Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact on firm performance in Korea

Transcription

1 160 Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 43, Nos. 1-3, 2008 Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact on firm performance in Korea Yong Ki Yoon* Strategy Planning Team, LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea *Corresponding author Kun Shin Im School of Business, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea Abstract: In Information Technology (IT) outsourcing environments, customers requirements and feedback are essential to the development of Information Systems (IS) applications and the improvement of the service quality of IT service vendors. This study proposes an instrument of IT Outsourcing Customer Satisfaction (ITOCS). We test its reliability and validity and its association with the firm performance using questionnaires administered to IT outsourcing service receivers in Korea. Survey results suggest that our instrument is a reliable and valid measure of ITOCS and also that the ITOCS positively affects the firm performance. Interestingly, it is found that the satisfaction on maintenance and repairing service by IT vendors is the highest among other services. Moreover, we find that larger IT vendors provide customers with more satisfied IT outsourcing services. Keywords: customer satisfaction; firm performance; IT outsourcing. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Yoon, Y.K. and Im, K.S. (2008) Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact on firm performance in Korea, Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 43, Nos. 1-3, pp Biographical notes: Yong Ki Yoon is a Senior Manager at LG Electronics. He received his PhD degree in Technology Management from Yonsei University, Korea. His research interest includes information technology valuation, information strategy planning and IT outsourcing in e-business environments. Kun Shin Im is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at School of Business, Yonsei University, Korea. He holds a PhD in Management Information Systems from the University of South Carolina and a PhD in Accounting from Yonsei University. His research interests include IT impacts on organisational structure, IT investments evaluation, IT adoption, IT outsourcing and IT training effectiveness. He has published several studies in these areas in Information Systems Research, Journal of Information Technology Management, Journal of Organizational & End User Computing and Journal of Global Information Management. Copyright 2008 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

2 Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact Introduction Information Technology (IT) outsourcing is defined as the act of subcontracting part or all IT functions of a company to one or more external vendors (Loh and Venkatraman, 1992; Cheon, Grover and Teng, 1995; Grover, Cheon and Teng, 1996; Sengupta and Zviran, 1997; Lacity and Willcocks, 2001; Gelbstein, 2002). Various corporations introduced IT outsourcing chiefly to achieve cost-effectiveness until the mid-1990s, and thus mostly pushed ahead with computing-related services or system integration in the form of strategic alliances (McFarlan and Nolan, 1995; Grover, Cheon and Teng, 1996). Recently, however, new forms of IT outsourcing, such as ASP, system integration and system management outsourcing, have new characteristics that are totally different from those of traditional IT outsourcing (Young and Berg, 2001). Thus, IT outsourcing plays an increasingly important role in acquiring the firm s competitive advantage and downing cost of Information Systems (IS) implementations. A properly implemented outsourcing strategy brings together the industry knowledge and IT to create systems that help organisations acquire and maintain a competitive advantage and provide better service at a lower cost (Sengupta and Zviran, 1997). In IT outsourcing environments, customers requirements and feedback are essential to the development of IS applications and the improvement in the service quality of IT service vendors or companies. From the vendor s perspective, it is important to minimise complaints and dissatisfaction as well as the cost of a service recovery plan. It is also important for vendors to establish a track of direct feedback from customers on their reactions to complaints and dissatisfaction (Abubakar, Mavondo and Clulow, 2001). Therefore, it is particularly useful to study a customer satisfaction for IT outsourcing providers and their customers. In this paper, we present a measure of IT Outsourcing Customer Satisfaction (ITOCS) through literature reviews and experts interviews, and test the robustness of the concept of ITOCS and its relationship with the firm performance. The measure is applied in IT outsourcing customer companies in Korea to demonstrate the practical value and effectiveness of the proposed measure. We used Partial Least Squares (PLS) to analyse and verify the data collected from a sample of 100 customers. The main contribution of this study can be summarised in the following four areas. First, we propose a new instrument of customer satisfaction for IT outsourcing environments. Traditional instruments of User Information Satisfaction (UIS) evaluate the user satisfaction on information (i.e. output) of IS or IS themselves. However, in IT outsourcing context a comprehensive measure of customer satisfaction on the IT outsourcing provider s service is required (Sengupta and Zviran, 1997). The customer satisfaction measure for IT outsourcing should be able to evaluate IS (i.e. outcome of IT outsourcing), information (i.e. output of outsourced systems) and other services provided by IT vendors such as education, maintenance and repairing and consulting. Second, this study may be useful and helpful to practitioners, IT managers and customers who are faced with outsourcing services. Using the instrument as a tool for measuring ITOCS, IT outsourcing providers can monitor their service level and understand customers requirements precisely. The observed values of customer satisfaction can provide important guidelines in the improvement of IT outsourcing services and improve their competitive position in the market. Third, customers can also utilise the results of customer satisfaction in choosing IT outsourcing vendors. Fourth, we show that ITOCS

