Development of e-Service tools for customer services and processes, Case: KONE Oyj Finland

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää miten kehittää yrityksen nykyistä e-palvelujärjestelmää, Internet -teknologiaan perustuvaa sähköisiä kommunikaatio- ja tiedonjakojärjestelmää, yrityksen business-to-business asiakkuuksien johtamisessa. Tavoitteena oli myös luoda ehdotukset uusista e-palvelusopimusmalleista. Tutkimuksen teoriaosuudessa pyrittiin kehittämään aikaisempiin tutkimuksiin, tietokirjallisuuteen ja asiantuntijoihin perustuva viitekehysmalli. Empiirisessä osassa tutkimuksen tavoitteisiin pyrittiin haastattelemalla yrityksen asiakkaita ja henkilöstöä, sekä tarkastelemalla asiakaskontaktien nykyistä tilaa ja kehittymistä. Näiden tietojen perusteella selvitettiin e-palvelun käyttäjien tarpeita, profiilia ja valmiuksia palvelun käyttöön sekä palvelun nykyistä houkuttelevuutta. Tutkimuksen teoriaosan lähdeaineistona käytettiin kirjallisuutta, artikkeleita ja tilastoja asiakashallinnasta sekä e-palveluiden, erityisesti Internet ja verkkopalveluiden markkinoinnista, nykytilasta sekä palveluiden kehittämisestä. Lisäksi tutkittiin kirjallisuutta arvoverkostoanalyysistä, asiakkaan arvosta, informaatioteknologiasta, palvelun laadusta ja asiakastyytyväisyydestä. Tutkimuksen empiirinen osa perustuu yrityksen henkilöstöltä sekä asiakkailta haastatteluissa kerättyihin tietoihin, yrityksen ennalta keräämiin materiaaleihin sekä Taloustutkimuksen keräämiin tietoihin. Tutkimuksessa käytettiin case -menetelmää, joka oli yhdistelmä sekä kvalitatiivista että kvantitatiivista tutkimusta. Casen tarkoituksena oli testata mallin paikkansapitävyyttä ja käyttökelpoisuutta, sekä selvittää onko olemassa vielä muita tekijöitä, jotka vaikuttavat asiakkaan saamaan arvoon. Kvalitatiivinen aineisto perustuu teemahaastattelumenetelmää soveltaen haastateltuihin asiakkaisiin ja yrityksen työntekijöihin. Kvantitatiivinen tutkimus perustuu Taloustutkimuksen tutkimukseen ja yrityksen asiakaskontakteista kerättyyn tietoon. Haastatteluiden perusteella e-palvelut nähtiin hyödyllisinä ja tulevaisuudessa erittäin tärkeinä. E-palvelut nähdään yhtenä tärkeänä kanavana, perinteisten kanavien rinnalla, tehostaa business-to-business -asiakkuuksien johtamista. Tutkimuksen antamien tulosten mukaan asiakkaiden palveluun liittyvän tieto-, taito-, tarpeellisuus- ja kiinnostavuustasojen vaihtelevaisuus osoittaa selvän tarpeen eritasoisille e-palvelupaketti ratkaisuille. Tuloksista muodostettu ratkaisuehdotus käsittää neljän eri e-palvelupaketin rakentamisen asiakkaiden eri tarpeita mukaillen.

