Mass Customizing IT Service Agreements: Towards Individualized On-Demand Services

IT-service providers shall achieve both cost reduction in IT-operations and customer individuality inservice agreements. This article suggests applying the well known principle of mass customization tobalance individuality and standardization in service agreements. Dependent on the commitmentmodularity type, its employment may not only save time and resources at the point of customerinvolvement but also allow the predefinition of repeatable processes in IT-operations. We develop atypology for positioning and classifying IT-service providers as mass customizers of serviceagreements. This categorization is based on commitment modularity types and points of customerinvolvement in the IT-service life cycle. We identify four generic archetypes of IT-service providers’customization strategies and explain their characteristics by means of selected examples of actual ITserviceagreement situations. Finally, we introduce a service model that enables IT-service providersto implement one specific archetype with a great balance in standardization and individuality. Wetherefore propose to (1) strictly separate the design of services from contracting and usage stages, (2)modularize self-contained commitments and (3) productize options and changes of a serviceagreement. This model has been prototyped and developed in close cooperation with IT-serviceproviders and is currently applied for a pilot project

Management und IT: Tagungsband zur AKWI-Fachtagung vom 16. bis 18.09.2012 an der Hochschule Pforzheim

Wirtschaftsinformatik befasst sich mit allen Themen, die an der Schnittstelle zwischen Informatik und Betriebswirtschaft anzutreffen sind. So geht es in der Wirtschaftsinformatik – basierend auf dem Wissen und dem Verstehen der betriebswirtschaftlichen Konzepte und Anwendungen – insbesondere darum, IT-Systeme für die betriebliche Praxis zu entwickeln, einzuführen und zu betreiben. Eine wissenschaftliche Fachtagung, die den Titel „Management und IT“ trägt, setzt an einer solchen Beschreibung der Wirtschaftsinformatik an