Importance of Business Service Management - Assignment Example

Business Service Management Table of Contents Introduction 3 Purposes and Importance of Business Service Management 4 Application of Business Service Management 7 Limitations of the Business Service Management 12 Conclusion 13 References 14 Bibliography 16 Introduction Service management concept principally deals with the ways of delivering value to the customers. The main purpose of this management concept is to attain higher level of customer satisfaction and to reward the competitive advantages to the organisation. Management experts have often referred ‘change’ as the only constant word in this changing environment of business. Now-a-days, with the purpose to meet the changing needs of the customers and to provide them with higher satisfaction, organisations are incorporating advanced business service technologies. On the similar context, ‘Business Service Management’ is considered as a dynamic approach that assists the organisation to support its Information Technology (IT) operations in relation to its business functions (Darmawan & Et. Al., 2004). The paper studies the purpose of Business Service Management with respect to its importance and purposes in the organisations with due consideration to the service concept, customer segmentation and customer expectations and perceptions. Purposes and Importance of Business Service Management Service management can be defined as the management of IT infrastructure including software systems, hardware systems, documentations, communication techniques and facilities, as well as skills which enable the organisation to provide and maintain high quality in their services. Business Service Management can also be considered as the application of service management principles with an intention to enhance the quality of the services provided by the organisation. IT operations are required to maintain proper organisational infrastructure which further supports the systematic functioning of the business as stated in the application of service level agreements (Darmawan & Et. Al., 2004). Business Service Management is dedicated to holistic approach of changing and improving the service function of the organisation with due consideration to service concept, customer segmentation and customer expectations. In addition, Business Service Management helps in measuring and maintaining the service quality provided by the organisation. The main purpose of Business Service Management is to assist in improving operational efficiency in every dimension of the organisation and maintaining the quality of services offered. The major contribution of it can be observed in reducing and controlling the extra incurred expenses by integration and automation procedure (Meyer, 2008). Emergence of IT and its inclusion in the business operation are the smart ways adopted by the organisation to deliver the service with noteworthy quality assurance and in a time-efficient manner as well. Thus, these help in satisfying customer expectations and gaining competitive advantages. These factors are also helpful in dividing the customers in different segments so as to deliver quality services tailored according to the customer needs (Meyer, 2008). Business Service Management helps in establishing IT as an integral part of the operation in the organisation. IT acts as a strategic service supplier which helps in streamlining customer transactions and encourages productivity of the organisation resulting into the sustainable growth of the business. Business Service Management in the process tends to become a strategic partner of the organisation generating value for the brand. It also acts as the source of innovation within the organisation. Business Service Management not only signifies the advantages of the technology but also takes into consideration the people and the processes involved. Business Service Management is prepared in order to provide the customers with better services facilities and thus attain increasing customer satisfaction. This is an attempt of meeting customer needs and satisfaction. The functioning of the Business Service Management is shown in the below figure: Business Service Management Framework Source: (Rosemann & Et. Al., 2009). The above figure explains the framework of the Business Service Management. The Business Service Management includes service supplier management where suppliers of the resources are managed systematically with due consideration to their requirements and interests. Service customer management is another part of this framework where services related to the customers’ desires are managed. Service life cycle management of this framework is the vital part as the phase tends to depict the necessity of product innovation and re-innovation. Subsequently, the service enablement is considered as the most important part of the framework which depicts the availability of the service, the means and the ways adopted to make the service available to the customers and other similar aspects signifying the marketing efficiency of the organisation (Rosemann & Et. Al., 2009). Application of Business Service Management Business Service Management is designed to implement sustainable enhancement in terms of quality in order to meet customers’ requirements. Application of Business Service Management is done in every organisation, especially in those which are service oriented. Business Service Management mostly focuses on customer segmentation and analysing their expectations. Notably, service concept plays a major role in designing Business Service Management. Business Service Management offers flexible and reliable services which further help in enhancing the progress of the organisation (Goldstein & Et. Al., 2002). Business Service Management is designed in accordance with the service concept, customer segmentation and customer expectation, taking