3 162 Y.K. Yoon and K.S. Im has impact on firm performance. This result verifies whether our measure of ITOCS has validity as a satisfaction instrument for serving in IT outsourcing context. 2 Related literature 2.1 Traditional measures of user satisfaction The assessment of IS effectiveness is an important issue for both IS practitioners and general management (Sengupta and Zviran, 1997). Many pieces of research on user satisfaction, IS usage and information value have been done to evaluate IS effectiveness (Cho, 2000). Several studies have employed UIS as a dependent variable to demonstrate IS effectiveness and acceptance (Ives and Olson, 1984; Igbaria and Nachman, 1990). Although there is no standard measure of satisfaction in these studies, it is argued that the user satisfaction is an indicator of system usage and effectiveness (Sengupta and Zviran, 1997). Bailey and Pearson (1983) measured the user satisfaction as the weighted sum of the user s positive and negative reactions to a set of factors regarding an IS and identified 39 factors that can represent the user satisfaction domain. Ives, Olson and Baroudi (1983) suggested some modified factors, which are based on the study of Bailey and Pearson (1983). Baroudi and Orlikowski (1988) developed simple and short-form measures that include 13 questions with two response scales per question. Doll and Torkadeh (1988) verified that five factors, such as content, accuracy, format, ease-of-use and timeliness, are suitable to measure end-user computing satisfaction. However, UIS measures are not suitable for evaluating overall customer-oriented service quality and satisfaction regarding IT outsourcing. This is because those kinds of instruments are not directly related to the service and product quality of vendors and their end users, rather they focus on the IS itself and on an internal information department. For example, Lee and Kim (1997) measured user satisfaction as the success of outsourcing and empirically proved that the user satisfaction increases when the firm s current outsourcing strategy matches the recommended strategy in the case of affiliated firms of the Korean conglomerate groups. However, they viewed the user satisfaction as a satisfaction on outsourced IS. Sengupta and Zviran (1997) also assessed the utility of the widely used short-form UIS questionnaire in outsourcing environments and suggested the existence of a fourth factor relating to contractor services. They measured the user satisfaction using information department staff and service, contractor services, information output and user s knowledge and involvement. However, the four factors of Sengupta and Zviran (1997) are mainly related to maintenance and repairing service, education service and information quality. Since factors are generated from the shortform UIS questionnaire, moreover, they did not fully reflect the user satisfaction in outsourcing context. In spite of the importance of consulting service and Service Level ment (SLA) in outsourcing environments, Sengupta and Zviran (1997) did not incorporate these factors in evaluating the customer satisfaction. They suggested that the development of a comprehensive measure of user satisfaction in outsourcing environments and the construction of new instruments for serving IT outsourcing environments were needed in academia and industry. Although previous work was tried to reflect outsourcing environments, it still focused on outsourced IS itself and internal information department. On the contrary, we consider ITOCS as a measure for total solution or service from providers, not IS itself.

