DETERMINING THE BUSINESS VALUE OF VOLUME FLEXIBILITY FOR SERVICE PROVIDERS - A REAL OPTIONS APPROACH

摘要: Service Providers often struggle with fluctuating demand of service requests which can lead to prolonged waiting times and hence dissatisfaction customers. Therefore, providers strive for volume flexibility cope this challenge. In manufacturing context, a shift excess an external partner is already common practice while reacted reluctantly possibilities in fear high integration costs. The uprising new technologies such as Oriented Architectures (SOA) lowered these cost allowed the separation up now entangled software functionalities into services use standardized interfaces. Nevertheless, investment decisions related SOA oftentimes lack well-founded valuation respective benefits. we present analytical model based on Real Options Approach (ROA) that determines business value resulting from IS-based vendor. Thereby consider trade-off between investments technical requirements (e.g. SOA) are necessary gain one hand negative effects unsatisfied customers customer equity other hand. We also provide first insights applicability via demonstration example.