An Ideation Framework for Service Process Improvement

Abstract

Service delivery processes play a key role in the competitiveness of modern organizations. Their effectiveness and efficiency are a consequence of successful design of new processes and improvement of existing processes. Improvement methodologies commonly focus on generic steps serving as a road map for moving a process from its current state along a guided path to better performance. However, these methodologies ignore the crucial step of methods for modifying processes, which often necessitate the generation of new improvement alternatives; generally based on “randomized” brainstorming rather than on systematic triggering of new ideas and reusing past improvements. The authors’ framework comprises and integrates 21 goal determinants to be achieved through process redesign, 32 best practices describing possible process modifications, 40 TRIZ inventive principles for generating new improvement ideas, and case-based reasoning (CBR) for retaining and reusing past improvements. This paper illustrates the application of the proposed methodology using an example of an inbound telesales process.