4 Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact 163 In outsourcing environments, customer or user satisfaction evaluation has to consider various dimensions such as supporting services and contracts between outsourcing vendors and customers, as well as IS. 2.2 IT outsourcing customer satisfaction Scholars of different academic backgrounds have different analyses of customer satisfaction by looking at it both theoretically and practically (Wong, 2000; Chien, Su and Su, 2002; Leem and Yoon, 2004). Typical customer satisfaction evaluation models such as SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry, 1988; Pitt, Waton and Kavan, 1995, 1997; Kettinger and Lee, 1997) and SERVPERF model (Cronin and Taylor, 1992) and their utilised practical models such as ACSI (National Quality Research Center, 1995) and NCSI (Korea Productivity Center, 1997) are difficult to apply directly to customers or users of IT outsourcing service vendors. Although they are widely used in the world regardless of product or service types, they do not assume that customers possess a certain level of professional knowledge about products or services that are often required to use IS or services provided by IT outsourcing vendors. In this study, we view customer satisfaction as a broad concept that includes a perceived evaluation of products and services. In particular, in IT outsourcing context we regard customer satisfaction as an instrument evaluating IS themselves as well as other dimensions such as various supporting services and contracts between outsourcing vendors and customers. In order to generate key items that have an effect upon ITOCS, an initial list of items was established through the review of literatures on IT outsourcing, user or customer satisfaction in IS and software and general customer satisfaction evaluation models represented in earlier references and Table 1. From them, we identified about 40 items. Once the list was generated, we conducted interviews with nine IT outsourcing experts from IT outsourcing service industry, academia and government. Through IT outsourcing professionals review, the initial list of items was revised by adding or dropping items. Q-sort technique was then applied to the revised list of items. Finally, we defined 23 customer satisfaction items and classified them into five evaluation categories or factors: consulting service quality, maintenance and repairing, education, SLA quality and information quality as shown in Table 1. Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is the most popular and basic software evaluation model for the software or software company which are designed to evaluate the capability level of software (Paulk, Curtis and Chrissis, 1991, 1992, 1993; ISO/IEC TR 15504, 1998). Based on CMM, consulting service quality, maintenance and repairing and education are considered as important measurements of software organisation or IT service level (Frank and Hans, 1999). Consulting service quality is related to outsourcing providers business and service quality such as best-practice and human resource. Leem and Yoon (2004) used consulting service capability as a factor in evaluating customer satisfaction of software vendors. Maintenance and repairing factor refers to various customer-supporting service related to maintenance and repairing service by IT outsourcing vendors (Paulk, Curtis and Chrissis, 1991, 1992, 1993). Education is related to the service from outsourcing service vendors. Previous researches found maintenance and repairing and education as important factors in evaluating IT service or software customer satisfaction (Leem and Yoon, 2004; Yeo and Nam, 2004). Yoon, Seo and Kim (2004) used education as a service quality factor in developing IT consulting SERVQUAL and showed the effects of education on customer satisfaction and service

5 164 Y.K. Yoon and K.S. Im quality. Thus, we consider maintenance and repairing and education as factors in IT service and outsourcing satisfaction. Table 1 Measures and references for IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and firm performance Factors Items Related references Consulting Service Quality (CONS) Maintenance and Repairing (MNR) Education (EDU) SLA Quality (SLAQ) Information Quality (INQ) Firm performance (FP) Advanced methodology and business adaptation (CONS01) Systematical and standardisation consulting (CONS02) Consulting knowledge and experience (CONS03) Understanding of business environment and project (CONS04) Participation intention and communication skill (CONS05) Customer care and management (MNR01) Quickness in emergency and repairing (MNR02) Continuous and periodical service in maintenance (MNR03) Reflection of updated requirements and changes (MNR04) Service attitude and specialty (MNR05) Quick response for customer (EDU01) Instructor s specialty and kindness in education (EDU02) Continuity of education service (EDU03) Continuous contents development (EDU04) Education effectives (EDU05) Contents specification and precise requirement (SLAQ01) Accuracy of SLA (SLAQ02) Realisation and reality of SLA (SLAQ03) Clarification and clearness of SLA (SLAQ04) Information relevance (INQ01) Information accuracy (INQ02) Information precision (INQ03) Information completeness (INQ04) Market share (FP01) Sales growth (FP02) Competitive advantage (FP03) Profitability (FP04) Overall firm performance (FP05) Paulk, Curtis and Chrissis (1991, 1992, 1993), ISO/IEC TR (1998), Frank and Hans (1999), Yeo and Nam (2003), Leem and Yoon (2004), Sengupta and Zviran (1997), Baroudi and Orlikowski (1988), Byrd and Turner (2000) Paulk, Curtis and Chrissis (1991, 1992, 1993), ISO/IEC TR (1998), Frank and Hans (1999), Yeo and Nam (2004), Leem and Yoon (2004), Cho (2000) Paulk, Curtis and Chrissis (1991, 1992, 1993), ISO/IEC TR (1998), Frank and Hans (1999), Yeo and Nam (2004), Leem and Yoon (2004), Cho (2000) Doll and Torkzadeh (1988), Gartner (2000), Lee (2003), Yoon, Seo and Kim (2004) Baroudi and Orlikowski (1988), Sengupta and Zviran (1997) Powell and Dent-Micallef (1997), Bharadwaj (2000), Keskin (2005), Choi and Lee (2003)

