Managing Service Delivery Processes: Linking Strategy to Operations

The quest for value drives customer behavior in the services marketplace. This book focuses on complex service processes, and is written for professionals, semi-professionals, and technical workers laboring in all spheres, from law to medicine, and accounting to engineering. It draws its theory and examples from these professional services and many more, with hands-on end-of-chapter exercises on all topics. A framework is presented for understanding how a set of shared fundamental beliefs drives the best-in-class professional service organizations in their learning, which is the source of sustained competitive advantage. Products and processes can be imitated or copied, but learning faster than your competition cannot. Processes create the benefits customers want by delivering the service, or by making this delivery possible in one way or another. The notions, methods and tools presented in this book present readers with a perspective on their work they most likely never envisaged, and which will lead to a marked improvement in their effectiveness. Contents: 1 Rigorous Execution: At the Root of Value and Learning 2 The Nature of Value 3 The Nature of Processes 4 Professional Service Delivery Processes 5 Think Globally, Act Locally 6 Connecting Value to Processes – The Techniques 7 Scoping a Process for Improvement or Design 8 Managing a Process 9 The Learning Cycle 10 Doing Things Better – Improving an Existing Process 11 Doing Things Right the First Time – Designing a Process That Works 12 The Learning Organization