Service Science Competence Center
Service Science Management and Engineering
The emergence and proliferation of the Service Economy has changed the way in which the creation of value is perceived throughout various industry sectors and societies. Some current manifestations are integrating industrial machinery with customized service offerings (customer solutions, product-service systems), offering aircraft turbines (power by-the-hour) or software applications (as-a-service) without selling physical goods, or providing content on mobile platforms. Theories and artifacts related to service are reflected in the emerging academic discipline of Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME). Research in SSME is focused on understanding and facilitating the creation of value in service systems, involving interactions of service providers and service customers.
Mission of the Service Science Competence Center
The mission of the ERCIS Service Science Competence Center is twofold. On the one hand, we strive to understand the nature and impact of service orientation on commercial businesses, on the public sector, and on society in general. On the other hand, we contribute to further shaping the course of the service economy by designing new business solutions and software artifacts. One focal point of our research is facilitating service-orientation in close cooperation with high-tech manufacturing companies. We have also been in frequent contact with banks, retail companies, and facility management service providers.
Our research is equally dedicated to research excellence and to providing results that companies can utilize to further shape their businesses in the service society. We achieve this goal based on a network of excellent researchers in the global ERCIS network.
Value Proposition
Together with our commercial and public partners, we analyze current developments and design solutions and software prototypes. With these results we contribute to identifying and implementing innovations in engineering, offering, and provided service(s):
· Service Process Management and Business Process Integration in Networks
· Service Performance Management
· Service Business Models and Modular Service Portfolios
· Service Channels in the Web 2.0
Record of Research Projects
Since its foundation in 2006, several large-scale research projects have been conducted at the Service Science Competence Center, most of them funded in federal research initiatives of the German government.
The Networked Service Society (NSS)
In this joint project of the ERCIS partners in Australia, Germany, Korea, and New Zealand we focus on analyzing and designing two areas of service research. First, we develop new methods and strategies for the global organization of business processes in multinational settings. Second, we theorize on and shape the commercialization of Social Media for networked service enterprises and the public sector. Additionally, one focus of the project is the establishment of long-term research structures with our partners in the Asian-Pacific region.
The NSS project is kindly supported by the International Office of the German Ministry of Education and Research (promotion sign: 01DR12003). More information is available at: www.NetworkedServiceSociety.net.
ServDEA (Service Performance Measurement with the Data Envelopment Analysis)
Traditionally, ‘productivity’ is conceptualized as dividing outputs manufactured in a company by the resources consumed during their production (input). This calculus does not apply easily to service(s), since services are co-created with customers to satisfy their individual needs. In the project ServDEA we develop new conceptual approaches to measure service productivity. A central advance is utilizing the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a benchmarking approach to assess and improve the productivity of service operations. On this basis we design a software prototype that companies can easily use to benchmark their services, without a need to know all properties of the DEA. The project is conducted in close cooperation with leading manufacturing companies that have successfully established business services to augment their value propositions towards their clients.
The ServDEA project is kindly supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research (promotion sign: 01FL10015). More information is available at: www.ServDEA.net.
ServPay (Business Models and Customers’ Willingness-to-Pay for Service-Oriented Business Models)
Pricing value bundles constitutes a complex decision problem, since it requires the consideration of three perspectives: From the provider’s point of view the available price corridor is limited downwards by the costs for engineering, marketing and delivering a value bundle. From the customers’ points of view, the upper limit of the price corridor is imposed by the expected customer value and corresponding willingness to pay. From a competitive perspective, the upper limit of the price corridor is marked by the price of a comparable competitor’s offer. To provide companies with sound decision support, an integrated multi-perspective modelling language that accounts for all three perspectives simultaneously is presented. Based on the developed modelling language an integrated decision support tool, i.e. the so-called pricing workbench, has been designed. In addition, a recommender system was conceptualized that provides individualized recommendations of potentially interesting value-added services when customers express interest in a particular physical product and also leverages estimations of a customer’s willingness to pay to allow for a dynamic pricing of these services and of the incorporation of profitability considerations into the recommendation process. This suite of tools enables companies to model their service and goods offerings as well as to determine a suitable price for their solutions that will maximize their margins, while being acceptable for customers.
The ServPay project was kindly supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research (promotion sign: 02PG1010). More information is available at: http://ercis.org/node/128.
FlexNet (Flexible Information Systems Architectures for Service Networks)
Service networks made up of manufacturers and service firms to satisfy complex customer needs are proliferating. By exploiting their complementary competencies, such service networks enable their members to provide innovative and integrated solutions that could not be offered by any of the firms alone. In the research project FlexNet we have designed methods, electronic documents, software tools, and other solutions that enable companies to network their business processes and information systems with other companies in order to design, offer, and deliver complex value propositions to their clients collaboratively. Drawing on existing works on boundary objects and service blueprinting, we have developed a new method for diagnosing boundary spanning processes and identifying candidates for IT-based boundary objects that integrate the sub-processes of manufacturing companies and service companies. As boundary objects we have designed and standardized a set of electronic documents and interaction routines that companies can re-use and adapt in order to integrate with the partners. All methods and tools are provided in the integrated software tool FlexNet Architect. The FlexNet Architect is a planning and modeling tool for integrating business processes and information systems in service networks, based on planning workshops conducted with the involved stakeholders. In addition to these core results of the research project we have designed and implemented a research map that depicts and categorizes contributions of the international service research discipline and that is made available through a web portal.
The FlexNet project was kindly supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research (promotion sign: 01FD0629). More information is available at: http://www.ercis.org/node/127.
The research map of the service science discipline is accessible at: http://www.forschungslandkarte-hybridewertschoepfung.de/.