March 3, 2010

Who's a service scientist.. not me..yet!!

When I started writing this article, i was kind of an extremely frustrated person ...professionally. Ofcourse it was not very long lasting...but some part of it continues to reside at the back of my mind. I am trying to come to terms with a major thought revolving in my mind. Am I really a service scientist.. or am I kidding myself?? I mean for a moment, if we were to agree without argument that "service science" is real...(refer my main page on service science)... the immediate question I have is what calls for a basic qualification for being a service scientist. By any given measure, there are two roads to getting there...one by theoretical understanding and learning of the discipline, and other is by practical experience. Now my theoretical subjects have long been in the area of electronics and computer science since forever now..so the first approach is out of question. As for practice, I have finished 2.5 yrs at IBM research, of which lets say one year went in doing core computer science work...So in effect really 1.5 years spent so far understanding practically, how IT(only IT yes..) service delivery happens, and the nitty grittys. This surely doesn't qualify me for being called a service scientist...yet. Talk about all the technical service managers, the account managers, who have been delivering services for last 10-15 years, I feel completely humbled in front of them when it comes to understanding this art..which we are trying to translate to science.

However an argument in favor of the assertion is that we've all been dealing with services since right we can remember. Be it the friendly neighbourhood shop, or the ice-cream vendor, or more recently our frequent flights, and dozens of facilities we enjoy ( I agree that I started appreciating and thinking about most services critically more when I start paying for those services myself) but the point being that from an overall perspective, it doesn't need a sherlock holmes to figure out how the good services work vis-a-vis bad services. Its just that with the other powerful tool of computer science and computers themselves at our disposal, how can we apply, and implement these good services in a repeatable, and efficient and customer friendly manner again and again and again, and accurately as we can. Without computers, I believe Service Science would have been the exclusive domain of B-Schools.. But, not in this context. It is a circle.. or a spiral. Services Needed Automation..Automation Led to electronic devices.....computers.. computers led to more and more information capturing..and allowing more and more complex things...resulting in more information, higher need of computers, and better computers..and now behind the vast eco-system of delivering services, is a huge stack of knowledge or information call it whatever, which needs collection, storage, dissemination, interpretation, transformation, translation, preservation, analysis, visualization etc. etc. which is unthinkable without applying the most advanced computer science approaches. In fact many a times, the problems and challenges faced, need computer scientists to push the envelop further and create new approaches. ( I all of a sudden seem to be making so much sense to myself.. realizing that "Information Technology" was really not just another major created in colleges in addition to computer science, but it was the natural evolution from the academics of how computers work..and designing computers, to the academics of how we can use them.) The same evolution continues...from the academics of how we can manage information better in general..we can say broadly we are thinking about how we can manage information related to delivering services better. And thus the loop completes to Service Science.. ( and this my friends.. right now.. just as I wrote this, has become my 'Aha' moment in this dilemma I had..)

As I conclude I would have to say that we indeed seem to be better placed to become service scientist's than any other professionals. However ofcourse there is still a lot of things to learn, lot of fundamental stuff to understand, which will not happen until we get into the thick of the things. Being an outsider to the ecosystem of delivery of services, and trying to solve the problems from a third party view can be dangerous and tardy, since there is a good chance, we dont even appreciate the true problems until we are in the actual delivery, and end up wasting time solving what our outsider notions/interpretations are of the main problems in delivery. Should I be thinking seriously about a stint.. may be a few months working in the thick of delivery..?? Not sure whether soon...but one needs to definitely focus on this in the medium term as a high priority if they want to really be true service scientist..

..so long..!!

Service Quality

Service quality (or for a matter of fact..quality in general..) has eluded sellers, manufacturers, and service providers for ages. Point being you cannot tame service quality with a series of control loops, or computer programs or audit processes. Quality is a lot of aspects related to your product and service. My recent journey in this area led me to internalizing 4 principle notions of quality...the sum of which can be perhaps seen as all encompassing..! I do not intend to profess on this topic.. and there are many schools of thoughts which say quality needs to be preceded by good ideas, business models, innovations etc. I agree, and all i am saying is once you have that thing going for you, you should try to make sure you have internalized few of the concepts below.. (not as theory..but as principles..) So that when u are providing a service .you make sure you are addressing all the below aspects. After all .. whats stated below is what the service is about.
  • Quality is excellence.. (the philosophical definition..)
  • Quality is conformance to specification.. (the product and manufacturing definition)
  • Quality is making the user happy.. (the user based definition..)
  • Quality is value.. (the value...or rather price based definition..)
Anyways. Here is a recent talk I gave to a SSME class at S.P.Jain Institute of Mgmt. and Research on the evolution of service quality concept in industry and academia. Please feel free to use it to articulate the information presented. (Would appreciate if you could drop me a note..and keep me in loop if you do)

What is Service Science

Service science to the 21st century some argue, is what computer science was to mid 20th century. It was written off, as another non essential minor extension of the Electrical Engineering, not critical... mainly academic discipline, and something primarily for playful experiments in labs and garages. Recently came across this interesting illustration by Andy Ma from sun on this very comparison.

Source of above image: Talk by Andy  Ma
While I have not really come across anyone who has actually thought of service science as frivolous, there are still many minds, including mine at times, who wonder, what really is service science?? Is it really a science, or a term coined by few individuals to satisfy an academic hunger or some call of the business.

Here are some observations:

1. Service science unlike computer science, has not been born in academic playgrounds, but in the heart of our businesses, out of a growing need, to fulfill a gap which was left unfulfilled with application of all known sciences...

2. Service science, while has many dangers of being likened to Information technology (more so because of the modern context in which service science has emerged), it is really not so, because services preceded computers and technology as we know today.. by ages, or epochs I must say. Service as a concept has existed for ever...

3. Service science is vastly complex yes..because it is really a combination of various elements of science and in fact faculties outside the scope of science as we define today....interacting together heavily. It is really a multidisciplinary subject, which captures extreme ends of a spectrum...for e.g. hugely complex, and unpredictable human behaviors guided by psychological, biological, chemical drivers, to the usually predictable and stable computing machines, guided by some bits and bytes of programming. The context is important, depending on which you may have to reach out for any random faculty of knowledge to get answers. You may find yourself looking up annals of biology at times, and chronicles of history at times...to help you better deliver and approach a service.

4. One theme that strikes most from above is that at the heart of service science, is a lot of information, which needs to be efficiently created, extracted, transported, preserved, shared, managed, etc. etc. So personally I would put Information Management at the top of all faculties which influence the broader topic of service science. And would bet on advancement in related areas to precede any major breakthroughs in service science.

While I am making assertions and arguments, it is really incomplete without convincing examples. I would try to bring together from the literature, and knowledge others have already gathered, some substantial evidence for my reasoning. I am at this point of time personally convinced service science is here to stay, and thats why have put a reasonable stake in it myself in terms of my career. Hopefully, I would be able to generate some more opinion on the same and get some interesting collaboration going. Watch out for this space. Welcome to the world of services.

Here is what is IBM's View on Service Science and Management Engineering..or popularly known as SSME