Quality in services marketing in infocom sector in Finland

Tutkielman tavoitteena oli selvittää, mikä on palvelun laadun taso infocom sektorilla Suomessa, ja miten sitä voidaan parantaa. Teoriaosassa tavoitteeseen pyrittiin muodostamalla teoriakirjallisuuteen, tieteellisiin julkaisuihin sekä aikaisempaan aihealuetta sivuavaan tutkimukseen perustuva viitekehysmalli. Empiirisessä osassa tavoitetta lähestyttiin tutkimalla infocom sektorin kunkin toimialueen (telekommunikaatio, informaatio teknologia ja sisältötuotanto) palvelujen laatua case-kuvausten muodossa. Tutkielman empiirinen osuus toteutettiin kvalitatiivisena multiple case -tutkimuksena teemahaastattelu-menetelmää soveltaen. Case-analyysi suorittiin käyttäen ns. explanation- building -menetelmää. Teoreettiset ja empiiriset tutkimustulokset yhdistettiin erityisiksi infocom sektorille soveltuviksi toimenpidesuosituksiksi. Tutkielman empiirinen osuus antoi tukea teoreettisen osuuden pohjalta kehitetylle viitekehykselle. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli case-analyysi- menetelmän mukaisesti luoda perusta syvemmälle aihepiiriä käsittelevälle jatkotutkimukselle ja luoda kuva infocom sektorin tämän hetkisestä laadullisesta tilasta. Yhteenvetona voidaan sanoa, että laatu palvelujen markkinoinnissa infocom sektorilla on suhteellisen heikkoa, vaikka tutkimusaineiston mukaan laatu arvostetaan hyvin korkealle. Yritysten tämänhetkiset panostukset laatuun liittyvät lähinnä liiketoiminnan tukifunktioihin ja prosessien ohjausmenetelmiä koskeviin järjestelmiin. Tutkimuksen pohjalta tehtävät varsinaiset toimenpidesuositukset liittyvät laadun sisäistämiseen jo strategiaa luotaessa, asiakaslähtöisyyteen, laatujohtamiseen, laatukoulutukseen ja kokonaisvaltaisen laatukulttuurin luomiseen organisaatioissa. Turbulentissa, nopeasti kansainvälistyvässä ja erittäin voimakkaasti kilpaillussa liiketoimintaympäristössä nämä ovat elintärkeitä menestymisen kriteerejä.

Digital Audio Broadcasting: Technology and Prospects

The subject of the thesis was the digital audio broadcasting technology developed in the Eureka project 147. The research was based on the literature on the subject. At first, some reasons for the digitisation of broadcasting technology were given. Next, the channel multiplexing and channel coding methods employed by digital radio were discussed. The design of these methods is based on certain phenomena related to the propagation of radio-frequency signals, and these phenomena were also described. After that, audio and data transfer mechanisms as well as the structure of digital radio network were explained. Furthermore, digital audio and data services were considered. Finally, the digital radio was examined from marketing and administrative aspects. From a merely technical point of view, the digital radio technology offers several improvements in comparison with analogue technology. However, the digital radio has not become as widespread as it was perhaps originally expected during its development.

Handover aspects in Unlicensed Mobile Access Technology

Fixed Mobile Convergence is the recent buzz in the field of telecommunication technology. Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology is a realistic implementation of Fixed Mobile Convergence. UMA involves communication between different types of networks. Handover is a very important issue in UMA. The study is an analysis of theoretical handover mechanism and practical test results. It includes a new proposal for handover performance test in UMA. It also provides an overview of basic handover operation on different scenarios in UMA. The practical test involves an experiment on handover performance test using network analyzers. The new proposal provides a different approach for an experimental setting on handover performance test without using network analyzers. The approach is not be implemented because of some technical problem in a network equipment in UMA. The analysis of the test results reveals that time of handover between UMA and Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) network is similar to time of handover between inter base station controller (BSC) handover in GSM networks. The new approach is simple and provides measurement at the end point communicating entities. The study gives a general understanding of handover operation, an analysis of handover performance in UMA and specifically provides a new approach useful for further study of handover in different real world environments and scenarios.

Air services on thin routes : Regional versus low-cost airlines

An examination of the impact in the US and EU markets of two major innovations in the provision of air services on thin routes - regional jet technology and the low-cost business model - reveals significant differences. In the US, regional airlines monopolize a high proportion of thin routes, whereas low-cost carriers are dominant on these routes in Europe. Our results have different implications for business and leisure travelers, given that regional services provide a higher frequency of flights (at the expense of higher fares), while low-cost services offer lower fares (at the expense of lower flight frequencies).

