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Selecting the appropriate IT outsourcing (ITO) strategy is important for firms in general and banking institutions in particular to achieve expected benefits, but it remains complex, risky and lengthy process for clients to select the appropriate ITO strategy. Previous academic efforts to support ITO decision incorporated a limited number of factors, which is over-simplification of multi-faceted real world problems. In this paper, after doing in-depth literature review for identifying influencing factors on such ITO decisions, a model with an application of Fuzzy TOPSIS based approach is proposed to rank and prioritize the alternatives. Throughout this study, the authors use data from a real banking case to run the model for supporting outsourcing decision for five ATM, POS, tele-banking, mobile, and internet-banking services. The proposed model can help ITO decision makers advance their decision making process, especially where parameters involve uncertainties and hardly can be assessed by human judgment.

Abstract Objectives Pharmaceutical supply chain is a significant component of the health system in supplying medicines, particularly in countries where main drugs are provided by local pharmaceutical companies. No previous studies exist assessing risks and disruptions in pharmaceutical companies while assessing the pharmaceutical supply chain. Any risks affecting the pharmaceutical companies could disrupt supply medicines and health system efficiency. The goal of this study was the risk assessment in pharmaceutical industry in Iran considering process's priority, hazard and probability of risks. Methods The study was carried out in 4 phases; risk identification through literature review, risk identification in Iranian pharmaceutical companies through interview with experts, risk analysis through a questionnaire and consultation with experts using group analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method and rating scale (RS) and risk evaluation of simple additive weighting (SAW) method. Results In total, 86 main risks were identified in the pharmaceutical supply chain with perspective of pharmaceutical companies classified in 11 classes. The majority of risks described in this study were related to the financial and economic category. Also financial management was found to be the most important factor for consideration. Conclusion Although pharmaceutical industry and supply chain were affected by current political conditions in Iran during the study time, but half of total risks in the pharmaceutical supply chain were found to be internal risks which could be fixed by companies, internally. Likewise, political status and related risks forced companies to focus more on financial and supply management resulting in less attention to quality management.