into account the satisfaction of the customers. In this context, SERVQUAL is a model which is frequently used by the organisation to check the service quality. It is worth mentioning that service concept is the key point in service design and development. The service concept is very important as it defines how the service design is necessary to be developed and what should it accommodate. One of the major importances of the service concept is that it acts as mediator between needs of the customers and the strategic goal of an organisation. While preparing of Business Service Management, service concept is taken into consideration as it helps to guide the management towards the actual needs of the customers (Goldstein & Et. Al., 2002). While designing new service or redesigning the existing service processes, with respect to the required need of the changed business environment, managers are supposed to take decisions related to each components in this context. The decision can be major in nature such as, resource availability, location of the facility or minor decision, for instance, the colour of the bottles. Managers are responsible to take numerous decisions for even a simple service e.g. undertaking the new or redesigning the existing service process from the initial stage of developing an idea, through the phases when designing is done, to the final stage of delivering the service to the customers. Enormous number and wide variety of decisions are required to be taken for designing and delivering the services offered throughout the organisational structure. This has often been witnessed as the ongoing process in a few organisations which are especially service oriented (Goldstein & Et. Al., 2002). Developing Business Service Management strategy becomes quite easy for the designer if significant consideration is provided to the aspect of service concept. As service concept defines the exact need of the designing or redesigning the process of service formulation to service delivery, the Business Service Management so prepared can be referred as more effective. With a similar point of view, Collier (1994) stated the service concept as a ‘customer benefit package’. To be precise, it is considered to be the thing which provides the customers with their demanded benefits and values. Business Service Management so developed is proved to be highly beneficial for the grounding of service concept (Collier, 1994). It is worth mentioning that needs vary from customers to customers due to which a particular product becomes incapable to satisfy the requirement of every customer. Thus, customer segmentation emerges as quite essential in accordance with delivering right product to the right group of customers. Customer segmentation can be referred to as dividing the entire population of customers into particular groups with respect to their tastes, desires and needs. Customers’ segmentation becomes vital in Business Service Management. As their interests are different in nature, various products are to be developed to meet the needs of the customers from different segmentation of the customers. In this context, Business Service Management plays a critical role such as with advanced technology the organisation is capable of producing different modified goods in minimum time because of which maximum customers can be served. The process of delivering services has also been witnessed to change with the purpose of satisfying the expectations of each customer group. Different products are developed with the help of different technologies. Thus, different Business Service Management requires to be developed for production and delivery of different services in keeping with the customers’ needs. Business Service Management has enabled the organisations to meet the demands of different groups of customers in an effective way. It adds efficiency to the process of customer segmentation as maximum needs of the customers can be met in the minimum time. Customer expectation and perception is also one of the key components of Business Service Management. Business Service Management is developed with an intention to meet customer expectation. But meeting customers’ expectations is not an easy task done by the management of the organisations. Identifying perception is a very critical and complex by nature. GAPS model of SERVQUAL (Service Quality) is highly used by the organisations to determine the quality of the services so that the services available to the customers are compatible with their needs and desires (Shawyun, 2009). SERVQUAL can be depicted as a tool used by the management of the organisations to measure expectations and perceptions of the customers. It is developed by undertaking ten dimensions which are reliability, competence, responsiveness, courtesy, credibility, access, communication, security, understanding and tangibles. Among these, reliability is of main importance. Being more precise, reliability is the ability of the organisation to perform as promised. This indicates that the services provided to the customers are dependable and accurate and also the quality of the service is sustained (Buttle, 1996). GAPS model of SERVQUAL is very effective in guiding the management of the organisation towards the development of such products which would be accepted by the customers. This helps the management in identifying the expectations and the perceptions of the customers. The GAPS model is very important, as it helps in identifying the customer behaviour towards the services offered in the market which is usually done through market research. It also helps in establishing good relationships among the customers and the organisations. If the service is not up to the mark, after observing the feedback from the market, the organisations can improve their services on the given parameters by redesigning it (Madison, 2001). Figure: The GAPs Model