Satisfaction with pregnancy and delivery services: The quality of maternity care services as experienced by women

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the opinions of women regarding the satisfaction about the quality of maternity care received. We hope to establish whether health care technology increases satisfaction or whether it actually interferes with the construction of personal satisfaction in the process of care. Design and setting: Information was gathered using the focus group technique. The area of study comprised the post-natal groups run as part of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Programme of the Catalan Health Authority. (Spain) Participants: Five focus groups were held between May 2006 and July 2007. Findings: Quality of care is a complex concept in which a number of independent core features can be identified. We have grouped these core features into three basic categories. Safety: the hospital and its technological facilities, and the technical expertise of health professionals. The other two main pillars of quality of care are the human dimension of the relationship between the carers and the patient, and finally the structural aspects that determine the context in which the heath care is provided. Key conclusions and implications for practice: The mothers of our study feel satisfied with healthcare technology and view it as a source of security; technology become indispensable features in order to reduce the anxiety provoked by the perceived lack of confidence in their ability as mothers. In this study, women, both during pregnancy and especially when giving birth, believe their feelings and values should be understood by professionals, from whom they seek empathy and a personal commitment, and not just information.

Satisfaction with pregnancy and delivery services: The quality of maternity care services as experienced by women

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the opinions of women regarding the satisfaction about the quality of maternity care received. We hope to establish whether health care technology increases satisfaction or whether it actually interferes with the construction of personal satisfaction in the process of care. Design and setting: Information was gathered using the focus group technique. The area of study comprised the post-natal groups run as part of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Programme of the Catalan Health Authority. (Spain) Participants: Five focus groups were held between May 2006 and July 2007. Findings: Quality of care is a complex concept in which a number of independent core features can be identified. We have grouped these core features into three basic categories. Safety: the hospital and its technological facilities, and the technical expertise of health professionals. The other two main pillars of quality of care are the human dimension of the relationship between the carers and the patient, and finally the structural aspects that determine the context in which the heath care is provided. Key conclusions and implications for practice: The mothers of our study feel satisfied with healthcare technology and view it as a source of security; technology become indispensable features in order to reduce the anxiety provoked by the perceived lack of confidence in their ability as mothers. In this study, women, both during pregnancy and especially when giving birth, believe their feelings and values should be understood by professionals, from whom they seek empathy and a personal commitment, and not just information.

The learning about imaging diagnosis technology

Objective To investigate the learning about management of the technology (efficient use, acquisition and maintenance of imaging diagnosis equipment) in the radiology residency program of Escola Paulista de Medicina - Universidade Federal de São Paulo, with a view to improving the education of radiologists. Materials and Methods Exploratory research where residents, faculty staff and tutors of the program were quantitative and qualitatively approached with Likert scale questionnaires (46), and deepening with recorded interviews (18) and categorization based upon meaning units (thematic analysis). Results Among the participants, 66% agreed that they had the opportunity of learning about the use of radiological equipment; for 61% the program should include knowledge on the importance of acquiring equipment; and 72% emphasized the lack of learning about equipment management and maintenance. Conclusion As the major moment in the education of specialists, the medical residency program provides residents with a favorable environment to the learning of the skills required to the future of their professional practice, but with limited emphasis on the management of the technology: efficient use, acquisition and mainly maintenance of equipment, still poorly explored. Both the investigated program and the medical residency in radiology should incorporate, whenever possible, the commitment with the training in supplementary skills related to equipment management, developing the competence of the future radiologists.

