Managing Service Productivity

Productivity management is gaining importance in the service industry, therefore this chapter provides a deep insight into business practices of German service productivity management. Its results can be used to extrapolate trends for other industrialized and service intensive countries. Perhaps of concern is the finding that on the one hand 99 % of all participants of the study expect a constant or growing relevance of service productivity but on the other hand, one third (33 %) of the surveyed companies do not conduct any productivity management. Part of this challenge facing managing service productivity is the lack of appropriate methods and tools. Although several academic approaches exist, such as Data Envelope Analysis (DEA), they can often not be used in business practice due to their complexity. So what does the management of service productivity look these days? The following chapter addresses this question. The contribution by Stephan Klingner, Stephanie Pravemann, Michael Becker and Klaus-Peter Fähnrich is an empirical study conducted in 1,990 German service companies from February to November in 2012. The main focus of this study was to analyse the state of the art in managing service productivity within these companies and to show the correlation between managing service productivity and economic success. It examines the methods and tools actually used in practice for measuring and improving service productivity and highlights existing challenges for managing service productivity as well as the current needs and trends of companies.