This volume provides updated guidance on how to design, develop and implement service management both as an organisational capability and a strategic asset. It is a guide to a strategic review of ITIL-based service management capabilities, with the aim of improving their alignment with overall business needs. It is written primarily for senior managers who provide leadership and direction in the form of objectives, plans and policies. It is also benefits mangers at other levels, by explaining the logic of senior management decisions.

In today's competitive global markets, simply making a great product is not enough. To achieve profitable growth and stand out among competitors, you must start to strategically compete through service and innovative solutions for business customers. Professors Christian Kowalkowski and Wolfgang Ulaga guide you how to shift your business from a goods-centric to a service-savvy model. The authors' proprietary twelve-step roadmap to profitable service growth will help you break out of a narrow product-centric logic and discover how to � determine if your company is "fit-for-service," � make the most of your existing services, � innovate and create value-added services and customer solutions beyond your products, � embed a true service-centric culture in your organization, � drive change and align your service strategy with corporate goals, � transform your product-centric sales force into a service-savvy sales organization, � design an organizational structure that promotes service growth, and � align your interests with distributors and partners. Kowalkowski and Ulaga's twelve-step roadmap is based on rigorous research and long-standing experience working with businesses. They have worked with hundreds of managers in industrial and professional services companies, conducted research projects, led executive workshops, and published numerous articles in scientific and managerial journals, including Harvard Business Review, among others. Here, they share not only their own insights but the lessons learned from successful case studies and years of extensive research.

Examines the special characteristics that make services and the management of service organizations successful. Provides a comprehensive framework for service oriented businesses that stresses a streamlined service management system, the key components of which are market segment, service concept, service delivery system, image, and culture. Growth strategies and the nature of innovation are analyzed and amply illustrated. The role and principles of good leadership in service organizations form a crucial area of discourse. Topics such as the use of image and culture as management instruments, effective and persuasive communications, and ``high social technology'' are also explored.

Management, Computers, Computer networks, Information exchange, Data processing, IT and Information Management: IT Service Management

How to close the gap between strategy and execution Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don’t have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors. Based on new research, the authors reveal five practices for connecting strategy and execution used by highly successful enterprises such as IKEA, Natura, Danaher, Haier, and Lego. These companies: • Commit to what they do best instead of chasing multiple opportunities • Build their own unique winning capabilities instead of copying others • Put their culture to work instead of struggling to change it • Invest where it matters instead of going lean across the board • Shape the future instead of reacting to it Packed with tools you can use for building these five practices into your organization and supported by in-depth profiles of companies that are known for making their strategy work, this is your guide for reconnecting strategy to execution.

& Top quality, needs-based, business best practice from Europe's leading executive education provider. & & The only hard, practical, implemental book on customer service. A classic business text book. & & Heavily updated and expanded with checklists and case studies.

The Customer Experience is the sensory, cognitive, emotional, social and behavioral dimensions of all activities that connect the customer and the organization over time across touch points and channels. It encompasses all activities involving the customer where the organization is the focal object, including pre-purchase activities (such as exposure to a website ad), and purchase, consumption, and engagement behaviors (blogging, sharing photos). This book analyzes the challenges of creating excellent customer experiences, including the management of technology and new media. It describes how customers co-produce and co-create their experiences, and how these activities influence business revenues and costs. The book takes a deep dive into the psychology of customers, revealing the conceptual building blocks of customer experiences and how they build relationships over time. These ideas provide a business perspective on how to manage relationships with customers to generate cash flows and profitability, including the role of pricing.

Seven Secrets of Service Strategy reveals how to compete through service differentiation by concentrating on the creation of a valuable 'service culture' and customer loyalty programmes that improve customer satisfaction..

“Shows how humans have brought us to the brink and how humanity can find solutions. I urge people to read with humility and the daring to act.” —Harpal Singh, former Chair, Save the Children, India, and former Vice Chair, Save the Children International In conversations with people all over the world, from government officials and business leaders to taxi drivers and schoolteachers, Blair Sheppard, global leader for strategy and leadership at PwC, discovered they all had surprisingly similar concerns. In this prescient and pragmatic book, he and his team sum up these concerns in what they call the ADAPT framework: Asymmetry of wealth; Disruption wrought by the unexpected and often problematic consequences of technology; Age disparities--stresses caused by very young or very old populations in developed and emerging countries; Polarization as a symptom of the breakdown in global and national consensus; and loss of Trust in the institutions that underpin and stabilize society. These concerns are in turn precipitating four crises: a crisis of prosperity, a crisis of technology, a crisis of institutional legitimacy, and a crisis of leadership. Sheppard and his team analyze the complex roots of these crises--but they also offer solutions, albeit often seemingly counterintuitive ones. For example, in an era of globalization, we need to place a much greater emphasis on developing self-sustaining local economies. And as technology permeates our lives, we need computer scientists and engineers conversant with sociology and psychology and poets who can code. The authors argue persuasively that we have only a decade to make headway on these problems. But if we tackle them now, thoughtfully, imaginatively, creatively, and energetically, in ten years we could be looking at a dawn instead of darkness.