Banking through insufficiently coordinated and non-integrated channels (Multi-Channel) is slowly being discarded. With Omni-Channel banking, where channels are integrated and data and information are shared across cross channels, customers are in control of the channels they wish to use. Factors influencing the organisational decision to transition from Multi-Channel to Omni-Channel hasn't been fully explored. Is this decision responding to internal factors like efficiency improvements, or is it driven by external factors like customer demands, trying to enhance customer experience, gaining competitive advantage over the competitors, expanding the business by introducing new business models, or trying to gain access to smart technologies for financial benefit? This dissertation presents research findings into the investigation of factors that influence the organisational decision to transition from Multi-Channel to Omni-Channel banking. A positivist case study with inductive reasoning was adopted. Qualitative data was collected from a single organisation through interviews together with observations of the strategy documents between January 2019 and April 2019. An initial conceptual model was derived from the literature review to guide data collection, after which thematic analysis was used to analyse the data and develop an emergent theory. The key findings from the research study are that a customer centric approach informs the decision to transition. The customer is at the centre of the omni-channel strategy: that is through an enhanced customer experience or timeously responding to customer demands. Other factors are either enabling this strategy, like technological innovations, and efficiency improvements or are the outcome of the strategy like customer satisfaction, revenue or cost optimisation, and competitive advantage. The key implications are that organisations must pay more attention to the customer journey and ensure that they advance in the Customer Experience Capability Maturity Model. Most successful business transitions to the Omni-Channel strategy require a transformation in organizational culture, operations and processes, and the underlying technologies.

Globally, trade and industry has shifted its focus from the traditional service delivery approaches to various alternative practices to be more successful, cost efficient, customer orientated, flexible and innovative. This shift in focus has lead to organisations applying a customer centric approach in their business. In order to understand customer centricity, it is necessary to be familiar with the term customer service. Customer service is the offering of services to customers before, during and after a purchase. It is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction, i.e. the feeling that a product or service has met the customer’s expectations. Although it seems to be difficult to create and maintain a positive service culture, the implementation and upkeep of service excellence hold numerous advantages for organisations in both the short and the long term. Excellent customer service leads to an increase in profits as well as assist organisations in achieving a competitive advantage. Organisations with a customer centric approach can expect to experience a 30% higher return on investment on their marketing efforts compared to their peers not embracing customer centricity. Moreover, exceptional customer service will lead to customer satisfaction, which in turn, may well lead to customer loyalty which is crucial in the current volatile economic market. Recent economic instability triggered financial uncertainty in trade and industry. This causes difficulties for organisations to gain a competitive advantage and predict consumer behaviour. The organisations that will survive and outlive these uncertain circumstances will be those that maintain a customer centric focus. A customer centric focus implies that organisations place their customers first by concentrating on their needs and behaviours. These organisations will also attempt to eliminate internal factors that constrain service offerings to customers. Furthermore, customer centricity includes the alignment of resources of the organisation to successfully respond to the ever-changing needs of the customer, while building mutually profitable relationships. The main difference between customer service and customer centricity appears to relate to meaningful changes that customer centric organisations make in addressing their customers’ expectations and providing reciprocal support. Customer centricity seems to take customer service thus a step further with regards to service delivery. The healthcare environment forms an important part of trade and industry and economic instability also affects this sphere. In this study, the focus filters to the healthcare industry in South Africa and the role and importance of a customer centric approach to doctors. The South African healthcare environment consists of two sectors, namely large public (managed by government) and smaller, higher quality private healthcare. The South African healthcare system is unique to those of other countries as it is dynamic and multifaceted. The legislative framework within the healthcare system gives South African citizens the right to access healthcare services. Due to a skewed financing system in healthcare, this framework has a major impact on both the public and private sectors. The private healthcare industry in South Africa has grown dramatically with the number of beds doubling between 1988 and 1993. This was mainly due to the international trends toward