Two Different Ways of Innovating with Information Technology
The New York Times and Boston Scientific :
Two Different Ways of Innovating with Information Technology 1. As stated in the case, The New York Times chose to deploy their innovation support group as a shared service across business units. What do you think this means? What are the advantages of choosing this approach? Are there any disadvantages?
Shared services have long been seen as a supporting unit for the rest of the business with limited impact outside of the bottom line. However, companies and directors of shared services face mounting pressure to make significant contributions other than to the bottom line.
Growth and innovation, two of the most critical
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Hence the rationale for shared services can be summarized as the need organizations to : • Align accounting services with the busniness strategy • Eliminate non value added activities • Streamline administrative processes • Reduce costs • Obtain consistent information across sites and countries • Free up resources for core business operations • Increase efficiency and effectiveness in non core processes The growth of shared services is increasingly linked to the broader restructuring of businesses along the global lines and the need to establish solid platforms for rapid global growth. Typically, drivers for implementing shared services are often related to costs, quality, speed, dependability and flexibility.
Disadvantages :
The decision-making process is longer and more complex. More people are involved in the decision-making process, representing different facets of the business. 2. Boston Scientific faced the challenge of balancing openness and sharing with security and the need for restricting access to information. How did the use of technology allow the company to achieve both objectives at the same times? What kind of cultural changes were required for this to be possible? Are these more important than the technology-related issues? Develop a few examples to justify your answer.
The company seek out software that allows the broader
Decision-making in the workforce is a process of responsibilities used by upper management to implement, enforce rules, regulations, and maintain a successful environment. Decision-making implemented more effectively by making a plan, thinking it through, accepting more than one opinion and determining what is best. However, decision-making often utilized more effectively by opening doors of opportunities for a suggestion, question, discussion, and feedback. Although, more involvement helps improve understanding, utilize behavior skills and present opportunities for better communication. Everyday life consists of decision-making, the right decision may not always be applied, but ensure room for improvement and opportunity. Individuals approached decision-making in many different ways. As stated by (Jones, Graham, & Bateman, 2006) decision making is a procedure used to recognize a problem, weigh the alternatives and evaluate a solution in which, certain situations will require different approaches to become effective.
Conduct a critique of the following service management ideas, theories and techniques, specifically with reference to purpose, application and limitations and with regard to how these service management ideas, theories and techniques might contribute to the development of a business.
As the company continues to grow at a tremendous rate, the organizational structure became more complicated for the managers to maintain. Additionally, the Association is unsure of how to deal with the growth, and continue to preserve their company philosophy of “people supported first” at the same time. When the company was small their informal way managing the support service was a great fit, however, with more people constantly being supported, a more structural way of overseeing the expanding support service infrastructure needed to be established.
Service management combines the required services with organizational solutions and thus new generation user service becomes simplified. These forthcoming services are necessitated to be interrelated and combined in order to meet the demand of socio- economic factors such as environment analysis, safety measurement, climate management, agriculture modernization
This course focuses on services management in general and service operations in particular. It explores the elements that unite services, that differentiate service processes from non-service processes and that differentiate various types of services from each other. Customers generally participate in the service process, often with direct and uncensored interactions with employees and facilities. The resulting
Existing services can be purchased and implemented quickly within the SOA. This increases our capabilities and ensures we stay caught up with the larger firms. In essence this can level the playing field providing valuable resources and systems.
To an organisation, through understanding the service concept they are able to display the value of their service to the customer through communicating a key set of benefits. The services and benefits provided vary upon industry, however what individual organisations can benefit from is organisational alignment. Johnston et al. (2012) suggests that the service concept can act as a tool that links together the different functions of an organisation with a common purpose and standard. In addition, Looy et al. (2013) explains that the service concept can become a blueprint that communicates to employees what service they should provide and to customers what service they should expect to receive.
10. Describe three transactions that you have experienced recently, in which an organization’s advanced use of information technology played a significant role (for example, withdrawing cash from an ATM, registering for classes online, or ordering food by fax). How did the technology contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of the transaction?
There has to be an understanding of the complexity of services before one can begin to determine what challenges face the service industry and the most efficient means of facing those challenges to maintain success. A service organization provides intangible services for a monetary value as perceived by the consumer (Lovelock & Wirtz, 2011). A simple definition is that there are no physical items exchanged in a service transaction as opposed to retail where an item is given in exchange for a predetermined price point. This paper will provide
Normally people do not break down how they make decisions, they just decide. But, for people who are making decisions for a larger group, knowing the process could be helpful. The first step in the process is to identify the problem by fully understanding and gathering all the information of the problem. Secondly, you want to think of alternatives or other options for handling the issue. Thirdly, you want to access or evaluate all the alternatives and consider the possible outcome. Finally, you go forward with the decision and evaluate the outcome (Kinicki and Williams, 2016). These steps are helpful and critical when making decisions for large groups or an organization.
Even though the currently used direct method is simple and less costly in terms of implementation, it ignores the interactions among the service departments. For example, the Other Corporate Support may also provide services to the other three support-services cost centers. If managers of business units are not vigilant, the over-used support-services costs may be passed onto them in the form of higher cost allocations.
Thinking critically and making decisions are important parts of today’s business environment. It is important to understand how the decision making process works and the steps involved. The nine steps of the decision making process are: identifying the problem, defining criteria, setting goals and objectives, evaluating the effect of the problem, identifying the causes of the problem, framing alternatives, evaluating impacts of the alternatives, making the decision, implementing the decision, and measuring the impacts. (Decision, 2007.) By using various methods and tools to assist in making important business decisions an individual can ensure the decisions they make will be as successful as possible. In this paper it
The decision is to select an action among a number of actions that solves a given problem, that prevents a problem from happening, or that forces to apply new ideas for development. The need for understanding decision making process is increasing because the complexity of modern organizations is increasing, and because the modern organizations' effectiveness depends on the decisions made by the managers. The question is how to select the most appropriate action to solve the problem satisfying all stakeholders.
We have learnt from Servicer Strategy that service means to provide guidance on design, and how to implement them according to the needs of the customer. From the service lifecycle Service Design comes after the service strategy (Annexure A). The service design is not limited to new services, but also to old services which are need to improve the service design which are necessary to maintain the value to customers. The main objective of service design is designing an innovative idea or to change an existing design into a live environment. To change a design or to implement there are several requirements. These requirements are taken from the service portfolios and they are analyzed. There are teams which will indulge in this process and