Business Models

Customer Service as an add-on for products is accepted as an important factor for international competition. It is also very often established as a business unit. In the following article not only problems are discussed for pricing and costing in customer service, but also methods for solving these problems are pointed out, how to appropriately calculate costs according to the input involved as basis for customer oriented pricing.

Performance contracting changes the way of cooperation between customer and supplier substantially and turns a former product business into a service business. Both from supplier’s and customer’s point of view several reasons exist why to adopt contracting solutions. The actual market adoption, however, is still moderate. After the introduction of the peculiarities of performance contracting, this paper deals with the causes of market resistance and the most important barriers of launching the respective solutions. Based on empirical observations proposals are developed in order to overcome the resistance.

This article analyzes how and to which extent ERP application modules are supported by the use of mobile technology. Features provided by ERP vendors and real-world solutions using mobile applications are presented. We discuss how the utility of ERP systems can be en-hanced through mobile components. Our investigation shows that most mobile business applications are found in the modules sales and customer service. On the other hand, ERP areas like finance, accounting and controlling do not yet exploit the potential of mobile technology significantly.