6 Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact 165 In addition to those factors, SLA quality is involved in our ITOCS. SLA forms an essential part of the IT outsourcing service (Gartner, 2000) because it sets up expectations between the consumer and the provider. Lee (2003) argued that SLA is an important factor in outsourcing performance. Yoon, Seo and Kim (2004) also suggested that the development and management of SLA s measurement are needed to obtain a success in IT outsourcing. SLA quality includes SLA contents, reliability and clarification. Finally, information quality that is well known as an important evaluation factor of IS is also included in our ITOCS (Baroudi and Orlikowski, 1988; Sengupta and Zviran, 1997). Information quality is the information output performance from services and products of IT outsourcing vendors. 2.3 IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and firm performance Despite large bodies of literature on IT outsourcing, the study on the effect of ITOCS on the firm performance has been insufficiently conducted. Most of the studies agree that IT has a positive impact on firm performance and productivity (Hu and Quan, 2005) and that IT outsourcing provides an opportunity of improving firms IS services and departments (King and Malhotra, 2000). However, there is no study on the association between the customer satisfaction for IT outsourcing and the firm performance. It is argued that user satisfaction is a surrogate of IS effectiveness (Ives and Olson, 1984; Igbaria and Nachman, 1990). Accordingly, we argue that ITOCS is also a surrogate of IT outsourcing success. We then expect that ITOCS is positively associated with firm performance. To examine this, we reviewed previous work on the impact of IT on firm performance. To investigate the impact of IT on firm performance, Powell and Dent- Micallef (1997) used market share, sales growth and profitability as measures of firm performance. Keskin (2005) and Choi and Lee (2003) also measured the corporate performance in terms of market share, profitability, innovation level and so on. Based on these studies, we measure various dimensions of firm performance as shown in Table 1. Through the examination of the relationship between ITOCS and firm performance, we can also demonstrate the predictive validity of ITOCS instrument. 3 Research model Figure 1 presents our research model with a second-order factor model for ITOCS. ITOCS is indirectly measured through five factors: consulting service quality, maintenance and repairing, education, SLA quality and information quality. In other words, the five factors are measured by a total of 23 items and then the factor scores of the five factors are used to measure ITOCS. In addition, firm performance is measured by five items. The items are listed in Table 1. To collect data on these variables, we developed a five-point Likert-style questionnaire (see Appendix).

7 166 Y.K. Yoon and K.S. Im Figure 1 Research model 4 Research method 4.1 Data collection To collect data on ITOCS and firm performance, we conducted a survey by supplying questionnaires to the IT outsourcing customer companies in Korea. In Korea, IT outsourcing market is rapidly increasing and many corporations introduce IT outsourcing in many fields. Outsourcing has become an very important issue to outsourcing service receivers and providers. IT outsourcing providers focus on customer satisfaction to retain existing customers as well as attract new customers, and service receivers want to select a good vendor among various service providers in Korea. The participants in the survey or respondents are IT engineers and staff involved in performing IT outsourcing project and contracting outsourcing service providers. We sent 320 questionnaires to 40 customer companies that had outsourced their IT functions to external service providers. We received 100 usable questionnaires from 28 companies that participated in the survey. The response rate is about 31% through the survey. 4.2 Data analysis The analysis of the data was done using PLS that enables the specification of both relationships among the constructs and measures underlying each construct (Wold, 1989). The PLS procedure has been gaining interest and use among researchers in recent years because of its ability to model latent constructs under conditions of non-normality and small to medium sample sizes (Chin and Gopal, 1995; Compeau and Higgins, 1995; Chin, 1998; Chin, Marcdin and Newsted, 2003). The PLS analysis can examine how well measures are related to each construct and whether the hypothesised relationship at the theoretical level is empirically true. It also can be employed to estimate the parameters in a hierarchical (i.e. second-order factor) model (Guinot, Latriell and Tenenhaus, 2001). We choose PLS Graph Version 3.00 to perform the analysis.

