Analysis of value drivers behind CRM adoption projects in financial services industry

This research is focused on deriving framework for the value thought for from the Customer Relationship Management system adopted by an enterprise operating in the financial services industry. It will analyze existing academic work to derive a conceptual value model, while applying secondary industry specific case studies provided by the CRM vendors to check the validity and commonality of these drivers. Furthermore this work locates the variances and correlation between value thought for from CRM system, scope of enterprise operations and size of the enterprise.

Korttijärjestelmät osana tulonjakoa– Case S-ryhmä ja Kesko

Tutkimuksessa keskitytään osakeyhtiön ja osuuskunnan erilaisiin varainjakotapoihin ja korttijärjestelmien rooliin varainjaossa. Näkökulma tutkimukseen painottuu kuluttaja-omistajan perspektiiviin. Tutkimuksen tavoite on valottaa niitä eroja, joita osuuskunnan ja osakeyhtiön tulonjaossa on, ja kahden eri tapauksen, S-ryhmän ja Keskon, avulla tutkia korttijärjestelmien roolia tässä tulonjaossa.

Research framework for the connection between environmental collaboration and firm performance

This thesis focuses on collaborative activities with regard to environmental issues both within the firm and outside the firm with the key suppliers and customers, i.e. internal and external environmental collaboration. Integrating environmental thinking into supply chain management has received increasing interest in recent years. The relational view and the natural resource-based-view together suggest that environmental capabilities can be built jointly with supply chain partners and used to gain sustained competitive advantage. Several studies have been undertaken to analyse the connection between environmental activities and firm performance but most studies have taken only economic performance into account. This study pays attention also to two other dimensions of firm performance, intra-firm supply chain performance and environmental performance, and aims at presenting the linkages between them and environmental collaboration. This thesis creates a research framework for the connections between environmental collaboration and firm performance and suggests approaches to analyse these. In order to find out the key concepts and their relationship, an extensive literature review is conducted. The research framework proposes a positive connection between internal and external environmental collaboration and all three dimensions of firm performance. In addition, environmental performance and intra-firm supply chain performance are expected to contribute positively to economic performance. Hence, firms are suggested to benefit from environmental collaboration both within the firm and outside the firm. Empirical testing of the developed research framework is out of the scope of this study. However, this thesis proposes using a mixed methods research approach, including survey research and multiple case studies. Finland State of Logistics 2012 survey commissioned by the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications and conducted by Turku School of Economics is used as an example of data for the quantitative phase. The applicability of these two methods is discussed at a general level and with regard to analysing the research framework developed in the thesis. Future research will aim at the development of the research framework and the methods in order to confirm the connection between environmental collaboration and firm performance.

Situational awareness concept in a multinational collaboration environment : challenges in the information sharing framework

