Identifying the core competence as a key requirement for business model innovation. The case of Airlines as a service industry

Core competencies form the basis of an organization’s skills and the basic element of a successful strategic execution. Identifying and strengthening the core competencies enhances flexibility thereby strategically positioning a firm for responding to competition in the dynamic marketplace and can be the difference in quality among firms that follow the same business model. A correct understanding of the concept of business models, employing the right core competencies, organizing them effectively and building the business model around the competencies that are constantly gained and assimilated can result in enhanced business performance and thus having implications for firms that want to innovate their business models. Flexibility can be the firm’s agility to shift focus in response to external factors such as changing markets, new technologies or competition and a firm’s success can be gauged by the ability it displays in this transition. Although industry transformations generally emanate from technological changes, recent examples suggests they may also be due to the introduction of new business models and nowhere is it more relevant than in the airline industry. An analysis of the business model flexibility of 17 Airlines from Asia, Europe and Oceania, that is done with core competence as the indicator reveals a picture of inconsistencies in the core competence strategy of certain airlines and the corresponding reduction in business performance. The performance variations are explained from a service oriented core competence strategy employed by airlines that ultimately enables them in having a flexible business model that not only increases business performance but also helps in reducing the uncertainties in the internal and external operating environments. This is more relevant in the case of airline industry, as the product (the air transportation of passengers) minus the service competence is all the same.

Real time passenger information systems and quality of bus services

One of the main problems in urban areas is the steady growth in car ownership and traffic levels. Therefore, the challenge of sustainability is focused on a shift of the demand for mobility from cars to collective means of transport. For this end, buses are a key element of the public transport systems. In this respect Real Time Passenger Information (RTPI) systems help citizens change their travel behaviour towards more sustainable transport modes. This paper provides an assessment methodology which evaluates how RTPI systems improve the quality of bus services in two European cities, Madrid and Bremerhaven. In the case of Madrid, bus punctuality has increased by 3%. Regarding the travellers perception, Madrid raised its quality of service by 6% while Bremerhaven increased by 13%. On the other hand, the users ́ perception of Public Transport (PT) image increased by 14%.

Rural tourism quality in Spain. The "Q" mark.

The Spanish tourism stakchoiders (State Tourism Administration, public tourism agencies, hospitality sector, recreational sector, travel operators, other touristic business, etc.) have developed a very powerful and practical quality certification system for all the actors in the tourism sector, including all those actors and activities in the rural tourism sector, which traditionally do not have a proper tourism system. In this framework the Institute for Spanish Tourism Quality (ICTE) administers, manages and monitors the "Spanish Tourism Quality" "Q" Mark, as an exclusive brand that announces the quality of the activity and service provided by the certified tourist business.

Analysis, monitoring, and management of quality of experience in video delivery services over IP

Esta tesis estudia la monitorización y gestión de la Calidad de Experiencia (QoE) en los servicios de distribución de vídeo sobre IP. Aborda el problema de cómo prevenir, detectar, medir y reaccionar a las degradaciones de la QoE desde la perspectiva de un proveedor de servicios: la solución debe ser escalable para una red IP extensa que entregue flujos individuales a miles de usuarios simultáneamente. La solución de monitorización propuesta se ha denominado QuEM(Qualitative Experience Monitoring, o Monitorización Cualitativa de la Experiencia). Se basa en la detección de las degradaciones de la calidad de servicio de red (pérdidas de paquetes, disminuciones abruptas del ancho de banda...) e inferir de cada una una descripción cualitativa de su efecto en la Calidad de Experiencia percibida (silencios, defectos en el vídeo...). Este análisis se apoya en la información de transporte y de la capa de abstracción de red de los flujos codificados, y permite caracterizar los defectos más relevantes que se observan en este tipo de servicios: congelaciones, efecto de “cuadros”, silencios, pérdida de calidad del vídeo, retardos e interrupciones en el servicio. Los resultados se han validado mediante pruebas de calidad subjetiva. La metodología usada en esas pruebas se ha desarrollado a su vez para imitar lo más posible las condiciones de visualización de un usuario de este tipo de servicios: los defectos que se evalúan se introducen de forma aleatoria en medio de una secuencia de vídeo continua. Se han propuesto también algunas aplicaciones basadas en la solución de monitorización: un sistema de protección desigual frente a errores que ofrece más protección a las partes del vídeo más sensibles a pérdidas, una solución para minimizar el impacto de la interrupción de la descarga de segmentos de Streaming Adaptativo sobre HTTP, y un sistema de cifrado selectivo que encripta únicamente las partes del vídeo más sensibles. También se ha presentado una solución de cambio rápido de canal, así como el análisis de la aplicabilidad de los resultados anteriores a un escenario de vídeo en 3D. ABSTRACT This thesis proposes a comprehensive approach to the monitoring and management of Quality of Experience (QoE) in multimedia delivery services over IP. It addresses the problem of preventing, detecting, measuring, and reacting to QoE degradations, under the constraints of a service provider: the solution must scale for a wide IP network delivering individual media streams to thousands of users. The solution proposed for the monitoring is called QuEM (Qualitative Experience Monitoring). It is based on the detection of degradations in the network Quality of Service (packet losses, bandwidth drops...) and the mapping of each degradation event to a qualitative description of its effect in the perceived Quality of Experience (audio mutes, video artifacts...). This mapping is based on the analysis of the transport and Network Abstraction Layer information of the coded stream, and allows a good characterization of the most relevant defects that exist in this kind of services: screen freezing, macroblocking, audio mutes, video quality drops, delay issues, and service outages. The results have been validated by subjective quality assessment tests. The methodology used for those test has also been designed to mimic as much as possible the conditions of a real user of those services: the impairments to evaluate are introduced randomly in the middle of a continuous video stream. Based on the monitoring solution, several applications have been proposed as well: an unequal error protection system which provides higher protection to the parts of the stream which are more critical for the QoE, a solution which applies the same principles to minimize the impact of incomplete segment downloads in HTTP Adaptive Streaming, and a selective scrambling algorithm which ciphers only the most sensitive parts of the media stream. A fast channel change application is also presented, as well as a discussion about how to apply the previous results and concepts in a 3D video scenario.