8 Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact Test of measurement instrument For the validity of measurement instrument, we assessed the individual measurement reliability by analysing loadings of measures in their corresponding construct. Table 2 shows the factor loading and cross-factor loading of constructs with more than one item. All the factor loadings exceed 0.6 except for CONS05, and each of the factors loaded stronger on their associated factors rather than on any other factors. It shows the convergent and discriminant validity of our ITOCS instrument. Table 2 Factor loadings and cross-factor loadings Factor loadings Measurements CONS MNR EDU SLAQ INQ FP CONS CONS CONS CONS CONS MNR MNR MNR MNR MNR EDU EDU EDU EDU EDU SLAQ SLAQ SLAQ SLAQ INQ INQ INQ INQ FP FP FP FP FP

9 168 Y.K. Yoon and K.S. Im Internal consistency was examined using the Composite Scale Reliability Index (CSRI), a measure similar to Cronbach s alpha (Yoo and Essex, 2004). Fornell and Larcker (1981) recommended using a criterion cutoff of 0.7. The reliability of each scale is shown in Table 3. The CSRI values range from to All the CSRI values are greater than 0.7, indicating the internal consistency of our measures. Discriminant validity was also assessed by comparing the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values associated with each construct to correlations among constructs (Barclay, Higgins and Thompson, 1995). AVE measures the percentage of variance captured by a construct by showing the ratio of the sum of the variance captured by the construct and its measurement variance (Gefen, Straub and Boudrean, 2000). Table 3 represents results of the correlation matrix for constructs. Table 3 Reliability and discriminant validity Correlation of constructs Variables No. of items CSRI * CONS MNR EDU SLAQ INQ FP Consulting Service Quality (CONS) Maintenance and Repairing (MNR) Education (EDU) SLA Quality (SLAQ) Information Quality (INQ) Firm Performance (FP) * Composite Scale Reliability Index. The bold diagonal elements show the square root of the variance shared between constructs and their measures (i.e. the AVE), whereas the off diagonal elements are correlations among constructs. For discriminant validity, diagonal elements should be larger than any other corresponding row or column entry. According to Table 3, each construct sufficiently differs from other constructs. Therefore, measures demonstrate the discriminant validity. In brief, all constructs in this study are deemed acceptable 1. 5 Results Figure 2 represents overall results for the full sample. It shows the result of the statistical significant of the path coefficient between ITOCS and firm performance as well as factor loadings of five factors on ITOCS. We used bootstrapping procedure to assess the statistical significance of the path coefficient (Barclay, Higgins and Thompson, 1995). As shown in Figure 2, all five evaluation factors of ITOCS have large factor loadings. Specially, the factor loading of maintenance and repairing is greatest. And, the path coefficient between ITOCS and firm performance is (p 0.00). These results are consistent with our expectation and confirm the validity of our ITOCS instrument. To evaluate whether ITOCS instruments can be used regardless of the size of IT outsourcing service provider, we divided our sample into two sub-samples: small and large IT vendors. About 48 questionnaires answered that they use service by small providers and 52 use large providers. Table 4 shows the mean value of all variables

10 Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact 169 including ITOCS and firm performance for small and large IT vendors. It is found that ITOCS and five sub-factors are consistently greater for IT outsourcing provided by large IT vendors than by small IT vendors. However, the difference between two sub-groups is not significant except for consulting service quality. Figure 2 PLS results Table 4 IT outsourcing customer satisfaction by size of vendors Mean Sample (SD) Total (0.805) Large (A) (0.595) Small (B) (0.460) A B (t 0.61) *p ITOCS CONS MNR EDU SLAQ INQ Mean (SD) (0.651) (0.722) (0.565) (t 2.15*) Mean (SD) (0.704) (0.740) (0.632) (t 0.46) Mean (SD) (0.692) (0.682) (0.706) (t 0.86) Mean (SD) (0.787) (0.831) (0.735) (t 0.67) Mean (SD) (0.657) (0.697) (0.460) (t 0.10) 6 Conclusions and discussions This paper has focused on evaluating ITOCS and showing its impact on firm performance. To measure ITOCS, we used five factors: consulting service quality, maintenance and repairing, education, SLA quality and information quality. The developed instrument was applied to IT outsourcing service receivers in Korea. All five factors were found important for ITOCS. We also found that customer satisfaction on IT outsourcing services (i.e. ITOCS) is positively associated with firm performance. Our study is a first study confirming that in IT outsourcing environments a high level of