Technological capabilities are built to support different types of collaboration, and this gives the justification to widely observe, how activity environments are influenced by technology. Technology as an enabler can be addressed from different perspectives, other than merely technological. Dynamic, evolving environment is at the same time interesting but also challenging. As a multinational collaboration environment, the maritime surveillance is an good example of time critical and evolving environment, where technological solutions enable new ways of collaboration. Justification for the inspiration to use maritime environment as the baseline for understanding the challenges in creating and maintaining adequate level of situational awareness, derives from the complexity of the collaboration and information sharing environment elements, needed to be taken into account, when analyzing criticalities related to decision making. Situational awareness is an important element supporting decision making, and challenges related to it can also be observed in the maritime environment. This dissertation describes the structures and factors involved in this complex setting, found from the case studies that should be taken into account when trying to understand, how these elements affect the activities. This dissertation focuses on the gray area that is between a life threatening situation and normal everyday activities. From the multinational experimentation series case studies, MNE5 and MNE6 it was possible to observe situations that were not life threatening for the participants themselves, but not also basic every day activities. These case studies provided a unique possibility to see situations, where gaining of situational awareness and decision making are challenged with time critical crisis situations. Unfortunately organizations do not normally take the benefit from the everyday work to prepare themselves for possible emerging crisis situations. This dissertation focuses on creating a conceptual model and a concept that supports organizations – also outside the maritime community – to improve their ability to support gaining of situational awareness from the individual training level, all the way to changes in organizational structures in aiming for better support for decision making from the individual level to the highest decision making level. Quick changes and unpredictability are reality in organizations and organizations do not have the possibility to control all the factors that affect their functioning. Since we cannot be prepared for everything, and predict every crisis, individual activities inside teams and as a part of organizations, need to be supported with guidance, tools and training in order to support acting in challenging situations. In fact the ideology of the conceptual model created, lies especially in the aim of not controlling everything in beforehand, but supporting organizations with concrete procedures to help individuals to react in different, unpredictable situations, instead of focusing on traditional risk prevention and management. Technological capabilities are not automatically solutions for functional challenges; this is why it is justified to broaden the problem area observation from the technological perspective. This dissertation demonstrates that it is possible to support collaboration in a multinational environment with technological solutions, but it requires the recognition of technological limitations and accepting the possible restrictions related to technological innovations. Technology should not be considered value per se, the value of technology should be defined according to the support of activities, including strategic and operational environment evaluation, identification of organizational elements, and taking into account also the social factors and their challenges. Then we are one step closer to providing technological solutions that support the actual activities by taking into account the variables of the activity environment in question. The multidisciplinary view to approach the information sharing and collaboration framework, is derived especially from the complexity of decision making and building of situational awareness, since they are not build or created in vacuity, but in the organizational framework by the people doing it with the technological capabilities, enabled by the organizational structures. Introduced case studies were related to maritime environment, but according to the research results, it is valid to argue, that based on the lessons learned it is possible to create and further develop conceptual model and to create a general concept to support a wider range of organizations in their attempt to gain better level of situational awareness (SA) and to support decision making. To proof the versatile usage of the developed concept, I have introduced the case study findings to the health care environment and reflected the identified elements from the trauma center to the created concept. The main contribution to complete this adventure is the presented situational awareness concept created in the respect to NATO concept structure. This has been done to tackle the challenge of collaboration by focusing on situational awareness in the information sharing context by providing a theoretical ground and understanding, of how these issues should be approached, and how these elements can be generalized and used to support activities in other environments as well. This dissertation research has been a several year evolving process reflecting and affecting presented case studies and this learning experience from the case studies has also affected the goals and research questions of this dissertation. This venture has been written from a retro perspective according to ideology of process modeling and design rationale to present to the reader how this entire journey took place and what where the critical milestones that affected the end result, conceptual model. Support in a challenging information sharing framework can be provided with the right type of combination of tools, procedures and individual effort. This dissertation will provide insights to those with a new approach to war technology for the organizations to gain a better level of awareness and to improve the capabilities in decision making. This dissertation will present, from the war technology starting point, a new approach and possibility for the organizations to create a better level of awareness and support for decision making with the right combination of tools, procedures and individual effort.

T&k-toiminnan suorituskyvyn johtaminen: kontekstin vaikutus mittaamiseen pk-yrityksissä

Tutkimuksen päätavoitteena oli ymmärtää, kuinka konteksti vaikuttaa t&k-toiminnan suorituskyvyn mittaamiseen pk-yrityksissä. Tutkimus kartoitti ja kuvaili kontekstin vaikutusta mallilla, joka jaottelee mittaamisen sisältöön, kontekstiin ja prosessiin. Kontekstin vaikutusta sisältöön ja prosessiin tutkittiin sekä suoraan että välillisesti mittaamisen tavoitteen kautta. Tutkimuksessa käytettiin case survey-tutkimusmenetelmää, jossa yhdistyy survey-tutkimuksen ja tapaustutkimuksen strategiat. Empiirisenä aineistona käytettiin olemassa olevia tapaustutkimuksia, joiden laadulliset havainnot muunnettiin systemaattisesti määrällisiksi muuttujiksi koodausjärjestelmällä. Muuttujien yhteyksien ristiintaulukoinnit analysoitiin tilastollisesti merkitsevien riippuvuuksien tunnistamiseksi ja laajempaa joukkoa koskevien päätelmien johtamiseksi. Tulokset olivat yhteneväisiä aiemman tutkimustiedon kanssa, mikä osoittaa kontekstin vaikutuksen t&k-toiminnan suorituskyvyn mittaamiseen olevan samankaltainen pk-yrityksissä kuin suuremmissakin yrityksissä. Empiirisinä yleistyksinä tunnistettiin uusia riippuvuuksia kontekstin ja sisällön sekä kontekstin ja prosessin välillä. Yleistykset suositellaan testattavaksi hypoteeseina jatkotutkimuksessa.