Analysis of service-oriented computing systems

La computación basada en servicios (Service-Oriented Computing, SOC) se estableció como un paradigma ampliamente aceptado para el desarollo de sistemas de software flexibles, distribuidos y adaptables, donde las composiciones de los servicios realizan las tareas más complejas o de nivel más alto, frecuentemente tareas inter-organizativas usando los servicios atómicos u otras composiciones de servicios. En tales sistemas, las propriedades de la calidad de servicio (Quality of Service, QoS), como la rapídez de procesamiento, coste, disponibilidad o seguridad, son críticas para la usabilidad de los servicios o sus composiciones en cualquier aplicación concreta. El análisis de estas propriedades se puede realizarse de una forma más precisa y rica en información si se utilizan las técnicas de análisis de programas, como el análisis de complejidad o de compartición de datos, que son capables de analizar simultáneamente tanto las estructuras de control como las de datos, dependencias y operaciones en una composición. El análisis de coste computacional para la composicion de servicios puede ayudar a una monitorización predictiva así como a una adaptación proactiva a través de una inferencia automática de coste computacional, usando los limites altos y bajos como funciones del valor o del tamaño de los mensajes de entrada. Tales funciones de coste se pueden usar para adaptación en la forma de selección de los candidatos entre los servicios que minimizan el coste total de la composición, basado en los datos reales que se pasan al servicio. Las funciones de coste también pueden ser combinadas con los parámetros extraídos empíricamente desde la infraestructura, para producir las funciones de los límites de QoS sobre los datos de entrada, cuales se pueden usar para previsar, en el momento de invocación, las violaciones de los compromisos al nivel de servicios (Service Level Agreements, SLA) potenciales or inminentes. En las composiciones críticas, una previsión continua de QoS bastante eficaz y precisa se puede basar en el modelado con restricciones de QoS desde la estructura de la composition, datos empiricos en tiempo de ejecución y (cuando estén disponibles) los resultados del análisis de complejidad. Este enfoque se puede aplicar a las orquestaciones de servicios con un control centralizado del flujo, así como a las coreografías con participantes multiples, siguiendo unas interacciones complejas que modifican su estado. El análisis del compartición de datos puede servir de apoyo para acciones de adaptación, como la paralelización, fragmentación y selección de los componentes, las cuales son basadas en dependencias funcionales y en el contenido de información en los mensajes, datos internos y las actividades de la composición, cuando se usan construcciones de control complejas, como bucles, bifurcaciones y flujos anidados. Tanto las dependencias funcionales como el contenido de información (descrito a través de algunos atributos definidos por el usuario) se pueden expresar usando una representación basada en la lógica de primer orden (claúsulas de Horn), y los resultados del análisis se pueden interpretar como modelos conceptuales basados en retículos. ABSTRACT Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a widely accepted paradigm for development of flexible, distributed and adaptable software systems, in which service compositions perform more complex, higher-level, often cross-organizational tasks using atomic services or other service compositions. In such systems, Quality of Service (QoS) properties, such as the performance, cost, availability or security, are critical for the usability of services and their compositions in concrete applications. Analysis of these properties can become more precise and richer in information, if it employs program analysis techniques, such as the complexity and sharing analyses, which are able to simultaneously take into account both the control and the data structures, dependencies, and operations in a composition. Computation cost analysis for service composition can support predictive monitoring and proactive adaptation by automatically inferring computation cost using the upper and lower bound functions of value or size of input messages. These cost functions can be used for adaptation by selecting service candidates that minimize total cost of the composition, based on the actual data that is passed to them. The cost functions can also be combined with the empirically collected infrastructural parameters to produce QoS bounds functions of input data that can be used to predict potential or imminent Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations at the moment of invocation. In mission-critical applications, an effective and accurate continuous QoS prediction, based on continuations, can be achieved by constraint modeling of composition QoS based on its structure, known data at runtime, and (when available) the results of complexity analysis. This approach can be applied to service orchestrations with centralized flow control, and choreographies with multiple participants with complex stateful interactions. Sharing analysis can support adaptation actions, such as parallelization, fragmentation, and component selection, which are based on functional dependencies and information content of the composition messages, internal data, and activities, in presence of complex control constructs, such as loops, branches, and sub-workflows. Both the functional dependencies and the information content (described using user-defined attributes) can be expressed using a first-order logic (Horn clause) representation, and the analysis results can be interpreted as a lattice-based conceptual models.