11 170 Y.K. Yoon and K.S. Im customer satisfaction leads to increases in customers firm performance. Given our PLS results, it could be concluded that our ITOCS is reliable and is an valid instrument for serving in IT outsourcing environments. Other notable conclusions could be also made as follows: Consulting service quality, maintenance and repairing, education, SLA quality and information quality are significant in evaluating customer satisfaction in IT outsourcing context. Maintenance and repairing is the highest associated with ITOCS, and SLA quality is the second (see Figure 2). This result suggests that IT outsourcing vendors in Korea have to focus their services on improving maintenance and repairing service as well as SLA quality to increase customer satisfaction on IT outsourcing comparing with other factors. In the survey, the average customer satisfaction on maintenance and repairing service is greatest among that of any other sub-factors of ITOCS (see Table 4). It implies that IT outsourcing service provider is focusing their service on the maintenance and repairing mainly in Korea. Customer satisfaction on IT outsourcing service is significant in the direction to firm performance. It suggests that high-quality service by IT outsourcing provider is helpful to improve its customer s firm performance. The average customer satisfaction on large IT vendors is consistently higher in all areas than that on small providers. Although this is statistically unsupportable, it might indicate that large IT vendors provide more stable IS and continuity service to customers than small vendors because large vendors have more systematic IT outsourcing departments and experienced service knowledge. Based on these results, it may seem that small vendors are still weak in terms of their enterprise resource and service levels in Korea. In this study, we consider both outsourcing service providers and receivers perspective, comparing previous researches. We regard IT outsourcing as a total solution and then develop comprehensive measurement of customer satisfaction in IT outsourcing environments. Compared with previous satisfaction measures in IT outsourcing context (cf. Lee and Kim, 1997; Sengputa and Zviran, 1997), our instruments combined maintenance and repairing service, education service, consulting service and SLA quality with traditional UIS to make more comprehensive satisfaction instrument. Further, our ITOCS measure can easily be adapted to evaluate ITOCS by outsourcing areas such as application service provider, hosting and data centre operations and system operations and support. Despite some meaningful implications, our work has several limitations. First, our instrument of customer satisfaction in IT outsourcing environments was not a perfect measure. A more broad and detail measure would be required to incorporate additional customer satisfaction dimensions that are related to outsourcing environments. The continuous improvement of the proposed customer satisfaction evaluation measure is needed to maintain the reliability and applicability of the measure by including more relevant factors of the ITOCS. Such efforts could facilitate the development of a theory for the ITOCS. Second, the proposed instrument did not consider the characteristics of each outsourcing service type and the new IT outsourcing services such as business process outsourcing and strategic alliance. Future research can examine whether the proposed instrument works for different type of outsourcing services. Third, the results of our study may have to be carefully interpreted since the sample was restricted to Korea.

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15 174 Y.K. Yoon and K.S. Im Appendix: Simplified questionnaire for IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and firm performance 1 Customer satisfaction in IT outsourcing service For consulting service quality Neutral They take advantage of advanced methodology and applications They do consulting systematically They have a great store of consulting knowledge and experience They understand our business and service They have a great deal of participant intention and communication skill For maintenance and repairing service Neutral They have customer care and management system They have quickness in emergency and repairing service They give us continuous and periodical maintenance service They reflect our requirements and changes timely They have excellent service attitude and specialty For education service Neutral They have customer care and management system Instructor has specialty and kindness in education service They have continuity of education service They keep up their education service and contents development Their education takes effect in our IT applications

16 Evaluating IT outsourcing customer satisfaction and its impact 175 For SLA quality Neutral SLA contents are specific and precise SLA is accurate SLA is realisable and have reality SLA contract is clarified and clear For information quality Neutral Information output is relevant Information output is accurate Information output is precise Information output is complete 2 Firm performance Through IT Outsourcing Neutral Compared to key competitors, my company has greater market share Compared to key competitors, my company is growing faster Compared to key competitors, my company is more successful Compared to key competitors, my company is more profitable Overall performance has improved Note 1 It should be noted that since ITOCS is a second-order factor, only five sub-constructs of ITOCS were compared in Tables 2 and 3. When five sub-constructs and firm performance are tested in terms of cross-factor loadings, however, we also found the construct validity and the reliability of measures used in our study.