Haluk Demirkan

Moving Forward and Making a Difference: Research Priorities for the Science of Service

Given the significant, sustained growth in services experienced worldwide, Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership embarked on an 18-month effort to identify and articulate a set of global, interdisciplinary research priorities focused on the science of service. Diverse participation from academics in a variety of disciplines working in institutions around the world—in collaboration with business executives who lead organizations ranging from small startups to Global 1000 companies—formed the basis for development of the priorities. The process led to the identification of the following 10 overarching research priorities: • Fostering service infusion and growth • Improving well-being through transformative service • Creating and maintaining a service culture • Stimulating service innovation • Enhancing service design • Optimizing service networks and value chains • Effectively branding and selling services • Enhancing the service experience through cocreation • Measuring and optimizing the value of service • Leveraging technology to advance service For each priority, several important and more specific topic areas for service research emerged from the process. The intent is that the priorities will spur service research by shedding light on the areas of greatest value and potential return to academia, business, and government. Through academic, business, and government collaboration, we can enhance our understanding of service and create new knowledge to help tackle the most important opportunities and challenges we face today.

Leveraging the capabilities of service-oriented decision support systems: Putting analytics and big data in cloud

Using service-oriented decision support systems (DSS in cloud) is one of the major trends for many organizations in hopes of becoming more agile. In this paper, after defining a list of requirements for service-oriented DSS, we propose a conceptual framework for DSS in cloud, and discus about research directions. A unique contribution of this paper is its perspective on how to servitize the product oriented DSS environment, and demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of engineering service oriented DSS in cloud. When we define data, information and analytics as services, we see that traditional measurement mechanisms, which are mainly time and cost driven, do not work well. Organizations need to consider value of service level and quality in addition to the cost and duration of delivered services. DSS in CLOUD enables scale, scope and speed economies. This article contributes new knowledge in service science by tying the information technology strategy perspectives to the database and design science perspectives for a broader audience.

Service-oriented technology and management: Perspectives on research and practice for the coming decade

Service-oriented technologies and management have gained attention in the past few years, promising a way to create the basis for agility so that companies can deliver new, more flexible business processes that harness the value of the services approach from a customers perspective. Service-oriented approaches are used for developing software applications and software-as-a-service that can be sourced as virtual hardware resources, including on-demand and utility computing. The driving forces come from the software engineering community and the e-business community. Service-oriented architecture promotes the loose coupling of software components so that interoperability across programming languages and platforms, and dynamic choreography of business processes can be achieved. Nevertheless, one of todays most pervasive and perplexing challenges for senior managers deals with how and when to make a commitment to the new practices. The purpose of this article is to shed light on multiple issues associated with service-oriented technologies and management by examining several interrelated questions: why is it appropriate now to study the related business problems from the point of view of services research? What new conceptual frameworks and theoretical perspectives are appropriate for studying service-oriented technologies and management? What value will a service science and business process modeling offer to the firms that adopt them? And, how can these approaches be implemented so as to address the major challenges that organizations face with technology, information and strategy? We contribute new knowledge in this area by tying the economics and information technology strategy perspectives to the semantic and design science perspectives for a broader audience. Usually the more technical perspective is offered on a standalone basis, and confined to the systems space - even when the discussion is about business processes. This article also offers insights on these issues from the multiple perspectives of industry and academic thought leaders.

An Interdisciplinary Perspective on IT Services Management and Service Science

The increasing importance of information technology (IT) services in the global economy prompts researchers in the field of information systems (IS) to give special attention to the foundations of managerial and technical knowledge in this emerging arena of knowledge. Already we have seen the computer science discipline embrace the challenges of finding new directions in design science toward making services-oriented computing approaches more effective, setting the stage for the development of a new science—service science, management, and engineering (SSME). This paper addresses the issues from the point of view of service science as a fundamental area for IS research. We propose a robust framework for evaluating the research on service science, and the likely outcomes and new directions that we expect to see in the coming decade. We emphasize the multiple roles of producers and consumers of services-oriented technology innovations, as well as value-adding seller intermediaries and systems integrators, and standards organizations, user groups, and regulators as monitors. The analysis is cast in multidisciplinary terms, including computer science and IS, economics and finance, marketing, and operations and supply chain management. Evaluating the accomplishments and opportunities for research related to the SSME perspective through a robust framework enables in-depth assessment in the present, as well as an ongoing evaluation of new knowledge in this area, and the advancement of the related management practice capabilities to improve IT services in organizations.

