P. K. Kannan
Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Marketing Science
The Robert H. Smith School of Business
University of Maryland
The Distant Past…
An ancient toll booth
Porta Borsari, Verona, Italy
The Past….
The Near Past.. and the Present!
A Mechanical Solution…
A Digital Solution…
Digital Technology Creates “Super-Service”
 Technology eliminates service variability
 Variability due to technology
 Variability due to customer skill-level
 Makes service very efficient
 A paradigm shift in service levels
 Co-production of effort minimal!
 Traffic is smooth, congestion minimized, community
benefits!
(Maglio 2011)
The rise of digital services…..
Media
Visual
Audio
Gaming
Software/Apps
Personalization/Add-on Services
UGC
Software-as-Service
E-Learning
E-Health
Success of Technology….not quite uniform
 Significant impact on individuals, firms, governments
and society
 Enormous productivity gains…
 In general, much improved outcomes…
 Despite infusion of technology, some sectors have not
seen significant gains in outcome
 Education expenses have been increasing
 Healthcare costs have exploded
 Expensive government services are the norm
 Digital networks and services will come to the rescue..
Personal Services – A network of devices and apps
Wearable computing…
www.fastcodesign.com
Customization/Personalization
Services Networking Apps
 Networking of the apps personalizes the suite of
service for an individual – apps to talk to each other…
 Digital services will allocate “screen space” in as much
as a retailer decides the “shelf space”
Renting will become fashionable….
 Enabler is vast digital networks
 Airbnb
 Uber, Lyft
 Software as a Service
 Digital Services rather than Software Products
 Education as a Digital Service
 Tele-medicine
 Outcome based measures of success
 Using customer as assets – co-creation using digital
networks
Institution
Government/Business
Citizens/Customers
Design Input
Effort
Benefit/Value
REALM
OF
SELF-SERVICE
Citizens/Customers
Institution
Government/Business
Effort
CITIZEN
SERVICE
FOR
COMMON
GOOD
Community Benefit
Citizens/Customers
Institution
Government/Business
Value
CITIZENS
HELPING
OTHER
CITIZENS
AND
FOR
COMMON
GOOD
Design Input
Effort
Value
•
•
•
•
Citizens are resources and assets
Defining value based on social outcomes
Building social networks
Building reciprocal relationships
Co-Delivery of Services
 Co-delivery is
 an active, creative and social process,
 based on collaboration between governments and
citizens, and/or
 between citizens and citizens
 that is initiated by the government
 to generate value for citizens
 through innovative “digital” services
 Based on Ref: Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004)
 Ref: www.promisecorp.com/newpathways
Co-Design of Public Services
 Citizens participating in the development of a new
policy or service
 Time-bounded
 Citizen groups
 Examples
 Consulting Canadians
 New South Wales Education Department
Co-Production of Public Services
 Co-production is a
 new way of thinking about public services;
 has the potential to deliver a paradigm shift in providing
services such as
 health, education, policing, etc
 to make them more effective, efficient, and more
sustainable
 Ref: Boyle and Harris (2009)
Big Data to Benefit the Small Guy…
 Using the big data to benefit the customers
 Processed information to help customers
 Health indicators
 Nutrition information
 Utility consumption
 Personalized Financial Services
 Visualization services for easy digestion of data
 Learning from the aggregate data to aid the individual
customer
 recommendation services
Necessity for services to be real-time…
 Services will need to become more real time
 Consider advertising services…
 Expanding media and formats

Digital media, social media, print, TV, radio, mobile
 Ever expanding number of devices

Desktop, laptop, tablets, smartphones,…
 When and where should customers be targeted

Reaction times are in nanoseconds
 More algorithmic services
 Service quality issues, metrics and measurement
In conclusion…
 The changes brought about by digital services
 Will be significant and paradigm shifting
 Real focus on reducing inefficiencies
 Will change the nature of service provision
 Will change the nature of service providers
 Challenges for firms and governments
 Keeping up with digital technologies
 Shorter time frame for recouping investments and
realizing ROI
 Will require new management skills