Reuse-Mechanisms for Mass Customizing IT-Service Agreements

Divergent requirements of customers limit the potential of information technology (IT) service providers to achieve economies of scale through the standardization of service agreements. Continuous change requests in ongoing IT-service relationships complicate matters even more. Mass customization strategies have successfully addressed similar challenges in industrial sectors by reusing, i.e. composing and adapting standardized modules. Transforming this strategy to IT-service management, we present an approach of reuse-based IT-service customization in order to increase both effectiveness and efficiency at the stages of initial service specification, customization of offerings, and continuous adjustment of ongoing service agreements. This is proposed to be achieved by adopting well-established reusemechanisms of reference information modeling. Their strict application in service agreement specification aims for enabling industrialized on-demand service contracting and provisioning. The approach has been developed and prototypically applied in close cooperation with IT-organizations

How to Provide the Desirable Business Outcome in International IT Projects: A Cross-Case Analysis

Rising complexity of international IT projects has compelled service providers to re-define their customer-service approach. This paper uses a case study method to identify critical success factors for customer interaction as IT service providers run projects to deliver services to intrafirm end-users. Our analysis found that process-level, social and psychological factors were decisive in promoting successful provider-customer relationships. Three major factors - knowledge of the customer’s business and it’s need of IT-support, a close project collaboration and trustful, clear, understandable communication - are the cornerstone of successful IT service practices when coupled with a clear customer-oriented value proposition. Therefore, we identified the “bridgehead”-concept as an effective method to close a lack of understanding between business and IT. Our results suggest that both the provider and customer benefit from a close and iterative calibration of needs and services, with a high level of transparency, to ensure process efficiency and customer satisfaction

A methodical procedure for designing consumer oriented on-demand IT service propositions

IT providers are increasingly facing the challenge to adapt their previously resource oriented service portfolios in order to offer their customers services which explicitly support business processes. Such customer centric service propositions, however, seem to contradict the demand for standardized and automated operational IT processes more than traditional IT service offers, as they are even more subject to customer individual reengineering efforts due to permanently changing business requirements. In order to reconcile increased efficiency in operational processes and effectiveness in consumer oriented service propositions, we propose (1) to predefine all service propositions in consideration of both consumer oriented commitments and operational processes, and (2) to allow for standardized customization by offering a selection of complementary service propositions that extend commitments regarding customer oriented functionality and performance. Such service propositions are aligned with a company's entities such as workplaces. Thereby the customer organization is enabled to trace, control and adjust commitments, value and expenses of IT services per entity in its business. We introduce a procedural model for designing and on-demand requesting this kind of service propositions, and we illustrate the model's application and impact by examples taken from two large projects with an associated IT provide

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

Aligning IT-service propositions to changing business requirements in ongoing servicesystems

In order to form value-oriented service-systems with their customer organizations, IT-providers are increasingly required to orientate their service offerings towards the ongoing support of their customers’ business processes with IT. Nevertheless, predominantly resource-focused and transactional IT-service propositions are offered that lack transparency in both value added and expenses per service for the customer’s business. As a first step in our research in progress that aims for a conceptual basis for the design of IT-service propositions in value-oriented servicesystems, we apply service-dominant logic to IT-service propositions. Simultaneously, however, the bit for standardized and automated IT-operations processes has to be taken into account when designing such service propositions. Based on current service-system research, we propose (1) to predefine service propositions in consideration of both commitments and operational processes and (2) to introduce additional ‘shaping propositions’ to customize and allow for the continuous adaption of the IT-service to functionality and performance changes. In order to maintain transparency in and control of the current service agreement and its expenses, these propositions orientate themselves toward business objects in the customer’s field of responsibility

