Category: IT-Enabled Services and Process Innovations

Quantifying the intangible: Determining the performance of knowledge workers

Measuring the performance of workers on an assembly line is simple: Count the objects produced and find out how long the process took. That should reveal the productivity of the factory workers. But how do you determine the performance of knowledge workers? Observing and measuring what they do is an enormous challenge. They often work unscripted and alone. The workers themselves may be unaware of the individual steps they take when carrying out an assignment. Professor Robert St. Louis and Assistant Professor Michael Lee of the W. P. Carey School’s Department of Information Systems and Robyn Raschke of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are tackling this issue in an unusual study that could hit close to home for the researchers.

Step-by-step: There’s a process behind smart process improvement

There’s little margin for error when you’re in the business of selling electrons. After all, if an electron traveled around the world instead of bouncing around the nucleus of an atom, it would circle the earth some 8.3 times in one second. Since there’s no time to react, electricity providers must do all they can to prevent system failures. In such efforts, Arizona Public Service (APS) has developed award-winning innovations. During 2008, the utility earned the Edison Electric Institute’s Edison Award — the highest industry recognition an electric utility can earn — for one such breakthrough; contributing to that development were top-tier process-improvement methods and a dedicated team that teaches other utility departments how to get business-process management (BPM) rolling.

Smart services: Customer focus turns technology into solutions

To many participants at the recent Digital Smart Services Leadership Summit hosted by Qualcomm in San Diego, the phrase "smart services" is digital by definition. This new and slightly broader catch phrase covers the field also know as M2M, which means machine-to-machine communications to some or machine-to-man communications to others. But "smart services" refers to more than just the technology that links systems and devices together. Amid all the talk of broadband data rates and RFID (radio frequency identification), marketing Professor Mary Jo Bitner, the academic director of the Center for Services Leadership at the W. P. Carey School of Business, reminded the engineers of what might be called an analog or pre-Internet era definition of smart services: focusing on the customer.

Jamming out Web services? Maybe you need a conductor

Anyone who’s ever watched a jazz ensemble jam knows it’s a fluid process. Players have to listen to each other, yield the stage sometimes, take the spotlight every now and then and always stay in sync with the group. The same could be said for the shift to application development that revolves around web services. With service-oriented applications, functionality comes together in "content mash-ups" that unite multiple web services to give users a comprehensive application. Considering that application developers used to look at their task as a start-to-finish process, service-based software development presents managerial challenges, say Haluk Demirkan and Michael Goul, professors of information systems at the W. P. Carey School of Business. They believe the new development model demands new IT positions, and they call one such role "the conductor."

Podcast: Are self-service technologies making your business better?

Self-service technologies, which automate routine interactions between companies and customers, are a source of convenience and efficiency to both parties — until something goes wrong and the customer cannot make the system work. Many companies should be focusing more closely on the overall customer experience, says Michael Goul, a professor of information systems and a researcher at the Center for Advancing Business Through Information Technology. Curiously, here’s a case where businesses could learn something from government!

Video: Collaborative technology poses challenges for businesses

Collaborative technology can advance business through innovation if it can be managed, translated and used creatively. At the "Achieving Innovation through Collaboration" symposium, hosted by the Center for Advancing Business through Information Technology at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Knowledge@W. P. Carey talked to presenters about challenges for businesses that are using collaborative technologies.