Service packaging: key to successful provisioning of ICT business solutions

Business services have an important role in the development of global knowledge‐base economy. This is particularly clear in the field of ICT services where business customers are requiring an increasing amount of complex services in order to support their utilization of advanced ERP, SCM and CRM solutions for boosting their business processes and competitive advantage. The complexity of these services and customers' requests for special adaptations form a critical challenge for service providers. This paper seeks to develop solutions for managing this complexity.

Three service design and development methods – service industrialization, tangibilization, and service blueprinting – are introduced and then analyzed as to how they can be utilized as an integrated system to reduce the complexity of ICT services. This is carried out through an action research‐based case study of an ICT service provider.

The results include a service architecture framework, which can be used for creating a modularized offering and implementation system for complex business services. It reduces the complexity of services while allowing their customer specific adaptation.

Key aspects are the identification of service modules and interfaces in a multi‐actor service offering setting and the providing of adequate resources for the design phase of the customized service project. This is essential in order to be able to simultaneously respond to customer specific needs and to reduce the number of existing technologies and overlapping functionalities, seemingly contra dictionary aims.

Findings of the paper offer significant theoretical and managerial implications for the design and production of complex business services.