Service Chain Management: Technology Innovation for the Service Business

ISBN-13: 9783642094750 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 308 str.

Christos Voudouris; Gilbert Owusu; Raphael Dorne

Opis

Service chain management enables service organisations to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs. In this book, Christos Voudouris and his BT colleagues together with experts from industry and academia present the latest innovations and technologies used to manage the operations of a service company. The viewpoints presented are based on the BT experience and on associated research and development. Service chain management is looked at both from the enterprise perspective and from the standpoints of the service professional and customer. The focus is on real-world challenges.

Recenzje

From the reviews: "Service Chain Management: Technology Innovation for the Service Business ... is a collected volume examining the management of a service company. The authors provide the reader with tools to both understand and manage a service company, and thus may appeal to a wider audience ... . The book is interesting for two reasons: it brings together in a single volume issues are often treated separately and includes perspectives from both academia and industry, primarily BT. ... recommend it to the library." (Jason Whalley, Communication Booknotes Quarterly, Vol. 41 (1), January-March, 2010)

Spis treści

Defining and Understanding Service Chain Management.- Defining and Understanding Service Chain Management.- Customer Service: Emerging Requirements and Trends.- Customer Service: Emerging Requirements and Trends.- Resource Planning.- Strategic Resource Planning.- Forecasting and Demand Planning.- Tactical Resource Planning and Deployment.- Network Planning for Telecom and Utilities.- Reservation Management and Resource Scheduling.- Reservation Management and Resource CRM.- Demand Pricing and Revenue Management.- Personnel Shift Scheduling and Rostering.- Work Allocation and Scheduling.- People and Attendance Management.- Process, Communications and Information.- Flexible Workflows.- Personalised Communications.- Predictive Customer Analytics and Real-Time Business Intelligence.- The Agile Delivery of Service Chain Management Solutions.- The Future Service Chain.- Collaborative Demand Forecasting in Service Chains.- Business to Business Online Revenue Management.- Electronic Marketplaces and Resource Exchanges.- Multi-Agent Systems for Staff Empowerment.- Epilogue.- A Practical Guide to Benefit Realisation.

O autorze

Christos Voudouris and his co-authors are leading BT’s R&D in service and network optimisation. The team was formed in the mid-1990s and worked on developing technologies for the company's pioneering Work Manager system, which by 1998 was saving the company $150 million a year by automating and optimising the processes related to the company's extensive field service operations.

Technologies developed by the authors have also been incorporated in two spin-off companies and in software products from BT Global Services and others; they are currently used and benefiting in service companies world-wide. The authors are all recognised authorities in the subject of service optimisation, having won several national and international awards for their work from leading organisations such as INFORMS, the British Computer Society, and The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Blurb

Service chain management enables service organisations to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs through intelligent and optimised forecasting, planning and scheduling of the service chain, and its associated resources such as people, networks and other assets. The area is quite broad, covering field force and workforce automation, network and asset planning and also aspects of customer relationship management, human resources systems and enterprise resource planning. Furthermore, it addresses the key challenge of how all these technologies and systems are integrated into a cohesive blueprint.

In this book, Christos Voudouris and his group together with experts from industry and academia present the latest innovations and technologies used to manage the operations of a service company. The viewpoints presented are, based on the BT experience and on associated research and development in collaborating universities and partner companies. The focus is on real-world challenges and how technologies can be used to overcome practical problems in a "don’t just survive, thrive!" approach.

The unique combination of technologies, experiences and systems, looked at from the different perspectives of service providers and users and combined with advice on successful benefit realisation and agile delivery of solutions, makes this an indispensable read for managers and system architects in the service industry.