and imprecision in outsourcing and evaluating Information Technology services. Identifying suitable outsourcing options, evaluating them and choosing the best one are regarded as multiple decision criteria decision making problems under uncertainty, where the imprecise decision-maker's judgments are represented as fuzzy numbers. A fuzzy modification of the Analytic Hierarchy Process is applied as an evaluation technique. Unlike the known fuzzy prioritization techniques, the proposed method derives crisp weights from consistent and inconsistent fuzzy comparison matrices, which eliminates the need of additional aggregation and ranking procedures. A detailed numerical example, illustrating the application of our approach to outsourcing evaluation and selection is given.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.2 Types of Systems
          Subjects: Decision support (e.g., MIS)

General Terms:
Algorithms, Human Factors, Management, Performance, Theory

Keywords:
analytic hierarchy process, decision support, fuzzy decision-making, multi-criteria decision-making, outsourcing