Services

This article aims at pointing out both theoretical starting points and a conceptual framework for the management of services. The theoretical considerations take up the concept of the bundles of values and the interpretation of services as solutions to customers’ problems. On the conceptual level, a structuring of the complex ma- nagement problem is proposed. This makes it possible to identify relevant action fields and to subject to a differentiated analysis.

Innovative services increasingly represent a critical factor for industrial enterprises to differ from competitors. While the industrial engineering was optimized over decades, services generally are designed unsystematically. This results inefficient planning and failures in meeting the needs of the customer. The article gives an overview on basic forms of existing service engineering procedure models and describes a generic, ICT-supported framework for the service-specific design of development processes.

Service companies and service offering industrial enterprises face new challenges. These include the increasing substitution of similar goods and services from one enterprise with those of another, dynamic resources and the emancipation of the customer caused by the change from a seller’s to a buyer’s market. Knowledge about their own abilities, the customer’s needs, as well as their integration into a service strategy become critical success factors of an enterprise.

Knowledge as strategic resource becomes even more important now than in the past, because of the turbulent change experienced by a company and its operating environment. Therefore, innovative service companies attempt to bundle the existing knowledge in the company and to use it optimal. Through the accumulation of know-ledge, competencies arise which the competitor has difficulties imitating and which create a competitive advantage. The learning history method can now help to recover implicit knowledge in the company, to improve processes and to strengthen the service competence.

CRM manages customer interactions in marketing, sales and service. Based on an empirical survey the barriers for product configuration software to support the sales process in the automation industry are presented. In this industry, CRM systems are currently primarily employed for the optimization of after-sales services.