Success Factors in IT-Projects to Provide Customer Value Propositions

Rising external competition and cost-pressures compel internal service providers to re-define their customer- service approach. Providing value propositions to the intra-firm end-users instead of provisioning technical resources becomes a necessity to facilitate transparency in costs and customer satisfaction. With that, the complexity of IT projects, particularly international ones, rises and changes in regards to impacts of inter-social and human factors. This paper uses a cross-case study method based on five cases to identify critical success factors for achieving IT-project success and the provision of the needed value propositions. Our analysis found that seven major factors are essential for the project success when coupled with a clear customer-oriented value proposition: one of the most important ones is to understand the customer’s business and with it to identify the end-user’s requirements. Furthermore, a close project collaboration, process alignment and trustful, clear communication as well the right choice of personnel emerge as important factors. Inter-social factors like support of the top-management and the early identification of stakeholders are equally crucial. Top management support acts as enabler for all these success factors. With the insight into requirements and impacts of each success factor, this cross-case study poses as operational guidance to achieve value propositions in IT-projects

Blockchains for Business Process Management - Challenges and Opportunities

Blockchain technology promises a sizable potential for executing inter-organizational business processes without requiring a central party serving as a single point of trust (and failure). This paper analyzes its impact on business process management (BPM). We structure the discussion using two BPM frameworks, namely the six BPM core capabilities and the BPM lifecycle. This paper provides research directions for investigating the application of blockchain technology to BPM.Comment: Preprint for ACM TMI

Short- and long-term effects of emotion up- and down-regulation

It is an open question in cognitive emotion regulation research how emotion regulation unfolds over time, and whether the brain regions involved in down-regulation are also recruited during up-regulation of emotions. As a replication and extension of our preceding study, we conducted an fMRI study in young healthy adults on the neural basis of up- and down-regulation of negative and neutral pictures during the immediate stimulation phase as well as after short- and long-term delays (N = 47 for immediate and short-term delays, a subset of N = 30 for long-term delays). For this, we employed three experimental conditions – down-regulation (distance), maintenance (permit), and up-regulation (intensify) – for negative and neutral pictures, and investigated the neural responses during the stimulation and post- stimulation phase as well as during re-exposure after 10 min and after 1 week. We observed the following main results: first, we found greater activation in emotion-generating regions such as the amygdala in the permit vs. distance and the intensify vs. distance comparisons, but not in the intensify vs. permit comparison. Second, we observed greater activation in emotion-regulating regions such as the right inferior parietal and right superior / middle frontal cortex in the distance vs. permit and the distance vs. intensify contrasts, but not the permit vs. intensify contrast. Third, we found that the activation difference between distance and intensify within the amygdala reversed after the regulation period. Fourth, previous emotion regulation did not influence the activation during re-exposure, neither after 10 minutes nor after 1 week. Taken together, the results provide a partial replication of persistent effects observed in our preceding study, indicate different neural systems for up- and down-regulation, and demonstrate that a broader perspective on emotion regulation can be achieved by simultaneously considering different goals, directions, and strategies of emotion regulation in a single experiment

Temporal dynamics of emotion regulation – Regulatory and post-regulatory effects of emotion up- and down-regulation

It is an open question in cognitive emotion regulation research how emotion regulation unfolds over time, and whether the brain regions involved in down-regulation are also recruited during up-regulation of emotions. As a replication and extension of our preceding study, we conducted an fMRI study in N=47 young healthy adults on the neural basis of up- and down-regulation of negative and neutral pictures during the immediate stimulation phase as well as after short- and long-term delays. For this, we employed three experimental conditions – down-regulation (distance), maintenance (permit), and up-regulation (intensify) – for negative and neutral stimuli, and investigated the neural responses during the stimulation and post-stimulation phase as well as during re-exposure after 10 min and after 1 week. We observed the following main results: first, greater activation in emotion-generating regions such as the amygdala in the permit vs. distance and the intensify vs. distance comparisons, but not in the intensify vs. permit comparison. Second, greater activation in emotion-regulating regions such as the right inferior parietal and right superior / middle frontal cortex activation in the distance vs. permit and the distance vs. intensify contrasts, but not the permit vs. intensify contrast. Third, the activation difference between distance and intensify within the amygdala reversed after the regulation period. Fourth, previous emotion regulation did not influence the activation during re-exposure, neither after 10 minutes nor after 1 week. Taken together, the results provide a partial replication of persistent effects observed in our preceding study, indicate different neural systems for up- and down-regulation, and demonstrate that a broader perspective on emotion regulation can be achieved by simultaneously considering different goals, directions, and strategies of emotion regulation in a single experiment