Tunninsisäinen tehotasapaino Suomessa 2020 ja 2030

Sähkön tuotannon ja kulutuksen välillä tulee vallita tasapaino joka hetki. Tunninsisäinen tehotasapainon hallinta on kantaverkkoyhtiön vastuulla, ja se tehdään säätöresurssein. Tässä työssä tarkastellaan tunninsisäistä tehotasapainon hallintaa Suomessa 2020-luvun alussa ja loppupuolella. Työn tarkoituksena on arvioida, riittävätkö nykytilanteen mukaiset säätöresurssit kattamaan tulevat säätötarpeet ja kuinka suuria säätövajeita, eli erotuksia markkinaehtoisen säätökyvyn ja säätötarpeen välillä, mahdollisesti esiintyy. Tehotasapainon hallintaa tarkastellaan tarkemmin kuudessa esimerkki-markkinatilanteessa. Tilanteet ajoittuvat tällä hetkellä tehotasapainon hallinnan kannalta hankaliin ajankohtiin, kevään tulva-ajalle, kesän lomakaudelle ja talven huippukuormitustilanteeseen. Tarkastelutilanteiden avulla pyritäänkin selvittämään hankalimmat tilanteet, joita tehotasapainon hallinnassa 2020-luvulla voidaan kohdata. Työn tarkastelutilanteiden perusteella säätövaje voi olla suurimmillaan 200 - 1100 MW Suomessa 2020-luvulla. Tämä työ vastaa myös siihen, mitä tulisi tehdä, jotta selvittäisiin tehotasapainon hallinnasta kaikissa tilanteissa tulevalla vuosikymmenellä.

Keskeneräisen tuotannon hallinta sähkönjakeluverkon urakointiprojekteissa

The main objective of the study was to find new approaches to the management of work in process in a rapidly changing power distribution network contracting environment in order to improve the efficiency of the management of capital and workload. The study describes the operating environment of a power distribution network contractor based in Eastern Finland and combines various activity indicators to create a general view. The literature review discusses scientific articles on project production, work in process and working capital management, analytical tools for projects as well as Lean criteria. The analysis of two case studies dealing with the characteristics of the power distribution network restructuring, focuses on how production management and management of work in process can potentially be improved in power distribution network contracting environments. The main results are the summary of the key figures of production, the data concerning the significance of different project types for work in process as well as the ways of improving the efficiency of production and business development in the present context.

Price spike forecasting in a competitive day-ahead energy market

Electricity price forecasting has become an important area of research in the aftermath of the worldwide deregulation of the power industry that launched competitive electricity markets now embracing all market participants including generation and retail companies, transmission network providers, and market managers. Based on the needs of the market, a variety of approaches forecasting day-ahead electricity prices have been proposed over the last decades. However, most of the existing approaches are reasonably effective for normal range prices but disregard price spike events, which are caused by a number of complex factors and occur during periods of market stress. In the early research, price spikes were truncated before application of the forecasting model to reduce the influence of such observations on the estimation of the model parameters; otherwise, a very large forecast error would be generated on price spike occasions. Electricity price spikes, however, are significant for energy market participants to stay competitive in a market. Accurate price spike forecasting is important for generation companies to strategically bid into the market and to optimally manage their assets; for retailer companies, since they cannot pass the spikes onto final customers, and finally, for market managers to provide better management and planning for the energy market. This doctoral thesis aims at deriving a methodology able to accurately predict not only the day-ahead electricity prices within the normal range but also the price spikes. The Finnish day-ahead energy market of Nord Pool Spot is selected as the case market, and its structure is studied in detail. It is almost universally agreed in the forecasting literature that no single method is best in every situation. Since the real-world problems are often complex in nature, no single model is able to capture different patterns equally well. Therefore, a hybrid methodology that enhances the modeling capabilities appears to be a possibly productive strategy for practical use when electricity prices are predicted. The price forecasting methodology is proposed through a hybrid model applied to the price forecasting in the Finnish day-ahead energy market. The iterative search procedure employed within the methodology is developed to tune the model parameters and select the optimal input set of the explanatory variables. The numerical studies show that the proposed methodology has more accurate behavior than all other examined methods most recently applied to case studies of energy markets in different countries. The obtained results can be considered as providing extensive and useful information for participants of the day-ahead energy market, who have limited and uncertain information for price prediction to set up an optimal short-term operation portfolio. Although the focus of this work is primarily on the Finnish price area of Nord Pool Spot, given the result of this work, it is very likely that the same methodology will give good results when forecasting the prices on energy markets of other countries.

