The primary objective of the project will be to research trends, issues, and ‘next practices’ in IT-based services, including:

• Services as part of the firm’s offering to customers:  these are services that deliver value directly to customers.  The supplier applies their skill, knowledge, and experience to undertake an activity and provide a result to a customer.  The service may be embedded in a product (for example, performance monitoring of an MRI unit in a hospital), bundled with a product, or be pure information or labour.  The service may be delivered through the product, by specialized staff on site, or over the Internet. 
• Customer support:  these are the more traditional customer services that firms offer to help customers use their products, solve tactical problems, and so on.  Unless a field organization is truly required, most customer service today is delivered through call centre and/or Internet channels.

Key questions

The project will seek to answer several key questions regarding the role and evolution of services in major firms:

• What is driving the provision of services related to the product or offering?  Are services becoming more important to the firm?  Is revenue and profit shifting from product to service sales?  What is the role of IT in these services in B2B and B2C markets?
• Enterprises both consume and produce services.  How is the mix of purchased services and customer-facing services changing?  What is the implied change in strategic direction?  What is the impact on organization?
• What is the service value proposition?  Are these ‘product leader’ services associated with cutting edge products?  Or are they ‘customer intimate’, offering a service tailored to meet a particular customer’s needs?  What about services that are simultaneously very cost efficient and also very tailored to customers (for example, Amazon)?  How are these services priced?
• What is the role of skilled people in these services, where do they add value, and how do they work with technology?  Are they adding value in the interaction with the customer, perhaps supported by technology and databases (for example, financial advisors)?  Or are they invisible to the customer and contributing through the software and sophisticated analytics that may underlie a service (for example, credit card processing and fraud detection)?
• What is the nature of ‘customer lock in’, if any, related to services?  How is loyalty created and maintained?
• How are more traditional customer support services changing?  Are they improving or getting worse?  What is the role of IT here?  What innovations are finding resonance in the market?
• What is the role of Enterprise IT in the development and provision of these services?  If Enterprise IT is not developing the needed IT for these services, who is?

Project scope and examples

Several generic types of services are of interest:

• B2C:
  
  
  1. Call-centre based customer service.
  2. Powerful diagnostics and/or self-service over the Internet (for example, Amazon or Dell).
  3. Services supporting sales and service agents in the field.

• B2B:
  
  
  1. Call-centre based customer service for users.
  2. On-site experts supported by technology-mediated capabilities accessible over the web.
  3. Services tied to an installed base of products at the customer.
  4. Tailored on-site business process provision, BPO.

Target industries:

• High tech machines, products, and automation.
• Health care and pharmaceuticals.
• Defence.
• Financial services.
• Consumer electronics and telecoms.
• Vehicles.