A conceptual model for grid learning services automatic composition

Peer-reviewed

Opinion Mining

In this thesis we study the field of opinion mining by giving a comprehensive review of the available research that has been done in this topic. Also using this available knowledge we present a case study of a multilevel opinion mining system for a student organization's sales management system. We describe the field of opinion mining by discussing its historical roots, its motivations and applications as well as the different scientific approaches that have been used to solve this challenging problem of mining opinions. To deal with this huge subfield of natural language processing, we first give an abstraction of the problem of opinion mining and describe the theoretical frameworks that are available for dealing with appraisal language. Then we discuss the relation between opinion mining and computational linguistics which is a crucial pre-processing step for the accuracy of the subsequent steps of opinion mining. The second part of our thesis deals with the semantics of opinions where we describe the different ways used to collect lists of opinion words as well as the methods and techniques available for extracting knowledge from opinions present in unstructured textual data. In the part about collecting lists of opinion words we describe manual, semi manual and automatic ways to do so and give a review of the available lists that are used as gold standards in opinion mining research. For the methods and techniques of opinion mining we divide the task into three levels that are the document, sentence and feature level. The techniques that are presented in the document and sentence level are divided into supervised and unsupervised approaches that are used to determine the subjectivity and polarity of texts and sentences at these levels of analysis. At the feature level we give a description of the techniques available for finding the opinion targets, the polarity of the opinions about these opinion targets and the opinion holders. Also at the feature level we discuss the various ways to summarize and visualize the results of this level of analysis. In the third part of our thesis we present a case study of a sales management system that uses free form text and that can benefit from an opinion mining system. Using the knowledge gathered in the review of this field we provide a theoretical multi level opinion mining system (MLOM) that can perform most of the tasks needed from an opinion mining system. Based on the previous research we give some hints that many of the laborious market research tasks that are done by the sales force, which uses this sales management system, can improve their insight about their partners and by that increase the quality of their sales services and their overall results.

Older consumers adopting information and communication technology: Evaluating opportunities for health care applications

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse older consumers' adoption of information and communication technology innovations, assess the effect of aging related characteristic, and evaluate older consumers' willingness to apply these technologies in health care services. This topic is considered important, because the population in Finland (as in other welfare states) is aging and thus offers a possibility for marketers, but on the other hand threatens society with increasing costs for healthcare. Innovation adoption has been under research from several aspects in both organizational and consumer research. In the consumer behaviour, several theories have been developed to predict consumer responses to innovation. The present dissertation carefully reviews previous research and takes a closer look at the theory of planned behaviour, technology acceptance model and diffusion of innovations perspective. It is here suggested that there is a possibility that these theories can be combined and complemented to predict the adoption of ICT innovations among aging consumers, taking the aging related personal characteristics into account. In fact, there are very few studies that have concentrated on aging consumers in the innovation research, and thus there was a clear indent for the present research. ICT in the health care context has been studied mainly from the organizational point of view. If the technology is thus applied for the communication between the individual end-user and service provider, the end-user cannot be shrugged off. The present dissertation uses empirical evidence from a survey targeted to 55-79 year old people from one city in Southern-Carelia. The empirical analysis of the research model was mainly based on structural equation modelling that has been found very useful on estimating causal relationships. The tested models were targeted to predict the adoption stage of personal computers and mobile phones, and the adoption intention of future health services that apply these devices for communication. The present dissertation succeeded in modelling the adoption behaviour of mobile phones and PCs as well as adoption intentions of future services. Perceived health status and three components behind it (depression, functional ability, and cognitive ability) were found to influence perception of technology anxiety. Better health leads to less anxiety. The effect of age was assessed as a control variable, in order to evaluate its effect compared to health characteristics. Age influenced technology perceptions, but to lesser extent compared to health. The analyses suggest that the major determinant for current technology adoption is perceived behavioural control, and additionally technology anxiety that indirectly inhibit adoption through perceived control. When focusing on future service intentions, the key issue is perceived usefulness that needs to be highlighted when new services are launched. Besides usefulness, the perception of online service reliability is important and affects the intentions indirectly. To conclude older consumers' adoption behaviour is influenced by health status and age, but also by the perceptions of anxiety and behavioural control. On the other hand, launching new types of health services for aging consumers is possible after the service is perceived reliable and useful.

