Centre for Service ResearchWhat Service Science offers to Business

Linda A MacaulayProfessor of System Design

Centre Director

Why a Centre for Service Research?The Centre for Service Research was created in response to a number of problems:

1. The shift from manufacturing to service • Economies have become dominated by service sectors• Service thought of as a ‘craft’ and lacks the scientific rigour of traditional engineering• A more scientific approach to service is needed but research is lagging behind

2. The complexity of service• Both business to business and business to consumer• Requires research into service innovation and how a service is the designed, delivered, managed,

used, measured and evaluated• Requires contribution from many disciplines• Research is traditionally conducted in silos and does not facilitate the holistic thinking needed to

address complexity

3. The growth in services is changing the way companies organise themselves• Creating a skills gap that requires people to have knowledge about people, business and

information technology in the design and delivery of service

Challenges for the Centre

People

FundamentalSkills

TechnologyBusiness ServiceCore

People

FundamentalSkills

TechnologyBusiness ServiceCore

To bring experts together to make the ‘T-shaped’

To be problem driven

To create and work towards visions of the future

To work with the international Service Research and Innovation Community

To develop research led curriculum

To work with business and academic collaborators to specify, design and deliver the service curriculum

Centre for Service Research

CSRMIOIR(service innovation)

Marketing

OperationsManagement

Computer ScienceeWork

Existing Research Groups with staff contributing to CSR

Service Systems

Socio-Technical

Decision Sciences

Accounting & Finance

Information Management

Risk assessment

Service Operations Socio-technical Design

Service Marketing

Work organisation

Service Innovation

Knowledge intensive services Service oriented architectures

Systems thinking

Human computer Interaction

Service quality

Service design

Expertise of Staff in the Centre

Service Innovation

DesignOperations

DeliveryManagement

MarketingHolistic thinking

Performance measurement

Predictive modelling

Human Resource Management

Data engineering

Building the Centre around problems

• Example of a Centre workshop: – to share understanding of each others contribution

• Patrick Dixon, Futurist of Globalchange.com talks about his vision for call centres

• 16 people present each person asked:– What is your area of expertise?– How would you analyse the problem?– How would you help to achieve the vision?

• Watch the video, what would your response be…

Responses

It’s a…. A data problemA people problem A work organisation problem

An information management problem

A performance measurement problem

An operational procedures problem

Need to look for sources of innovation

A human technology interaction problem

“I’d want to analyse if there are any gaps, between what the customer wants, what the organisation is saying it delivered, and to try and look at the processes that constitute this call centre. …. There seems to be little communication between different processes, so people have to call time and time again. “Claire Moxham, Operations Management

“We have done ethnographic studies of how these call centres work and we also did some analysis of discourse analysis, what is actually happening with the telephone calls at the moment, we took the telephone calls apart and we were able to help them restructure the service they delivered and their training.”Kathy Keeling, Marketing

“Broadly, the perspective we would have is that we need to consider data understanding, data representation, conceptualisation and a clever searching/extraction problem: data-->information-->knowledge - with an iterative, real time/performance aspect to it.We're interested in the tracking concerns that contextualise the interaction, and the concerns of individual element of customisation and segmentation. Ultimately what we try to do is describe what's contained within data and, where possible, predict what may occur.”John Keane, Computer Science and Decision Sciences, MBS

Further quotes….

“I look at this as a knowledge problem, how to capture the knowledge how to reproduce it, and how to actually summarise what you have in the system ….. So extracting information from unstructured data and integrating it with databases or other data that are in the company.”Goran Nenadic, Computer Science

“I disagree that all customers want to see a human face behind a service delivery there are customers that really want to be empowered and to have all the capabilities that could allow them to tap into companies back office.”Pedro Sampaio, Business Technology

“I think what struck me as being very interesting is when he first came on and said “that the customer wants to see a human and not a robot” So, how interesting because what we say in HRM is that the worker says we want to be treated as a human and not a robot, and they often say that they feel a part of this system and not they have no space to be human. …..how interesting maybe if they were given the space to be more human then they would act more human so the customer could appreciate that.”Victoria Bishop, Human Resource Management

“I would look at it from a risk perspective analysing the risks of outsourcing, whether to outsource within the country, whether to outsource to India, or to other locations abroad. What parts of the service to outsource …risk and cost...”Brian Nicholson, Accounting and Finance

E-mail

website

E-commerce

E-business

Networkedbusiness

Serviceecosystem

Extent of organisational change and sophistication

Bu

sin

ess

be

nefit

s

Adapted from Cisco study on e-commerce in small business

OrganisationalInterworking

Virtual enterprises

DynamicAggregationOf offers

Natural selectionAnd evolutionOf business servicePartners project by project

IntegratedSupplyChain

Value-chainIntegration

Reduction ofcosts

Order &Pay online

ReductionTransactionCosts

New markets

Visions of the business of the future

For example…

F. Nachira et al, (2007), Digital Business Ecosystems

Service ecosystem = business ecosystem + digital ecosystem

Business ecosystem

Digital ecosystem

Business ProcessWork organisationRelationship ManagementKnowledge ManagementInnovation

Service oriented architectureMerging of IT, telecoms & mediaSoftware service

Bringing together social and technical in future vision

Learn more: Posters

See some examples of Centre Research in the 22 posters on display in the Atrium from 40 contributors

Each poster coversresearch overviewcurrent researchkey achievements(see list of posters in your pack)

How we can work together

• RESEARCH– Joint Research Projects (through funding bids to EU and UK Research Councils)– Collaboration between CSR and your Research Centre or group

• EDUCATION– Joint Development of Case studies e.g. describing examples of service practice

• THEORY INTO PRACTICE– Giving a seminar or guest lecture at a CSR event– Attending CSR seminars and lectures– Taking part in our Practitioners Forum

• PROBLEM SETTING– Setting problems for investigation by research Centre staff or students (BSc,

MSc, MBA) or for doctoral candidates• KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

– Knowledge Transfer of research outcomes to practice from CSR to public or private sector organisations through consultancy or government funded KTP projects

• CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT– Executive MBA or CPD development activities (short courses, training, seminars,

workshops)See feedback form in pack

Centre for Service Research

List of Centre downloadsList of resources maintained by CSR on

www.ssmenetuk.orgFuller description of CSR staff and research on

http://www.mbs.ac.uk/research/csr/index.aspx

The Centre is still embryonic and we hope you will join us in helping to make it a major national and international focus for Service Research

Thank you for listening