Kundenorientierte Gestaltung und Vereinbarung standardisierter IT ...

these principles to the realm of IT-services. Some
principles from the original paper focus rather on
economics than on business issues and are therefore
omitted.
The application of specialized skills and
knowledge is the fundamental unit of exchange.
Traditionally IT service providers have provided hardand
software that has been used within an organization.
In a service dominant logic, the units of exchange are
not hardware and software but skills and knowledge
(related to information technology), that help
customers to reach their goals. IT service providers
have to focus on skills and knowledge and use hardand
software as means of delivering these services.
Goods are distribution mechanisms for service
provisioning. Even though hard- and software are not
at the center of attention anymore in a service
dominant logic, they are still of some importance.
While hard- and software are not the fundamental unit
of value exchange, they are the distribution mechanism
for services and are therefore essential for delivery
from the service provider�s perspective. From the
customer�s perspective, hard- and software are of little
interest since users care only for the delivery of certain
services.
The customer is always a co-producer. When
shifting from the perspective of creating value through
exchange of goods to a perspective where value is
created by applying certain skills and knowledge
provided through a service for the customer, the
customer becomes a co-producer of value. With
customers as co-producers, knowledge about the
customer�s processes becomes extremely important in
order to provide services that can be applied within the
customer�s processes.
Primary unit of
exchange
The enterprise can only make value propositions.
With customers being co-producers, it is obvious that
without the customers� interactions no value can be
created. This also leads to the realization that
organizations can only make value propositions. It
depends on the customers to determine the value of the
service and realize it in a process of co-creation.
A service centered view is customer oriented and
relational. The shift from a goods dominant logic to a
service dominant logic also affects the understanding
of business relationships for IT service providers.
Traditionally, goods-dominant logic is transactionoriented
while service-dominant logic requires
customer- and relation orientation. This requires
service providers to identify and define necessary
processes, that facilitate this change in the business
relationship (i.e. sophisticated controlling systems to
implement pay-per-use models).
These principles form the basis for a mind-change
within IT-service providers towards service
orientation. Table 1 is based on [9] and shows more
clearly the change in perspective when moving from a
goods-dominant logic to a service-dominant logic.
The change in perspective and the shift to a new
dominant logic are essential steps towards customeroriented
service descriptions. By focusing solely on
services and how they are delivered to the customer,
the focus shifts from single instances of hardware and
software towards the total combination of hardware
and software that is used to deliver a service. This also
leads to a change in understanding of service delivery
responsibility which we call the end-to-end perspective
of the IT service delivery chain.
Table 1: Comparison of goods based versus service based IT providers.
Traditional perspective of goodscentered
IT service providers
Hardware Products and Software
Licenses.
Role of goods Hardware and Software are developed,
configured and installed.
Role of customer
/ user
Determination
and meaning of
value
Firm-customer
interaction
Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2009
Customers are the receivers and users of
hardware and software.
Value is created through the exchange of
hardware, software and project
deliverables.
Customers are acted upon. Hardware and
Software is delivered and support is given
to the customer.
Emerging perspective of service-centered IT service
providers
Knowledge and skills (possible embedded in hardware,
software) are applied in the form of services.
Hardware and Software are used to deliver services but
provide no value in themselves.
Customers are co-producers who create value by using
the service in their processes.
Value is co-created in a co-production process between
IT-service provider and customer. Value can only be
determined by customers and realized in their process.
The services are continuously provided to enable the
customer�s processes. Customers are operant; they
participate in delivery of the service through its use.
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