of SERVQUAL Source: (Madison, 2001) After identifying the gaps, the Business Service Management is developed according to the requirement of the organisations. Business Service Management has contributed in improving the service process of the organisation as it considers the inclusion of advanced technologies while preparing strategies. This helps in reducing time which in return enables the organisation to provide the services to a maximum number of the customers, being a time-efficient process at the same time. In order to reduce these gaps, management needs to take into consideration the employees’ willingness or contribution to provide the services and sustain the quality of the products. The management can take the steps in identifying the required skills and knowledge of the employees. Particular knowledge and skills are always linked to develop the certain products. Therefore, it can be stated that the role of the GAPS model is to enable the management to develop the skills and knowledge in the responsible personnel required and produce the goods maintaining the margin of quality assurance (Shawyun, 2009). With adequate development of the Business Service Management, an organisation can be highly benefited in enhancing its productivity as well as reducing the gaps between the customers’ expectation and its objectives. Thus, Business Service Management can contribute a lot in meeting the needs of the organisation. Here, Business Service Management plays a very critical role as it empowers the management of the organisation to improve and recover the gaps existing amid the service providers and service consumers (Shawyun, 2009). Limitations of the Business Service Management Though Business Service Management offers many advantages for a modern organisation, it does come with certain limitations. Developing Business Service Management is quite complex job and requires high qualifications. Furthermore, the Business Service Management process involved is very expensive in nature as the advanced technologies are used in it. Developing Business Service Management should be done with consideration to the requirement of the business rather than just incorporating high-tech devices. Business Service Management includes technologies which are very advanced and can act as the barrier between the customers and the organisations. For instance, sophisticated technologies are often not understood by common people and so it can be sidelined by the people who do not understand its affects in the market share of the company. Accommodating Business Service Management to advance the production or manufacturing process is an expensive process. Thus, the organisations implementing this management concept requires providing extensive pressure on the sales unit to attain the desired profit margin after such huge investments. This can in turn have a negative influence for the organisation (Donegan & Meyer, 2008). Conclusion Business Service Management is the modern approach adopted by the organisation with an intention to meet the needs of the customers. This involves the merger of IT with business operation so that better means of delivering the services can be identified and developed. In this changing scenario of business environment, organisations need to come up with different approaches in order to attract as well as sustain the customers. Business Service Management is entirely devoted to change and fix the gaps, if any, in the operations of the organisation. It is noteworthy that strategies adopted by the organisation while preparing Business Service Management are devoted towards identifying the customers by segmentation. It contributes in organisational growth by making the management understand the expectations of the customers as well as eliminating the identified gaps in service quality and thus obtain competitive advantages. References Buttle, F., 1996. SERVQUAL: Review, Critique, Research Agenda. European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30, Iss.1, pp.8-32. Collier, D. A., 1994. The Service/Quality Solution: Using Service Management to Gain Competitive Advantage. ASQC Quality Press. Darmawan, B. & Et. Al., 2004. Business Service Management Best Practices. Redbooks. [Online] Available at: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg247053.pdf [Accessed November 11, 2011]. Donegan, M & Meyer, S., 2008. IT Initiatives for Business Service Management. Technology Brief: Business Service Management. [Online] Available at: http://www.ca.com/files/technologybriefs/bsm-4-initiatives-tb-us-en.pdf [Accessed November 11, 2011]. Goldstein, S. M. & Et. Al., 2002. The Service Concept: The Missing Link in Service Design Research? Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 20, pp.121-134. Madison, J., 2001. The Integrated Gaps Model of Service Quality. MKTG/HTM 386. [Online] Available at: http://cob.jmu.edu/reidrd/Slides/gaps%20model.PDF [Accessed November 11, 2011]. Meyer, S., 2008. Business Service Management Links IT Services to Business Goals. Transferring IT Management. [Online] Available at: http://www.ca.com/files/whitepapers/bsm_definition_wp.pdf [Accessed November 11, 2011]. Rosemann, M. & Et. Al., 2009. Business Service Management. Smart Services CRC. [Online] Available at: http://www.smartservicescrc.com.au/PDF/BSM_White_Paper.pdf [Accessed November 11, 2011]. Shawyun, T., 2009. Service Quality and the AuQS 2000 Quality Management System. Assumption University Quality Assurance. [Online] Available at: http://www.qa.au.edu/page2/auqs2000/ServiceQuality.pdf [Accessed November 11, 2011]. Bibliography Benatallah, B. & Et. Al., 2005. Service-Oriented Computing: ICSOC 2005: Third International Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December 12-15, 2005 : Proceedings. Birkhäuser. Johnston, R. & Clark, G., 2007. Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, 2/E. Pearson Education India. Read More