privatisation and advanced by government's policies for privatisation. This resulted in the migration of doctors from public service to private practices. Specialists play an integral part in providing healthcare services. The private hospital industry provides admitting and treating facilities where doctors prescribe the care that hospitals should deliver to patients. This interplay between private hospitals and specialists emphasises that specialists are important customers of private hospitals. The importance of obtaining and retaining doctors is also highlighted in the vision and mission of the top three private hospital groups in South Africa, namely Mediclinic, Netcare and Life Healthcare. Many challenges exist to grow and maintain patient volumes for the private hospital sector. One thereof is to establish doctor (and their practices') support by building an optimum mix of loyal specialist and general practitioner (GP) networks for the hospital. The management and nurturing of relationships with doctors through these networks could lead to a competitive advantage for private hospitals. A study was therefore conducted to gain insight as to how specialists define customer centricity as well as their expectations of private hospitals when applying a customer centric approach towards doctors. The research was of qualitative nature. An experimental research design was applied and included 11 participants. Semi-structured interviews with specialists from one of the top three private hospital groups were conducted in order to gather relevant data. The interviews were transcribed and coded. Results were analysed and interpreted via thorough content analysis. Participants highlighted the following elements as important when defining customer centricity: customer focus, satisfaction, facilities and resources, accessibility, safety and cost effectiveness. In addition, participants confirmed that the following aspects marked their expectancies of a customer centric organisation: quality patient care and services, facilities and resources, effective communication, support and cooperation, provision of sufficient and well trained staff, mutual financial gains, appreciation, resolving of problems, involvement in decision making and respect. Conclusions and recommendations pertaining to future research were also provided. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Globally, trade and industry has shifted its focus from the traditional service delivery approaches to various alternative practices to be more successful, cost efficient, customer orientated, flexible and innovative. This shift in focus has lead to organisations applying a customer centric approach in their business. In order to understand customer centricity, it is necessary to be familiar with the term customer service. Customer service is the offering of services to customers before, during and after a purchase. It is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction, i.e. the feeling that a product or service has met the customer’s expectations. Although it seems to be difficult to create and maintain a positive service culture, the implementation and upkeep of service excellence hold numerous advantages for organisations in both the short and the long term. Excellent customer service leads to an increase in profits as well as assist organisations in achieving a competitive advantage. Organisations with a customer centric approach can expect to experience a 30% higher return on investment on their marketing efforts compared to their peers not embracing customer centricity. Moreover, exceptional customer service will lead to customer satisfaction, which in turn, may well lead to customer loyalty which is crucial in the current volatile economic market. Recent economic instability triggered financial uncertainty in trade and industry. This causes difficulties for organisations to gain a competitive advantage and predict consumer behaviour. The organisations that will survive and outlive these uncertain circumstances will be those that maintain a customer centric focus. A customer centric focus implies that organisations place their customers first by concentrating on their needs and behaviours. These organisations will also attempt to eliminate internal factors that constrain service offerings to customers. Furthermore, customer centricity includes the alignment of resources of the organisation to successfully respond to the ever-changing needs of the customer, while building mutually profitable relationships. The main difference between customer service and customer centricity appears to relate to meaningful changes that customer centric organisations make in addressing their customers’ expectations and providing reciprocal support. Customer centricity seems to take customer service thus a step further with regards to service delivery. The healthcare environment forms an important part of trade and industry and economic instability also affects this sphere. In this study, the focus filters to the healthcare industry in South Africa and the role and importance of a customer centric approach to doctors. The South African healthcare environment consists of two sectors, namely large public (managed by government) and smaller, higher quality private healthcare. The South African healthcare system is unique to those of other countries as it is dynamic and multifaceted. The legislative framework within the healthcare system gives South African citizens the right to access healthcare services. Due to a skewed financing system in healthcare, this framework has a major impact on both the public and private sectors. The