María del Mar González-Zamora

Specifying business services: learning from software engineering

Purpose – The specification of business services (BS) is one of the key factors for success in service provision. Researchers and practitioners have identified a set of problems in BS specification, namely: communication problems between providers and buyers, inaccurate specifications and changes in requirements. These problems were identified in the software engineering (SE) field many years ago, resulting in the development of many techniques and tools to address them. Given the similarities between the two fields, the purpose of this paper is to identify the main lessons learned in SE and to propose how they can be adapted to the BS field.Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes the form of a literature study and presents a conceptual solution.Findings – To address communications problems and inaccuracies in BS specification, a formal requirements specification stage is required. Requirements should be set out in a well‐structured written, definition, document which can be used at a subsequent sta...

Determinants of the outcomes of services outsourcing: An empirical study of transport services

The purpose of our study is to examine whether the design and management of the interfaces and interaction processes between customer and provider in services outsourcing are determinants of the results achieved by the outsourcing company. Following the conceptual framework initiated in the study by Wynstra et al. [11], this study focuses on transport services and hypothesized relationships are tested using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) statistical technique. The primary data used was obtained from a survey in three different countries (Germany, Japan and Spain), and from manufacturing companies in the electronics, automotive and machinery sectors. Among other things, the results show that both the structural dimensions of interaction (the organizations resources that it must commit) and the process dimensions of interaction (that consider the dynamic nature of the relationships), are important for obtaining adequate performance from transport services outsourcing.