Piloting Knowledge Transfer in IT/IS Outsourcing Relationship Towards Sustainable Knowledge Transfer Process: Learnings from Swiss Financial Institution

Successful transfer of knowledge between two organizations is of particular importance for outsourcing relationships and even more so for relationships within IT/IS domain where the relationship often needs to be rapidly redefined or terminated. Transferring knowledge in IT/IS outsourcing relationships requires empowering of both teams of outsourcer and service provider towards achieving knowledge transfer goals set by outsourcing organization. We focus on the Transfer Team which consists of knowledge keepers (service provider) and receivers (outsourcer) and propose a framework for piloting knowledge transfer initiative in IT outsourcing set-up. To empower the outsourcing Transfer Team we propose two tools to support the process: Transfer Profiler and Transfer Instruments Catalogue. Swiss financial institution used an approach based on this framework and tools for knowledge transfer pilots in their outsourcing transfer initiative. We describe this framework and the related tools as well as offer first lessons learned from using them in the field.