private healthcare industry in South Africa has grown dramatically with the number of beds doubling between 1988 and 1993. This was mainly due to the international trends toward privatisation and advanced by government's policies for privatisation. This resulted in the migration of doctors from public service to private practices. Specialists play an integral part in providing healthcare services. The private hospital industry provides admitting and treating facilities where doctors prescribe the care that hospitals should deliver to patients. This interplay between private hospitals and specialists emphasises that specialists are important customers of private hospitals. The importance of obtaining and retaining doctors is also highlighted in the vision and mission of the top three private hospital groups in South Africa, namely Mediclinic, Netcare and Life Healthcare. Many challenges exist to grow and maintain patient volumes for the private hospital sector. One thereof is to establish doctor (and their practices') support by building an optimum mix of loyal specialist and general practitioner (GP) networks for the hospital. The management and nurturing of relationships with doctors through these networks could lead to a competitive advantage for private hospitals. A study was therefore conducted to gain insight as to how specialists define customer centricity as well as their expectations of private hospitals when applying a customer centric approach towards doctors. The research was of qualitative nature. An experimental research design was applied and included 11 participants. Semi-structured interviews with specialists from one of the top three private hospital groups were conducted in order to gather relevant data. The interviews were transcribed and coded. Results were analysed and interpreted via thorough content analysis. Participants highlighted the following elements as important when defining customer centricity: customer focus, satisfaction, facilities and resources, accessibility, safety and cost effectiveness. In addition, participants confirmed that the following aspects marked their expectancies of a customer centric organisation: quality patient care and services, facilities and resources, effective communication, support and cooperation, provision of sufficient and well trained staff, mutual financial gains, appreciation, resolving of problems, involvement in decision making and respect. Conclusions and recommendations pertaining to future research were also provided. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The main aim of the study was to determine which measurement tool, existing or adapted, would be able to determine the levels of customer centricity within the sales channels of a specific organisation, operating in the South African financial industry. A literary study showed that in order to determine the levels of customer centricity, customer experience should be measured. Six questionnaires were administered, namely, EXQ, NPS, CES, Customer satisfaction, Word-of-Mouth and Behavioural loyalty intention. The data showed a statistical significance and a positive relationship between all the constructs within all the questionnaires except with that of CES. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The main aim of the study was to determine which measurement tool, existing or adapted, would be able to determine the levels of customer centricity within the sales channels of a specific organisation, operating in the South African financial industry. A literary study showed that in order to determine the levels of customer centricity, customer experience should be measured. Six questionnaires were administered, namely, EXQ, NPS, CES, Customer satisfaction, Word-of-Mouth and Behavioural loyalty intention. The data showed a statistical significance and a positive relationship between all the constructs within all the questionnaires except with that of CES. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The customer takes over the center stage of tomorrow’s economy. In the wake of customer-centric service industries, traditional intermediaries are becoming increasingly obsolete and are substituted by self-services. Additionally, because of the on-going digitalization, e-services provide various alternatives to the customer. Thus, self-directed customers must overlook and manage an increasingly complex network of services and providers themselves. Technology is a central factor in this context. On the one hand, it is the leading cause of the current challenges whereby, on the contrary, it is the key to solving them. This work proposes the concept of Customer-centric Service Management (CSM). It is an interdisciplinary approach to adopt the service composition process from the field of business and IT to the particularities of consumers. Combining modular services to individualized and valuable service bundles is its objective. Making this type of interaction accessible for consumers requires a substantial reduction of complexity in the front end. The key to achieving this is by taking an outside-in perspective. This means understanding the decision process of the customer and speaking his language in a field that has been dominated by formal description standards and product parameters for a long time. This work hypothesizes that a paradigm-shift enables consumer-driven service com-position. Thus, the concept of customer-centricity is applied to service management. By letting the consumer describe himself, respectively his distinct needs and requirements, a better customer value is achieved than by traditional product-centric