Health
Reducing health care costs through supply chain management
In the national debate over how to make U.S. health care more efficient, one promising area for reform is often overlooked: supplies. Whether the products are knee implants, pacemakers or expensive medications, …
Marketing
A key to service innovation: Services blueprinting
The idea behind services blueprinting is fairly simple: Companies put themselves in their customers' shoes to find out what's working, what's not, and what needs to be changed. According to a new paper from three W. P. …
Marketing
Keeping promises: Closing the services gap
Would your customers say that the services they received from your company are the services they expected to get? If not, then your company may suffer from a services quality gap. Marketing professor Mary Jo …
Business Analytics and Big Data
Ebay study: How to build trust and improve the shopping experience
eBay has been one of the biggest and longest lasting success stories of the early dot com era. And a big reason for eBay's success has been its effectiveness at collecting and using data. Michael Goul, chairman of th …
Management
Effective leadership: Building a successful corporate culture
Year in and year out, cars manufactured by Toyota Motor Corp. are praised by automobile critics and lauded by loyal customers. The cars sell extraordinarily well and, come year's end, can almost always be found at the …
HR
Culture clash: When corporate culture fights strategy, it can cost you
It's been said that, for companies anyway, "culture is everything." Lou Gerstner, to whom this oft-quoted phrase is attributed, is the CEO who pulled IBM from near ruin in the 1990s — in part by …
Management
Successful small team leadership: Manage the group, not the individuals
Differentiated leadership — a management style in which leaders treat individual staff members differently based on such factors as their skills, perceived value or personalities — is a widely accepted approach to …
IT-Enabled Services and Process Innovations
Cloud computing: The evolution of software as a service
The next big upgrade to your corporate systems department may be something you will use but never see — "cloud computing," the next step in the evolution of SaaS technology. As with SaaS, cloud-computing …
Procurement
Using metrics to enhance purchasing
Detailed metrics not only help purchasing departments measure and analyze performance — they provide data that can spur organizational and procedural changes and help companies proactively prepare for the …
Ethics
The bigger they are: Ethical challenges of the rich and famous
Think twice about accepting a job with an organization headed by a renowned industry captain, a technological wunderkind or a visionary philanthropist, warns an expert who's studied the downside of charismatic …
Corporate Finance
Who profits from IPO underpricing?
A firm going public relies on the capital raised in its initial public offering to grow and thrive, but studies have found that IPOs in the United States are underpriced an average of 15 percent. Conventional wisdom has …
Marketing
Moving from products to services: The six big challenges
Product companies are looking to services as a way of increasing profitability and leveling out the revenue cycle. But marketing Professor Stephen Brown with the W. P. Carey Scho0ol’s Center for Services Le …
Marketing
Employees first: Strategies for service
The customer is king, an old service mantra says. But today a few industry leaders argue the employee, not the customer, is most important. "Take great care of your employees and they will take great care of your …
Finance
Debt crisis: Similarities, differences and lessons learned from the U.S. and Europe
In 2008, the credit crisis in the United States propelled shock waves across the Atlantic to Europe. Europe’s current debt crisis could send damaging waves to America's shores as well, according to international …
Economics
Arizona 2012 forecast: Still sick, but recovering
If Arizona’s economy were a hospital patient, she would be out of intensive care, but still in the hospital. In other words, the economy is doing better and certainly on the road to recovery, but it isn’t re …