Chapter 2 - Key Concepts Of Service Management Flashcards
Define ‘service management’
A set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services.
What must one understand in order to develop specialized organizational capabilities?
- the nature of value
- the nature and scope of the stakeholders involved
- how value creation is enabled through services
What is the purpose of an organization?
to create value for stakeholders
Define ‘value’
The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.
Value can be subjective. True or False?
true
Define ‘organization’
A person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve its objectives.
Define ‘customer’
A person who defines the requirements for a service and takes responsibility for the outcome of service consumption.
Define ‘user’
A person who uses services.
Define ‘sponsor’
A person who authorizes budget for service consumption.
Define ‘services’
A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.
Define ‘product’
A configuration of an organization’s resources designed to offer value for a consumer.
Define ‘service offering’
A formal description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. A service offering may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.
Outline the components of a service offering.
- Goods (supplied to the consumer, ownership is transferred to the consumer, consumer takes responsibility for future use); example: mobile phone, physical server
- Access to resources (ownership is not transferred to the consumer, access is granted or licensed to the consumer under agreed terms and conditions, the consumer can only access the resources during the agreed consumption period and according to other agreed service terms) example: access to the mobile network, or to network storage
- Service actions (performed by the service provider to address a consumer’s needs, performed according to an agreement with the consumer); example: user support, replacement of a piece of equipment
Define ‘service relationship’
A cooperation between a service provider and service consumer. Service relationships include service provision, service consumption, and service relationship management.
Define ‘service provision’
Activities performed by an organization to provide services. Service provision includes:
* management of the provider’s resources, configured to deliver the service
* ensuring access to these resources for users
* fulfillment of the agreed service actions
* service level management and continual improvement
Service provision may also include the supplying of goods.
Define ‘service consumption’
Activities performed by an organization to consume services. Service consumption includes:
* management of the consumer’s resources needed to use the service
* service actions performed by the users, including utilizing the provider’s resources, and requesting service actions to be fulfilled
Service consumption may also include the receiving (acquiring) of goods.
Define ‘service relationship management’
Joint activities performed by a service provider and a service consumer to ensure continual value co-creation based on agreed and available service offerings.
Define ‘output’
A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity.
Define ‘outcome’
A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.
Define ‘cost’
The amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource.
Define ‘risk’
A possible event that could cause harm or loss, or make it more difficult to achieve objectives. Can also be defined as uncertainty of outcome, and can be used in the context of measuring the probability of positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes.
What are two types of costs involved in service relationships (from the service consumer’s perspective)?
- costs removed from the consumer by the service ie staff, technology, other resources, which the consumer does not need to provide
- costs imposed on the consumer by the service (ie costs of service consumption), including staff training, network utilization, procurement, etc
What are the two types of risk that are of concern to service consumers?
- risks removed from a consumer by the service (part of the value prop). These may include failure of the consumer’s server hardware or lack of staff availability. In some cases, a service may only reduce a consumer’s risks, but the consumer may determine that this reduction is sufficient to support the value prop.
- risks imposed on a consumer by the service (risks of service consumption). An example of this would be a service provider ceasing to trade, or experiencing a security breach
Whose duty is it to manage the detailed level of risk on behalf of the consumer?
the provider
