**6. Concluding remarks**

*Outsourcing and Offshoring*

dures, as mentioned in above section.

on the use of proprietary or niche technology.

**5.3 Risk control and assess value at risk**

to commit competition.

**5.4 Negotiating outsourcing contract**

Companies need to guard against outsourcing arrangements or partnerships that prevent them from adopting new technologies or contracting with new vendors. Data management is a great value for a transport enterprise so it's a of great importance to control data produced by its activity. Those with the biggest and best databases will be those with the best models and predictive power, able to outcompete others. Giving away data increases dependency on suppliers increasing company value at risk. Hence, the data management system architecture so they can change with the times as new and unforeseen options emerge. Any outsourcing arrangement must be structured in a way that enables the architecture to be flexible, compatible, and open oriented. Key success factor for pioneers is the developed data driven business intelligent tools to help build outsourcing services, tools that are sold to competitors. Deep consideration should be given in conflict of interest, non-disclosure agreements, intellectual properties, and information shared proce-

**5.2 Outsourcing condition of contracts should be flexible and incentive**

Both parties must share benefits and depending on nature of outsource service to share risks as well. Therefore, incentives should be the core of the collaboration frame and the outuputs should be quantitated, determined, and monitored. Conventional wisdom is to agree in suitable incentives for an outsourcing arrangement to succeed. The usual ones—sharing gains and rewarding outcomes rather than inputs— are not extremely attractive in a digital age. But where outcomes are concerned, flexibility will be required. Eventually, it might be better to use another supplier to maintain competitive tension rather than to run existing outsourcing form of contacts. In business intelligence, hence, should avoid the deals that hinge

The risks of outsourcing to a single, dominant supplier might not be obvious initially, as digitization reduces the barriers to entry, prompting a proliferation of new players, all rushing to capture value and competing strongly. The risk of losing leverage over a supplier through a lack of credible competition is therefore significant. In addition, becoming too entrenched with a single supplier can make switching costs high, as many companies have found with enterpriseresource-planning systems. To help maintain a healthy level of competition, large companies spread even the same function of an activity among several suppliers and nurture smaller ones, although this does not come without a cost either. In a provocative sense, even the outsourcing for a large network in a city or region to a single supplier may the risks are significant lower to choose two or more suppliers

When negotiating, both suppliers and transport enterprises should consider clauses providing for asset substitution, upgrading, and modification, intellectual property and know-how issues along with adjustments in pricing and penalties. A clear "objective" for both parties along with clear and dedicate benefits-risk sharing

mechanisms to maintain technological change should be considered.

**5.1 Data control**

**64**

In transport sector, outsourcing can be extremely beneficial, productive even crucial to capture the potential of new technologies and innovation capabilities. Decisions to outsource for some companies' might base on buy time to build their own skills and capabilities or gain cooperation with technological driver of innovation, while smaller ones might outsource to leverage the capabilities of new suppliers. Ultimately, when up against increasingly smart and capable suppliers, many companies might have to rethink their core business. But in the meantime, they need to be highly strategic in their decisions about what or how to outsource.

With time, technology will undoubtedly break up the traditional value chain in the transport business ecosystem as companies are forced to conclude they enjoy a competitive advantage in far fewer functions than they do today. Eventually, they might be able to outsource entire parts of their business or major factions impact essential their value chain. Transport enterprises have to take the benefits of artificial intelligence and business intelligence as well. The outsourcing of research and development activities, especially, in the data management is on the top of the agenda even for the large companies.

The future impact of technology remains far too unclear. Very few years ago, for example, few businesses knew how important cloud data management would become. Open technology standards will be key to maintaining future strategic options towards outsourcing data retrieve services. While support might be sought for the execution of a technology strategy, decisions about what data to keep, where to store and process them, and how applications can access and manipulate them need to be made by the company. What companies should follow to ensure the capture of the short-term gains that outsourcing can deliver in a way that does not limit their future strategic options.

The paper outputs depict the results of a functional analysis for the transport enterprises, driven from the research outputs of ENIRISST program where transport intelligent application taken into consideration. The paper outputs given according to a System of System approach providing the changes on transport sector towards outsourcing and co-branding strategy. An area of further research could be this analysis to be extended for each sector of transport industry and to provide results in term of enterprise size, sector and market segment.

## **Acknowledgements**

The paper use research outputs from the research project "ENIRISST – Intelligent Research Infrastructure for Shipping, Supply Chain, Transport and Logistics", implemented in the Action "Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure", funded by the Operational Programme "Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation" (NSRF 2014-2020) and cofinanced by Greece and the European Regional Development Fund. EN.I.R.I.S.S.T. is a unique and pioneering research infrastructure deals with the development of innovative techniques, AI and BI applications, and digital observatories in the fields of Shipping, Supply Chain and Transport (https://www.enirisst.gr/).

*Outsourcing and Offshoring*
