## 4 Results and Discussion
### Influencing Factors, Critical Success Factors and the Proposed Sourcing Framework  
We conducted systematic literature reviews that presented a list of 15 influencing factors for the sourcing decisions. The influencing factors regarding the application maintenance offshoring were previously published and reported in [2; 3]. Table 3, contains the list of influencing factors identified by using systematic literature reviews. However, the detailed discussion of the factors and their identification process is provided in [2; 3]. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Score** & **Meaning** & **Explanation** \\ \hline
1 & Equal & Two factors are equally important \\
2 & Weak important & Weakly important from the other \\
3 & Moderate important & One factor is slightly preferred over other \\
4 & Moderate plus & Moderate important from the other \\
5 & Strong important & One factors is strongly preferred over the other \\
6 & Strong plus & One factor is more stronger than the other \\
7 & Very strong & One factor is very strongly preferred over the other \\
8 & Very, very strong & Very very stronger than the other \\
9 & Absolute important & One factor is absolutely more important than the other \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: The proposed scale by [PERSON]. The findings of the systematic literature review were validated by 93 experts using an empirical study in the outsourcing industry across 30 countries [1]. The identified influencing factors were analyzed on the basis of their respective frequencies and by using statistical analysis, such as the Chi square test (Linear by Linear association) and Spearman Rank Correlation Analysis. As a result, 10 influencing factors were ranked as critical success factors as given in Figure 3 [1]. A sourcing framework is proposed based on the identified critical success factors for the sourcing decisions of application maintenance. The suggested framework is shown \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**S.No** & **Influencing Factors** & **Frequency** & **Percentage** \\ \hline
01 & Cost & 27 & 69 \\
02 & Legal requirements & 27 & 69 \\
03 & Language barrier & 23 & 59 \\
04 & Maturity level & 24 & 61 \\
05 & Frequent requirement changes & 24 & 61 \\
06 & Service scope & 5 & 13 \\
07 & Cultural diversity & 19 & 49 \\
08 & Time zone difference & 16 & 41 \\
09 & Knowledge transfer & 22 & 56 \\
10 & Project management & 22 & 56 \\
11 & Domain knowledge & 12 & 31 \\
12 & Employee skills & 30 & 77 \\
13 & Infrastructure & 24 & 61 \\
14 & Poor communication & 27 & 69 \\
15 & Size of engagement & 5 & 13 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Identified factors through the systematic literature review. Figure 3: List of the identified critical success factors. in Figure 4, and may be used by clients as well as on the vendor side to assess a project's nature and requirements. Consequently, upon the evaluation of a project, an appropriate sourcing model is selected among the available alternatives. The alternatives are the onshore model, nearshore model and offshore model. The proposed framework is based on the factors; namely employee skills, cost, poor communication, legal requirements, maturity level, infrastructure, frequent requirement changes, domain knowledge, language barrier and project management. In the following paragraphs, the decision making through the proposed model is shown. The sub factors of \"employee skills\" are the employee knowledge, qualifications, skills and IT capabilities. Vendors with a diverse skill sets and experience are ideally positioned to deliver quality software and services to their consumers. Similarly, a client's employees with business knowledge and IT capabilities enable the company to successfully obtain the services from vendors. Prior to making an outsourcing decision, the customer typically assesses the service provider's capabilities in terms of skills and experience [44; 58; 59; 60].