Productivity of Business Services - Towards A New Taxonomy

Statistics show that the expanding service sector accounts already for three quarters of GDP in the developed economies. Moreover, there is abundant evidence on high variation in productive performance across the service industries. This suggests divergent technological and institutional trajectories within the tertiary sector. While conceptual knowledge on services and their performance has accumulated substantially, the overall landscape on productivity and competitiveness is still inconclusive. As noted by number of authors the research on service productivity is still in its infancy. The purpose of this paper is to develop further the analytical framework of service productivity. The approach is based on the notion that service definitions, classifications and performance measurement are strongly interdependent. Given the ongoing restructuring of businesses activities with higher information content, it is argued that the dichotomy between manufacturing and services should not be taken too far. Industrial evolution also suggests that the official industry classifications are increasingly outdated and new taxonomies for empirical research are therefore needed. Based on the previous analyses and new insights the paper clarifies the debated concept of service productivity and identifies the critical dimensions by which the service industries cluster. It is also demonstrated that the dimensions enable to construct new service taxonomies which bear essentially on productivity opportunities at the business level. Needles to say the key determinant explaining the development and potential of productivity growth is innovation activity. As an extensive topic of research, however, service innovation is tackled here only in a cursory way. The paper is constructed as follows: the first section focuses on the conceptual issues and evolving nature of service activities. A workable definition of service should capture the diversity of service activities, as well as the aspects of service processes, comprehensively. The distinctions and similarities between services and manufacturing are discussed, too. Section 2 deals with the service productivity, a persistent and controversial issue in academic literature and policy. With the assessments of strengths and weaknesses of the main schools new insights based on value creation will be brought in. Industry classifications and taxonomies are discussed in Section 3. It begins with a short analysis of the official classifications and their evaluation from the perspective of empirical research. Using well-known examples it is shown that the taxonomies on the manufacturing industries have a clear analogy with the business services. As there is a growing interest to regroup services too, the work to date, has been less systematic and inherently qualitative. Based on the earlier contributions threedimensional service taxonomy is constructed which highlight the key dimensions of productive performance. The main findings and implications are summed up in Section 4.

Web services to link interlibrary software with OCLC WorldShare

Purpose - This article describes the use of web services to interconnect the GTBib interlibrary loan program with the OCLC WorldShare platform. Design/methodology/approach - We describe the current problem of duplication of procedures in libraries that have added their collections to the OCLC WorldCat catalogue in recent years and are therefore more likely to receive interlibrary loan requests through the WorldShare Platform. Findings - A solution that uses web services to insert and retrieve requests between the two systems is presented. Autonomous agents periodically check the status of the requests and keep them updated and synchronized. These agents also inform the library staff of any variation or inconsistency that is detected. Practical Implications - This technology reduces process management time by making it unnecessary to introduce the request data in both systems. Agents are used to check the consistency of statuses between the two systems, thus avoiding errors and omissions and improving the efficiency of the whole interlibrary loan process. Originality/value - This paper describes in detail the technical aspects of the solution as a reference for the development of future applications.

ESTRO-HERO survey: Guidelines for equipment and staffing of radiotherapy facilities in the European countries: Final results of the ESTRO-HERO survey

Background and purpose: In planning to meet evidence based needs for radiotherapy, guidelines for the provision of capital and human resources are central if access, quality and safety are not to be compromised. A component of the ESTRO-HERO (Health Economics in Radiation Oncology) project is to document the current availability and content of guidelines for radiotherapy in Europe. Materials and methods: An 84 part questionnaire was distributed to the European countries through their national scientific and professional radiotherapy societies with 30 items relating to the availability of guidelines for equipment and staffing and selected operational issues. Twenty-nine countries provided full or partial evaluable responses. Results: The availability of guidelines across Europe is far from uniform. The metrics used for capital and human resources are variable. There seem to have been no major changes in the availability or specifics of guidelines over the ten-year period since the QUARTS study with the exception of the recent expansion of RTT staffing models. Where comparison is possible it appears that staffing for radiation oncologists, medical physicists and particularly RTTs tend to exceed guidelines suggesting developments in clinical radiotherapy are moving faster than guideline updating. Conclusion: The efficient provision of safe, high quality radiotherapy services would benefit from the availability of well-structured guidelines for capital and human resources, based on agreed upon metrics, which could be linked to detailed estimates of need