approaches. Unlike existing product-centric configuration tools, customer-centric configurators do not elicit product parameters. Instead, they rely on a structured description of customers’ intentions and values captured in a domain specific customer model. Consequently, the concept applies to a more abstract level of service categories instead of specific product instances. This refers to the pre-purchase phase of the consumer journey – a phase that is widely neglected by academia and practice yet. This work analyzes the concept of CSM on a technical, process-related, and strategic level. Three elements are identified as the core of CSM: the customer model, the service model, and the composition logic. Each item is elaborated in detail at the example of financial services. The concept of CSM facilitates current knowledge from different fields of research and finally implements them into a prototype. This demonstrator is the basis for a large field experiment to answer two questions: in the first place, does customer-centric service composition provide higher customer value regarding perceived complexity, solution utility and process utility? Moreover, secondly, does a reduced complexity, in respect of the amount of information that needs to be handled, with-out changing the configuration paradigm, have a greater impact on customer value? Empirical validation shows that the customer-centric approach has significant ad-vantages over the product-centric one. It offers higher customer value with respect to perceived complexity, perceived solution utility and perceived user experience. This proves the high potential of this concept. The findings of this thesis form the basis of a new form of customer interaction and enable new business models.:1 Introduction 1.1 Initial Situation and Problem 1.2 Contribution and Research Question 1.3 Research Approach 1.4 Thesis Structure 2 Foundations 2.1 Services 2.2 Complexity 2.3 Individualization 2.4 Service Management 3 Conceptualization of Customer-centric Service Management 3.1 Customer-centric Service Management 3.2 Customer Model 3.3 Service Model 3.4 Service Composition Logic 4 Empirical Validation 4.1 Objectives 4.2 Conceptualization 4.3 Prototype 4.4 Experiment Design and Empirical Testing 4.5 Data Analysis and Results 5 Results, Evaluation and Outlook 5.1 Summary and Results 5.2 Customer-centric Service Management as a Business-Model – Practical Startup Experiences 5.3 Outlook and Impact of CSM 5.4 Limitations and Need for Future Research 6 References Curriculum Vitae Bibliographic Data

Companies within the manufacturing industry is undergoing changes in their business models to adapt to changing external environments and trends – whereas one general trend is toward servitization, the transition from hardware products to software services. These software services have shown to have an increasingly impactful role for former productbased firms to ensure future reliable profits and revenues. This thesis aims to contribute to the academical field of servitization and business model literature, within the context of a non-disruptive industry with a slow technological development rate. This is done by addressing the following purpose: to understand how hardware manufacturing companies can integrate software services in their existing business model. In order to fulfill this thesis’ purpose, the research questions answered address how a hardware manufacturing company’s business model can be affected by servitization, but also how the process of business model innovation can be facilitated in the organization. This master’s thesis is anchored in a qualitative, interpretive case study – where the empirical data has been gathered from semi-structured interviews and internal case company documents. The findings from this thesis show that servitization can affect company business model in several ways. The first one is the shift towards customercentricity, both in terms of the design of the value proposition and the way of working with the customers. However, the findings show that companies in this context may experience difficulties with designing a value proposition that is desirable to the customer. Problems with demonstrating the benefits of the servitized value proposition might also arise. Furthermore, this thesis also concludes that there can be issues in translating a manufacturing company’s value proposition into concrete revenue streams and moving from traditional cost-based pricing methods to value-based pricing strategies. Also, manufacturing companies in this context might struggle to realize its value proposition if there is not a sufficient amount of dedicated resources, competences and activities dedicated to completing the transition. This thesis also concludes that in order to facilitate the process of business model innovation within the organization, there needs to be a supportive culture to the innovation, but also clear goals and strategies that fits the overall strategies of the company. These strategies also need to be appropriately communicated within the organization. Companies might experience difficulties in rooting the business model in the overall strategy, and failing to do so can affect the internal perception of the innovation in a negative manner. This thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of the concepts of the business model and innovation of the business model in the context of servitization. This study is performed as a context-specific study within a non-disruptive industry with a slow technological development, which differs the study from earlier research within this research field.

