Per-Olof Brehmer

Managing industrial service offerings in global business markets

Purpose – Despite the increased focus on industrial services in manufacturing companies, little research to date has focused on understanding the roles of local and central organizations in global ...

Managing industrial service offerings requirements on content and processes

This paper develops a typology for industrial service offerings, inter-relating service scope (degree of bundling), service focus (level of customer integration), and service process interfaces. Di ...

Proactive and reactive: drivers for key account management programmes

Purpose - Key account management (KAM) programmes are a way for companies to develop existing relationships and increase sales, thus being proactive and searching for opportunities (which is often ...

Business development with electronic commerce: refinement and repositioning

Electronic commerce enables business development for marketing channel intermediaries and strengthens their existing operations and strategic management. This research shows that electronic commerce provides stepwise business development refinement and repositioning in the form of process change and increased customer service. Based on marketing and logistics literature, a business development model with three developmental phases is proposed in this paper. The findings are based on the electronic commerce development of three intermediaries providing industrial products and services in the northern European market. Refinement is achieved through a focus on activities for internal efficiency, and through changing processes for increased integration, shorter time and lower costs. Repositioning involves extended focus on service improvements, image and customer tailored services. It is found that electronic commerce has not radically reshaped and developed the role of marketing channel intermediaries. Instead, it has strengthened existing business. Future electronic commerce efforts need to be viewed in a business wide development context, including structural change and reaching new segments or markets, to utilise fully the development potential of electronic commerce.

Technology as a driver for changing customer‐provider interfaces

The purpose of this paper is to explore how information and communication technology (ICT) is affecting and driving changes in the service processes and customer interfaces of capital goods manufac ...

Sourcing, insourcing and two times outsourcing: four phases of procurement of telecommunications services within the Swedish public sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how and why the question of outsourcing or insourcing within a specific empirical context, telecommunications services, has been handled differently over time.Design/methodology/approach – A longitudinal study on procurement of telecommunications for the Swedish public sectors organizations during the last 40 years. The empirical data were collected from three case studies and one research project.Findings – The paper identifies four phases: from a simple buying situations, via insourcing of equipment in order to produce some services in‐house, to outsourcing of telecommunications in a first step and to outsourcing of combined data and telecommunications in a second step. Three major contextual determinants are identified for the public procurement of telecommunications services: de‐monopolization, rapid technical development and pressure on public agencies from politicians, citizens and others. In addition to low cost, core competence, contr...

Managing Supplier Relations with the Balanced Scorecard

As a consequence of increased outsourcing, companies become more and more virtual organisations and dependent upon external sources to reach their strategic objectives. Here, lacking supplier performance or commitment can result in failure of the outsourcing programme that significantly risks the financial results of the outsourcing company. Consequently, when outsourcing it is important to assure that the supplier performs as expected. This study uses a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspective for investigating performance measurements in outsourcing. The results illustrate the importance of a process perspective when outsourcing (securing volume, high quality at the right time). Formulating a BSC for a supplier, an outsourcing company could better control/steer the supplier on an output/performance level.

The Strategic Importance of Supplier Relationships in the Automotive Industry

The aim of this paper is to analyse longitudinally the development of purchasing strategies in the automotive industry during the last 20 years. The amplitude of the business cycle during this time frame has been very high and includes periods of financial/automotive crisis as well as high sales and demand. Our empirical data is primarily drawn from a 1990–2010 longitudinal case study of the relationship between automaker Volvo Personal Cars and Autoliv, a supplier of seat belts and airbags, complemented with secondary data framing the development of the industry level. The theoretical focus is on outsourcing and purchasing strategies developed within long-lasting buyer-supplier relationships; theoretical pillars are found in transaction-cost theories and the resource-based view of the firm. Based on the longitudinal case study, our analysis pinpoints the importance of intimate cooperation between customer and supplier in areas close to the core values and core competences of the buyer (that is, the automaker). From an industry-level perspective, the winners in the automobile industry from 2010 and onwards have been and will be those who can organize long-term collaboration partnerships between the automakers, their suppliers, and the political stakeholders, and who can outsource a large part of the technical development to the suppliers in areas also close to the core competences. The automakers must accept that their suppliers have competing automakers as their customers and search for synergies in their product portfolio. Theoretically, there is a need for conceptual development through deeper studies of the firms relational capability and its implications.