ICT Outsourcing in the Swiss SME Sector: Conclusions and Typical Company Clusters

The outsourcing of ICT services has been common place in large organizations for many years. To date, most of the published research has focused on large organizations with very limited discussion exploring outsourcing in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper reports on a major study (based on 900 completed questionnaires) of Swiss SMEs and their approach to outsourcing. The results presented in this paper are weighted according to company size and industry sector and are in this respect representative for Switzerland. The findings are presented in four main conclusions and six identified clusters (typical company profiles). ICT outsourcing for SMEs is primarily focused on Maintenance and Support. The majority of SMEs using outsourcing have achieved positive outcomes as a result. Smaller SMEs are more likely to consider outsourcing than their larger counterparts. Suppliers of external ICT services specialised on selective, definable services seem to be at an advantage. Over all, the amount of outsourced ICT services is rather small. A cluster analysis identified six distinct clusters. Based on the identified clusters, several bivariate analyses were performed in order to show the typical outsourcing behaviour of the clusters.