Mobil teknologi integreras idag i allt högre grad med centrala stödsystem. Studien har undersökt vilka möjligheter som finns för fältservicetekniker att arbeta direkt i stödsystem, Service Management System (SMS), m.h.a. nya tekniker. Hur kan en bra mobil arbetsplats utformas? En enkätundersökning har utförts där 14 personer som arbetar som fältservicetekniker eller som servicechefer har deltagit. Studien visar att det är möjligt att integrera fältserviceteknikerns arbetsplats med SMS m.h.a. tekniker som mobilt Internet och handdatorer, och på ett sätt som medför att lösningen får en bred acceptans. Det finns lämpliga lösningar som bör inkluderas i arbetsplatsen. Exempel är uppdrags-/ärendehantering och reservdelshantering. Det finns dock områden som måste beaktas vid utformandet av arbetsplatsen. Fältservicetekniker utrycker oro för att antalet kontakter med medarbetare kan komma att minska och en känsla av att vara övervakad om GPS-positionering utnyttjas. Helhetsintrycket är dock att dessa fältservicetekniker är mycket positiva till denna nya typ av mobila arbetsplats

Abstract Swedish universities have always received greater attention from international students thanks to their well-quality and tuition-free programs. However, due to the introduction of tuition fee for non-EU/EEA students from fall 2011, it is predictable that by raising the threat of losing a rather large portion of international students, Swedish universities may experience a critical period over the early years after this change. This is occurring in an environment in which universities attempt to leverage their tangible and intangible resources for maintaining their competitive niche in the worldwide market. Besides, many universities have moved towards establishing student-centric strategies as a means to achieve a high level of students’ satisfaction and long-lasting relationships. The issue has become so substantial in the recent years that, as Pausits (2007) has also suggested, universities need to transform into “relation-based organizations”. To solve this possible problem and in order to help Swedish universities to pass this critical situation safely, this study has conducted a qualitative research on the basis of analysis of the empirical data gathered from a series of semi-structured phone and personal interviews with five Swedish universities that have the most number of international students (Lund, Uppsala, Linköping, Jönköping and Blekinge Universities) with the intense support of previous literature and the theoretical body of the study under investigation which has lead to the creation of a knowledge-based CRM model. The main aim of this conceptual CRM model is to systematically organize the operations of building, managing and retaining relationships between Swedish universities and international students. This model has been formed by combination of two theories of CRM, as a business strategy which has been proved to be one the most efficient customer-oriented business approaches within the past decades, and Knowledge Management (KM) as the pivot for effective operation of the proposed CRM framework by providing a constant learning environment.

Ett CRM system ger fördelar för ett företags förmåga att bygga varaktiga kundrelationer. Små och medelstora företag är dock tveksamma till att investera i sådana system. Resurserna för att dels investera i och sedan effektivt förvalta systemen fattas ofta i företagen. Implementationerna av systemen drar dessutom ofta ut på tiden. Modellen Software as a Service har under 2000 talet vunnit stora landvinningar. Leverantörer som erbjuder CRM funktionalitet som en betald tjänst över Internet är ett attraktivt alternativ för små och medelstora företag som vill kringgå ovanstående problem. Samtidigt råder en viss tveksamhet till vilken kvalitet dessa tjänster håller. I denna studie söker vi svar på hur små och medelstora svenska företag upplever fördelarna med att köpa in ett CRM system som en SaaS tjänst.Syftet med denna studie är att kartlägga hur ett antal små och medelstora svenska företagupplever fördelarna med att köpa in ett CRM system som SaaS tjänst och presentera resultatet som en källa till kunskap om CRM system som SaaS tjänster. En kvalitativ studie har bedrivits med litteraturstudier som metod för insamling av sekundärdata och semistrukturerade telefonintervjuer som metod för primärdatainsamling. Fyra företag som använder ett CRM system som SaaS tjänst har deltagit i studien. Studien visar att fördelarna med leveransmodellen SaaS eliminerar flera potentiella hinder för små och medelstora företags förmåga att köpa in ett CRM system. Företagen undgår kostsam hårdvara och IT förvaltning. Kvalitén för dessa tjänster håller även en hög standard. Implementationen av tjänsterna upplevs av företagen som snabba och betalningsmodellen medför låga initialkostnader och ger en låg totalkostnad. Det medför även möjligheter till ett mobilt arbetssätt. / Vet ej vem som är examinator för uppsatsen.

