SS

Early adopters of airline kiosks, for example, differentiated themselves through self-service technology (Mode-E). While kiosks were a distinctive activity central to the service strategy , it was hardly critical. Years later, customers expect kiosks at all locations for every airline. Every major airline considers it a critical activity but not distinctive – it no longer differentiates. Hence airlines consolidate or source this critical activity. They collaborate with partner airlines to provide kiosks any member airline may use. They source kiosks from Type III providers who place them in corporate locations, hotels and public places.

6.5.2 Sourcing structures

The dynamics of service sourcing require businesses to formally address provisions for a sourcing strategy, the structure and role of the retained organization , and the impacted decision rights processes. When sourcing services, the enterprise retains the responsibility for the adequacy of services delivered. Therefore, the enterprise retains key overall responsibility for governance . The enterprise should adopt a formal governance approach in order to create a working model for managing its outsourced services as well as the assurance of value delivery. This includes planning for the organizational change precipitated by the sourcing strategy and a formal and verifiable description as to how decisions on services are made. Figure 6.12 and Table 6.2 describes the generic forms of service sourcing structures.

Figure 6.12 Service sourcing structures

The term Co-Sourcing refers to a special case of Selective Outsourcing. In this variant, the service recipient maintains an Internal or Shared Services structure and combines it with external providers. The service recipient is the service integrator.