The contributions of netnography in new product development

Netnography has been studying in various aspects (e.g. definitions of netnography, application of netngoraphy, conducting procedure…) within different industrial contexts. Besides, there are many studies and researches about new product development in various perspectives, such as new product development models, management of new product development project, or interaction between customers and new product design, and so on. However, the connection and the interaction between netnography and new product development have not been studied recently. This opens opportunities for the writer to study and explore unrevealed issues regarding to applying netnography in new product development. In term of the relation between netnography and new product development, there are numerous of matters need to be explored; for instance, the process of applying netnography in order to benefit to new product development, the involvement degree of netnography in new product development process, or eliminating useless information from netnography so that only crucial data is utilized, and so on. In this thesis, writer focuses on exploring how netnography is applied in new product development process, and what benefits netnography can contribute to the succeed of the project. The aims of this study are to understand how netnography is conducted for new product development purpose, and to analyse the contributions of netnography in the new product development process. To do so, a case-study strategy will be conducted with triple case studies. The case studies are chosen bases on many different criteria in order to select the most relevant cases. Eventually, the writer selected three case studies, which are Sunless tanning product project (HYVE), Listerine (NetBase), and Nivea co-creation and netnography in black and white deodorant. The case study strategy applied in this thesis includes four steps e.g. case selection, data collection, case study analysis, and generating the research outcomes from the analysis. This study of the contributions of netnography in the new product development process may be useful for the readers in many ways. It offers the fundamental knowledge of netnography market research method and basic understanding of new product development process. Additionally, it emphasizes the differences between netnography and other market research methods in order to explain the reasons why many companies and market research agents recently utilized netnography in their market research projects. Furthermore, it highlights the contributions of netnography in the new product development process in order to indicate the importance of netnography in developing new product. Thus, the potential readers of the study can be students, marketers, researchers, product developers, or business managers.

Yritysvastuun johtaminen pk-yrityksen näkökulmasta

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on tunnistaa yritysvastuusta saatavilla olevasta tutkimustiedon, työkalujen ja johtamismenetelmien joukosta ne näkökulmat, jotka selkeimmin palvelevat pk-yrityksen käytännön liiketoimintaa. Tutkimus koostuu kirjallisuustutkimuksena tehdystä teoriarungosta ja kolmeen case-tutkimukseen pohjautuvasta soveltavasta osasta. Tutkimuksen tuloksena on todettu, että yritysvastuu ei jäsenny tällä hetkellä kovin hyvin pk-yrityksen näkökulmasta. Yritysvastuuta ei nähdä pk-yrityksissä useinkaan mahdollisuutena, vaan rasitteena, ylimääräisenä vaatimuksena. Vastuullisuuden periaate nähdään hyvänä, mutta termien raskaus ja ajattelutavan muodollisuus koetaan vaikeiksi. Johtamisen työkalut ovat byrokraattisia, mikä haittaa suunnitelmallisuutta. Tehokas sidosryhmäanalyysin hyödyntäminen osana järjestelmällistä yritysvastuun johtamista voi kuitenkin tuoda myös pk-yritykselle strategista etua. Yhteisen arvon luominen on mahdollista, jolloin yrityksen etu ja yhteiskunnan etu yhdistyvät tehokkaimmalla mahdollisella tavalla.