Effektiv kundsupport har blivit allt viktigare och studier visar på att de kunder som lämnar företag gör det till följd av dålig service. Anledningen till att uppsatsgruppen valt Customer Relationship Management (CRM) som ämnesområde är på grund av egna erfarenheter och upplevelser av dålig och opersonlig kundsupport. På grund av detta finner uppsatsgruppen att det är intressant att undersöka hur företag hanterar kundsupport och hur informationsteknik (IT) kan stödja denna verksamhet. Uppsatsen är skriven ur ett deduktivt angreppssätt som kännetecknas av att empirisk data testas mot befintlig teori. Det empiriska materialet samlades in genom att intervjua fem företag som bedriver support med stöd av IT. Syftet med detta uppsatsarbete är att beskriva hur supportärenden kan hanteras med stöd av IT och analysera viktiga aspekter i supporthanteringsprocessen. Utifrån detta har uppsatsgruppen sammanställt en generell supporthanteringsmodell som presenteras i slutsats och i bilaga 2. Slutsatsen av studien är att personalaspekten i supporthantering har karaktäriserats av motivation, utbildning och nöjdhet som de viktigaste delarna. IT-aspekten har i sin tur karaktäriserats av informationstillgänglighet, integration av system, samt att IT bidrar till en ökad effektivitet och kvalitetssäkring. IT och personal har visat sig vara betydande på så vis att de är grundpelarna för att bedriva support. Supporthanteringsprocessen är den del som sammanfogar IT och personal och enligt uppsatsgruppen den metod eller de rutiner som används för att styra supporthanteringsverksamheten i organisationen. Enligt uppsatsgruppen så går det inte att bedriva en supporthanteringsprocess utan IT. IT har på så vis fastställt sin roll som en av grundpelarna och är en oskiljaktig del av supporthanteringsprocessen. / Effective customer support has become increasingly important and studies show that customers who leave a company make it as a result of poor service. The reason for why the authors of this study chose Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was because of their own experiences of poor and impersonal customer support. Because of this the authors found it interesting to examine how companies handle customer support and how information technology (IT) can support it. The paper is written from a deductive approach which is characterized by empirical data being tested against existing theory. The empirical data was collected by interviewing five companies engaged in support with the support of IT The purpose of this paper is to describe how customer support errands can be managed with the support of IT and analyse other important aspects of the customer support process. On this basis the authors have compiled a general customer support model presented in the conclusion, and in appendix 2. The conclusion of the study is that staff in customer support is characterized by motivation, education and satisfaction as the key elements. The IT aspect in turn has been characterized by availability of information, system integration and that IT contributes to improving the efficiency and quality assurance. IT and staff has proven to be significant in the sense that they are the pillars to carry out customer support. The customer support process is the part that combines IT and staff, and according to the authors a method or procedure used to control customer support. According the authors you can not manage a customer support without IT. IT has thus defined its role as one of the pillars and is an inalienable part of customer support.