Data, information and analytics as services

While organizations are trying to become more agile to better respond to market changes in the midst of rapidly globalizing competition by adopting service orientation-commoditization of business processes, architectures, software, infrastructures and platforms-they are also facing new challenges. In this article, we provide a conceptual framework for service oriented managerial decision making process, and briefly explain the potential impact of service oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing on data, information and analytics. Today, SOA, cloud computing, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 are converging, and transforming the information technology ecosystem for the better while imposing new complexities. With this convergence, a large amount of structured and unstructured data is being created and shared over disparate networks and virtual communities. To cope and/or to take advantage of these changes, we are in need of finding new and more efficient ways to collect, store, transform, share, utilize and dispose data, information and analytics.

Coordination Strategies in an SaaS Supply Chain

The computing industry is gradually evolving to cater to the demand for software-as-a-service (SaaS). Two core competencies that have emerged over the past few years are that of the application service providers (ASPs) and the application infrastructure providers (AIPs). The arrangements between them result in system dynamics that is typical in supply chain networks. We examine the performance of an SaaS set up under different coordination strategies between these two players. Our analysis indicates that coordination between the monopoly ASP and the AIP can result in an outcome with the same overall surplus as can be achieved by a central planner. Even though the players have an incentive to deviate, it is possible to create the right incentives so that the economically efficient outcome is also the Nash equilibrium. The results of the analysis have significant implications for the coordination strategies for providers in the burgeoning business model of delivering software services over the Internet.

The Risk and Information Sharing of Application Services Supply Chain

Abstract We study an application services supply chain consisting of one application service provider (ASP) and one application infrastructure provider (AIP). The AIP supplies the computer capacity to the ASP that in turn sells the value-added application services to the market. The market is characterized by a price-sensitive random demand. The ASP’s objective is to determine the optimal price of its service to the market and the optimal capacity to purchase from the AIP. The AIP’s goal on the other hand is to maximize its profit from selling the capacity to the ASP. In this paper, we examine the supply chain’s performance under different coordination strategies involving risk and information sharing between the ASP and the AIP. We find several key managerial insights from our model. Most importantly, we find an effective decentralized mechanism to achieve the goal of maximizing the overall supply chain performance. Absent this effective mechanism, we find that it is better to let the player closer to the market coordinate the supply chain.

Seven key interventions for data warehouse success

The success of data warehouses depends on the interaction of technology and social context. We present new insights into the implementation process and interventions that can lead to success.

A Smart Healthcare Systems Framework

A cost-effective and sustainable healthcare information system relies on the ability to collect, process, and transform healthcare data into information, knowledge, and action. However, in implementing such systems, healthcare providers face many complex and unique challenges. This article proposes a systematic framework for conceptualizing data-driven and mobile- and cloud-enabled smart healthcare systems. With adoption of smart healthcare systems, healthcare organizations can provide cost-effective quality healthcare services with less IT set-up costs and reduced risk.

The Science of Service Systems

The Science of Service Systems intends to stimulate discussion and understanding by presenting theory-based research with actionable results. Most of the articles focus on formalizing the theoretical foundations for a science of service systems, examining a wide range of substantive issues and implementations related to service science from various perspectives. From the formal (ontologies, representation specifications, decision-making and maturity models) to the informal (analysis frameworks, design heuristics, anecdotal observations), these contributions provide a snapshot in time of the gradually emerging scientific understanding of service systems. The Science of Service Systems, along with its companion text, Service Systems Implementation, is designed to present multidisciplinary and multisectoral perspectives on the nature of service systems, on research and practice in service, and on the future directions to advance service science. These two volumes compose a collection of articles from those involved in the emerging area known as service science.