Managing Customer Issues through a Support Channel Network

The importance of after-sales service or service in general can be seen and experienced by customers every day with industrial as well as other non-industrial services or products. This dissertation, drawing on theory and experience, focuses on practical engineering implications, specifically the management of customer issues in the after-sales phase in the mobile phone arena. The main objective of this doctoral dissertation is to investigate customer after-sales issue management, specifically regarding mobile phones. The case studies focus on issue resolution time and the issue of corrective actions. This dissertation consists of a main body and four peer-reviewed journal articles and one manuscript currently under review by a peer-reviewed journal. The main body of this dissertation examines the elements of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention with respect to corrective actions to address customer issues and issue resolution time through literature and empirical studies. The five independent works are case studies supporting the thesis research questions. This study examines four questions: 1) What are the factors affecting corrective actions for customers? 2) How can customer issue resolution time be controlled? 3) What are the factors affecting processes in the service chain? and 4) How can communication be measured in a service chain? In this work, both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods are used. The main body of the thesis reviews the literature regarding the elements that bridge the five case studies. The case studies of the articles and surveys lean more toward the methodology of critical positivism and then apply the interpretive approach in interpreting the results. The case study articles employ various statistical methods to analyze and to interpret the empirical and survey data. The statistical methods were used to create a model that is useful for significantly optimizing issue resolution time. Moreover, it was found that samples for verifying issues provided by the customer neither improve the perceived quality of corrective actions nor the perceived quality of issue resolution time. The term “service” in this work is limited to the technical services that are provided by product manufacturers and after-sales authorized service vendors. On the basis of this research work, it has been observed that corrective actions and issue resolution time are associated with customer satisfaction and hence, according to induction theory, to customer loyalty and retention. This thesis utilizes knowledge of marketing and customer relationships to contribute to the existing body of knowledge concerning information and communication technology for after-sales service recovery of mobile terminals. The established models in the thesis contribute to the existing knowledge of the after-sales process of dealing with customer issues in the field of mobile phones. The findings suggest that process managers could focus more on communication and training provided to the staff as new technology evolves rapidly. The study also suggest the managers formulate strategies for how customers can be kept informed on a regular basis of the status of issues that have been escalated for corrective action. The findings also lay the foundation for the comprehensive objective to control the entire product development process, starting with conceptualization. This implies that robust design should be applied to the new products so that problems affecting customer service quality are not repeated. The objective will be achieved when the entire service chain from product development to the final user can be modeled and this model can be used to support the organization at all levels.

Russian SME technology transfer to Finland – Entrepreneurial challenges and motivation

The purpose of this thesis is to study the international technology transfer of transition economy SME entrepreneurs to the developed countries. The research aims to characterize the phenomenon by studying Russian SME technology transfer to Finland with the research methods from case studies. In addition to characterizing the phenomenon, the research finds out factors that motivate Russian entrepreneurs to conduct international technology transfer and what are the challenges the Russian entrepreneurs face when they enter the Finnish business environment. The qualitative data was collected from six semi-structured interviews with the entrepreneurs and several secondary data sources, considering four different technology transfer cases. The data and the analysis showed that the case companies in Finland are mostly linked to manufacturing of physical products. The entrepreneurs are motivated to come to Finland mainly by the opportunities and support the Finnish business and innovation environment provides to the entrepreneurs and by the personal gain that they get by establishing the company in Finland. Major challenges in the process include time constraints and capital requirements, difficulties on achieving sales on the Finnish market and finding skilled personnel to support the Russian management and owners.

Laadulliset tutkimusmenetelmät teollisessa markkinoinnissa

Tämä kandidaatintyö käsittelee laadullisten tutkimusmenetelmien käyttöön teollisessa markkinoinnissa. Työssä tutkitaan laadullisten tutkimusmenetelmien käyttöä vuosien 2010-2013 aikana Industrial Marketing Management –lehdessä. Työssä käsitellään käytetyimpien menetelmien piirteitä, käyttöä ja soveltuvuutta teollisen markkinoinnin tutkimuksessa sekä vertaillaan menetelmiä keskenään. Työn lopussa pohditaan myös laadullisten tutkimusmenetelmien käyttöä tulevaisuudessa. Tutkimuksen pohjalta laadullisten tutkimusmenetelmien huomataan olevan kasvussa, kun taas kvantitatiivisten menetelmien käyttö on vähenemässä. Käytetyimmiksi tunnistetut menetelmät ovat case-menetelmä, joka on tutkimuksen perusteella tällä hetkellä suosituin menetelmä, grounded theory, etnografia ja narratiivinen tutkimus.

Altmetrics in practice: How are institutional repositories using altmetrics today?

Workshop at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

How to take advantage of ORCID in institutional repositories

Workshop at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014