Fintech has had a huge growth in Sweden during the last decades. Increased competition has made companies compete over resources to attend to customer needs. The access to customer knowledge is one of those resources. This thesis is exploring the if, how and when companies within the Swedish fintech industry use customer knowledge and customers in co-creation processes. The research was conducted with a literature review and empirically investigated with semi-structured interviews. The findings imply that customer knowledge and customer involvement is present in Swedish fintech. Companies in Swedish fintech don’t use only one approach to involve customers but rather switch according to convenience. When it comes to the phases of innovation the findings imply that companies mostly involve customers in the ideation phase and customers in an intermediate phase between development and commercialization where there are a lot of iterative interactions between customer and company. / Fintech har haft en enorm tillväxt i Sverige under de senaste decennierna. Ökad konkurrens har fått företag att konkurrera om resurser för att tillgodose kundernas behov. Tillgången till kundkännedom är en av dessa resurser. Detta examensarbete undersöker om, hur och när företag inom den svenska fintech branschen använder kundkunskap och kunder i samskapande processer. Forskningen genomfördes med en litteraturgenomgång och empiriskt undersökt med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultaten tyder på att kundkännedom och kundengagemang finns inom den Svenska fintech industrin. Företag inom svensk fintech använder inte bara ett tillvägagångssätt för att involvera kunder utan byter snarare efter bekvämlighet. När det gäller innovations faserna antyder resultaten att företag mest involverar kunder i idéfasen och kunder i en mellanfas mellan utveckling och kommersialisering där det sker många iterativa interaktioner mellan kund och företag.

<p>This thesis is focused on studying Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool and philosophy implementation and how it develops a customer-centric view within organizations. Nowadays mutually advantageous customer relationship is the main asset of the contemporary businesses and CRM is the clue to creating this type of relationship. The purpose of this research is to study successful businesses where CRM tool and philosophy were implemented and how they contributed to the management of the companies. Through this analysis the benefits of the tool can be identified and the road map for its integration can be performed.</p><p>Theoretical framework regarding marketing channel relationships, importance of dual customer value creation and customer value management, relationship marketing as the basis for CRM development, and strategic framework of the phenomenon have been considered. Besides that, the current position of the case company, Volvo Construction Equipment Region International, on the roadmap of the CRM implementation has been evaluated and analyzed. These steps have been taken in order to answer the main research question of the thesis, namely "How can an MNC become a more customer centric company by helping its dealers to implement a CRM system"?</p><p>Several conditions have been identified in the thesis in order the companies could implement the CRM tool and philosophy successfully. The study provides recommendations, which guide the companies on the way to a customer-centric view through the integration of CRM in its business processes.</p>

This thesis is focused on studying Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool and philosophy implementation and how it develops a customer-centric view within organizations. Nowadays mutually advantageous customer relationship is the main asset of the contemporary businesses and CRM is the clue to creating this type of relationship. The purpose of this research is to study successful businesses where CRM tool and philosophy were implemented and how they contributed to the management of the companies. Through this analysis the benefits of the tool can be identified and the road map for its integration can be performed. Theoretical framework regarding marketing channel relationships, importance of dual customer value creation and customer value management, relationship marketing as the basis for CRM development, and strategic framework of the phenomenon have been considered. Besides that, the current position of the case company, Volvo Construction Equipment Region International, on the roadmap of the CRM implementation has been evaluated and analyzed. These steps have been taken in order to answer the main research question of the thesis, namely "How can an MNC become a more customer centric company by helping its dealers to implement a CRM system"? Several conditions have been identified in the thesis in order the companies could implement the CRM tool and philosophy successfully. The study provides recommendations, which guide the companies on the way to a customer-centric view through the integration of CRM in its business processes.