Key quality factors and travellers profiles at interurban interchanges

La planificación y las políticas de transporte no pueden descuidar la calidad del servicio, considerando que influye notablemente en el cambio modal del coche hacia otros medios de transporte más sostenibles. El concepto se aplica también a los intercambiadores de transporte público, los nodos del sistema donde se cruzan las distintas redes del transporte público y privado. Aunque se han logrado numerosos avances para medir y evaluar la calidad en el sector del transporte público, se han dedicado relativamente pocos esfuerzos a investigar estos aspectos relacionados con la calidad de los intercambiadores del transporte público. Este trabajo de investigación se concentra en la calidad del servicio de la transferencia modal en los intercambiadores interurbanos, según la perspectiva de los viajeros. Su objetivo es identificar los factores clave de la calidad del servicio y los perfiles de los viajeros en los intercambiadores. La investigación es exploratoria y ofrece información acerca de la percepción de los viajeros intermodales relacionada con los aspectos de la calidad, aportando nuevos elementos y datos para adentrarse en estudios más detallados. La metodología del trabajo combina técnicas de análisis estadístico multivariante para analizar los datos de las encuestas sobre la satisfacción de los clientes y se subdivide en tres etapas. En primer lugar, se ha implementado el análisis de correspondencias múltiples para explorar los constructos latentes relacionados con la satisfacción de las características cualitativas de los intercambiadores interurbanos, identificando así los factores clave de la calidad. En segundo lugar, se ha aplicado un análisis de conglomerados de k-medias sobre los factores clave de calidad para clasificar a los viajeros en grupos de usuarios de transportes homogéneos, de acuerdo con su percepción de satisfacción, identificando de este modo los perfiles de los viajeros. Por último, se han formulado sugerencias y recomendaciones sobre la calidad para respaldar la formulación de políticas, estableciendo las prioridades para los intercambiadores interurbanos. La metodología se aplicó en cuatro intercambiadores interurbanos (estaciones de ferrocarriles o de autobuses ) en Madrid, Zaragoza, Gothenburg y Lion, analizando los datos recogidos mediante una encuesta de satisfacción del cliente llevada a cabo en 2011 en los cuatro casos de estudio, donde se interconectan distintos medios de transporte público y privado, de corta y larga distancia. Se recogieron datos sobre la satisfacción de los viajeros con 26 criterios de calidad, así como información sobre aspectos socio-económicos y pautas de comportamiento de viajes. Mediante el análisis de correspondencias múltiples se identificaron 4-5 factores clave de calidad en cada intercambiador, que se asocian principalmente con el sistema de emisión de billetes, el confort y la interconexión, mientras que los viajeros no perciben los temas clásicos como la información. Mediante el análisis de conglomerados se identificaron 2-5 perfiles de viajeros en cada intercambiador. Se reconocieron dos grupos de viajeros en casi todos los casos de estudio: viajeros de cercanía/trabajadores y turistas. Por lo que concierne a las prioridades para apoyar a las partes interesadas en la formulación de políticas, la expedición de billetes es el factor clave para los intercambiadores interurbanos españoles, mientras que la interconexión y los aspectos temporales se destacan en los intercambiadores de Francia y Suecia. Quality of Service can not be neglected in public transport planning and policy making, since it strongly influences modal shifts from car to more sustainable modes. This concept is also related to Public Transport interchanges, the nodes of the transport system where the different sub-systems of public passenger transport and personal vehicles meet. Although a lot of progress has been generally done to measure and assess quality in public transport sector, relatively little investigation has been conducted on quality at PT interchanges. This research work focusses on Quality of Service in the use of transfer facilities at interurban interchanges, according to current travellers’ perspective. It aims at identifying key quality factors and travellers profiles at interurban interchanges. The research is exploratory and offers insight into intermodal travellers’ perception on quality aspects, providing new elements and inputs for more definitive investigation. The methodology of the work combines multivariate statistical techniques to analyse data from customer satisfaction surveys and is subdivided in three steps. Firstly, multiple correspondence analysis was performed to explore latent constructs as concern satisfaction of quality attributes at interurban interchanges, thus identifying the so-called Key Quality Factor. Secondly, k-means cluster analysis was implemented on the key quality factors to classify travellers in homogeneous groups of transport users, according to their perception of satisfaction, thus identifying the so-called Travellers Profiles. Finally, hints and recommendations on quality were identified to support policy making, setting priorities for interurban interchanges. The methodology was applied at four interurban interchanges in Madrid, Zaragoza, Gothenburg and Lyon, analysing the data collected through a customer satisfaction survey carried out in 2011 at the four railway or bus stations where different modes of public and private transport are interconnected covering both short and long trips. Data on travellers’ satisfaction with 26 quality attributes were collected, as well as information on socio-economical and travel patterns. Through multiple correspondence analysis were identified 4-5 key quality factors per interchange. They are mainly related to ticketing, comfort and connectivity, while classical issues, as information, are not perceived as important by travellers’. Through cluster analysis were identified 2-5 travellers profiles per interchange. Two groups of travellers can be found in almost all case studies: commuter / business travellers and holiday travellers. As regards the priorities to support stakeholders in policy making, ticketing is the key-issue for the Spanish interurban interchanges, while connectivity and temporal issues emerge in the French and Swedish case studies.

