A Service Experience Engineering (SEE) Method for Developing New Services

Abstract

Along with service sector becoming the largest economic activities in many countries, it is getting important to improve the service quality and stimulate innovation through systematic methods. This study introduces and discusses a methodology called Service Experience Engineering (SEE) for developing a new service. SEE describes the new service development framework completely from ideas creation to service market-launch. It divides the new service development into 3 phases: (1) FIND, including consumer demand survey and technology observing research; (2) InnovationNet, including two research focuses respectively on specific service-related value chain and service modeling; (3) Design Lab, including PoC (Proof of Concept), PoS (Proof of Service) and PoB (Proof of Business). SEE is a potentially useful and easy to implement technique for improving the development of new services. This paper concludes with a number of practical steps for making continuous improvements in new services suggested by the SEE method. Introduction The service sector is the largest economic sector in many developing or developed countries. By 2005, the service sector in Taiwan accounted for 73.56% of GDP while the manufacturing sector had fallen to 21%. As structure changes, the service sector is currently absorbing most of the surplus labor from the manufacturing sector (Hsiao et al., 2007). In the meantime, it is getting more and more important for the manufacturers to upgrade their services. It is not enough to be advanced in the cost, quality and technology of product manufacturing, the critical success factor is the additional service on the top of product. In the recent years, the service sectors are encountering pressures to innovate. The driving forces of service innovation come from the following aspects. The major driving forces include the liberation and de-regulation and the globalization of service industry. Another critical factor of bringing this change to service innovation is due to the influence of Information Communication Technology (ICT), for instance, the pervasiveness of internet, the new e-business model and standards, the demolishment of the national boundary, etc. Therefore, the enterprises are encountering many problems in the development of innovative sendees. In 2007, Institute for Information Industry made a survey to ninety-seven managers of Taiwan companies. It is shown that the issues of developing new services includes: lack of management mechanism for service innovation, the ad hoc methods for developing new services, lack of integration tool to support innovative service lack of suitable development model and methods, lack of qualified service development personnel, lack of suitable organization structure for sendee development. Many enterprises are in need of a specific organization to focus on strategic sendee which is normally conducted in traditional unsystematic way of service development. Systematic studies of service innovation are not only the next step to future studies but also an important trend worldwide (Spohrer et al., 2005). The appropriate application of system engineering can significantly improve service productivity (Tien and Berg, 2003). When we observe traditional domains such as industrial production and development, we realized that in their development process, systematic operational model and methods are applied. In most organizations, R&D division focuses on developing product and software in systematic way of methods. However, developing services with mature operational model and methods are not emphasized in many enterprises. Literature Review Sendee Engineering More and more enterprises regard the development and implementation of innovative services as primary task. In the traditional economic and engineering science research, this issue only focuses on the significance of new service but lack of discussion on practice (operational model and methods), nor emphasis on enterprise practice strategies and business management. …

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