Standardising services: Case study for a professional service company

The thesis examines the standardisation, modularisation, mass customisation and product platform approaches to services. These ideas are applied to a practical case for a professional service company. Productisation is the basis for this work and will be addressed as part of the thesis. The case company was running a productisation project for services in 2010. The main objective was sales promotion through the identification and definition of products. The productisation of the services still continues after the productisation project with further defining, describing and developing the services. This research work uses one of the company’s service concepts as an example for modularisation, determination of a service platform and standardisation. Theoretical research of these concepts is applied to the practical case. The thesis explores and applies services development models: The model of integrating the company's market, service platform and competencies, and a modular service platform, identification of the modules with DSM-matrix, and service automation with service development matrices. This study aims to find solutions to the standardisation and modularisation of services with these models and raise the matter of the associated benefits, and the issues that are important for the service standardisation and modularisation. The biggest benefits for the company with standardisation and modularisation of the services are easier sales of services through the service definition, the possibility for measuring the service, possibility of using different pricing models, performance enhancement and set-up time decrease of services for new customer. In addition, awareness and learning related to the services across the enterprise will increase.