Quality of bus services performance: benefits of real time passenger information systems

One of the main problems in urban areas is the steady growth in car ownership and traffic levels. Therefore, the challenge of sustainability is focused on a shift of the demand for mobility from cars to collective means of transport. For this purpose, buses are a key element of the public transport systems. In this respect Real Time Passenger Information (RTPI) systems help people change their travel behaviour towards more sustainable transport modes. This paper provides an assessment methodology which evaluates how RTPI systems improve the quality of bus services performance in two European cities, Madrid and Bremerhaven. In the case of Madrid, bus punctuality has increased by 3%. Regarding the travellers perception, Madrid raised its quality of service by 6% while Bremerhaven increased by 13%. On the other hand, the users¿ perception of Public Transport (PT) image increased by 14%.

Key quality factors at urban interchanges.

Quality of service should not be overlooked in public transport planning and policy making, as it influences modal shift from car use to more sustainable means. Little research has been conducted on the quality of public transport interchanges from the perspective of current travellers (i.e. perceived quality). This work is thus aimed at identifying key quality factors in urban interchanges, through an exploratory approach (multiple correspondence analysis) that provides novel elements for further research. The methodology was applied at interchanges in Madrid and Gothenburg and the data used in the analysis were collected through customer satisfaction surveys conducted in 2011. The analysis identified five key quality factors per interchange. Ticketing plays a key role at both interchanges while physical and environmental issues emerged at Avenida de America in Madrid, and services, temporal issues and interconnectivity characterise Gothenburg central station. Compared with other quality aspects, classical issues such as safety/security and information are not perceived as important by intermodal travellers.

Subjective quality assessment of an adaptive video streaming model

With the recent increased popularity and high usage of HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) techniques, various studies have been carried out in this area which generally focused on the technical enhancement of HAS technology and applications. However, a lack of common HAS standard led to multiple proprietary approaches which have been developed by major Internet companies. In the emerging MPEG-DASH standard the packagings of the video content and HTTP syntax have been standardized; but all the details of the adaptation behavior are left to the client implementation. Nevertheless, to design an adaptation algorithm which optimizes the viewing experience of the enduser, the multimedia service providers need to know about the Quality of Experience (QoE) of different adaptation schemes. Taking this into account, the objective of this experiment was to study the QoE of a HAS-based video broadcast model. The experiment has been carried out through a subjective study of the end user response to various possible clients’ behavior for changing the video quality taking different QoE-influence factors into account. The experimental conclusions have made a good insight into the QoE of different adaptation schemes which can be exploited by HAS clients for designing the adaptation algorithms.