Service Chain Management: Technology Innovation for the Service Business

Service chain management enables service organisations to improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs through intelligent and optimised forecasting, planning and scheduling of the service chain, and its associated resources such as people, networks and other assets. The area is quite broad, covering field force and workforce automation, network and asset planning and also aspects of customer relationship management, human resources systems and enterprise resource planning. Furthermore, it addresses the key challenge of how all these technologies and systems are integrated into a cohesive blueprint.

In this book, Christos Voudouris and his group together with experts from industry and academia present the latest innovations and technologies used to manage the operations of a service company. The viewpoints presented are, based on the BT experience and on associated research and development in collaborating universities and partner companies. The focus is on real-world challenges and how technologies can be used to overcome practical problems in a "don’t just survive, thrive!" approach.

The unique combination of technologies, experiences and systems, looked at from the different perspectives of service providers and users and combined with advice on successful benefit realisation and agile delivery of solutions, makes this an indispensable read for managers and system architects in the service industry.

Christos Voudouris and his co-authors are leading BT’s R&D in service and network optimisation. The team was formed in the mid-1990s and worked on developing technologies for the company's pioneering Work Manager system, which by 1998 was saving the company $150 million a year by automating and optimising the processes related to the company's extensive field service operations.

Technologies developed by the authors have also been incorporated in two spin-off companies and in software products from BT Global Services and others; they are currently used and benefiting in service companies world-wide. The authors are all recognised authorities in the subject of service optimisation, having won several national and international awards for their work from leading organisations such as INFORMS, the British Computer Society, and The Institution of Engineering and Technology.