Stakeholder management relates to how business organisations manage their relationships not only with their market stakeholders, but also with their nonmarket stakeholders. It requires firms and business managers to identify and develop effective strategies to balance the interests of many diverse groups or constituents. This requirement has of course been judged to be impractical by those who uphold narrow traditional views about how a firm operates; and is unsupported by those who believe that asking managers to focus on the interests or concerns of groups of constituents that do not directly contribute to the economic achievements or strategic objectives of a firm, is a distraction and an attempt to derail corporate objectives. However, in spite of the criticisms levelled against the notion of stakeholder management, firms can no longer ignore the fact that there are constituents who can affect, and are affected by their business objectives. The aim of this research is to illustrate the practical implications of stakeholder management by exploring how multinational oil corporations operating in the Nigerian oil and gas industry manage their relationships with nonmarket stakeholders; such as the local communities who are affected by their operations. In order to achieve the aims of this research, a case study approach has been adopted; the case study companies include Shell Petroleum Development Company (Shell), Total Exploration and Production (Total), and the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (AGIP). Furthermore, to achieve a balanced perspective regarding the stakeholder management practices of the oil companies, the research incorporates the views of stakeholders from local communities, and those from non-governmental organisations (NGOs). A mixed methods research strategy is employed in the data collection and analysis process to achieve not just triangulation, but also to assist in the comprehension of the research findings. The research established that each of the companies being studied has employed different stakeholder management strategies in order to manage their relationships with the local communities. The strategies employed by the companies, however, appear not to address the issue of environmental impact; the concern which triggered the breakdown in the relationship between the oil companies and the local stakeholders in the first place. They have instead mostly focused on ameliorating the socio-economic issues resulting from oil exploration and production activities, in part as a consequence of pressure from the local communities themselves. Additionally, the findings indicate that the companies have employed hostile and controlling engagement strategies such as intimidation, appeasement, and manipulation, when dealing with local community stakeholders. These strategies are believed to have undermined the quality of their relationship with the local communities. The most notable consequence of these engagement practices is damaged trust amongst community members, as well as between the communities and the oil companies. The findings of this research have strong implications for stakeholder theory, as well as future research into stakeholder management practices, particularly in relation to non-contractual or nonmarket stakeholders; they also shed light on several important practical issues in business management.

Management thinking has changed focus from bringing in new customers to under- standing the significance of maintaining existing customers and the need to attain loyalty with these customers. This has increased the importance of keeping good customer relationships. One important element to attain good customer relations is through a solid customer support. In this thesis a customer support approach for a software consultancy company has been implemented. The goal was to create a SharePoint Online application that would work as a single point of contact for the customers to improve the issue resolution process. Requirements elicitation was done through five customer interviews to obtain opinions and needs. Moreover, based on the customer requirements a workshop were held with developers from the consultancy firm to design a workflow proto- type. The final result is a customer-centered process that takes reported issues and manages the tickets through the issue life cycle until the issue is resolved. The approaches relies heavily on light-weight feedback in terms of mail notifications, reminders, and automatic assignment of tasks. The new process was developed in SharePoint Online and implemented using SharePoint Designer.

Supply chain management is a complex process requiring the coordination of numerous decisions in the attempt to balance often-conflicting objectives such as quality, cost, and on-time delivery. To meet these and other objectives, a focal company must develop organized systems for establishing and managing its supplier relationships. A reliable, decision-support tool is needed for selecting the best procurement strategy for each supplier, given knowledge of the existing sourcing environment. Supplier segmentation is a well-established and resource-efficient tool used to identify procurement strategies for groups of suppliers with similar characteristics. However, the existing methods of segmentation generally select strategies that optimize performance during normal operating conditions, and do not explicitly consider the effects of the chosen strategy on the supply chain’s ability to respond to disruption. As a supply chain expands in complexity and scale, its exposure to sources of major disruption like natural disasters, labor strikes, and changing government regulations also increases. With increased exposure to disruption, it becomes necessary for supply chains to build in resilience and robustness in the attempt to guard against these types of events. This work argues that the potential impacts of disruption should be considered during the establishment of day-to-day procurement strategy, and not solely in the development of posterior action plans. In this work, a case study of a laser printer supply chain is used as a context for studying the effects of different supplier segmentation methods. The system is examined using agent-based modeling and simulation with the objective of measuring disruption impact, given a set of initial conditions. Through insights gained in examination of the results, this work seeks to derive a set of improved rules for segmentation procedure whereby the best strategy for resilience and robustness for any supplier can be identified given a set of the observable supplier characteristics.

In today’s market it is possible to get a competitive advantage with right quality- and safety work to satisfy the customers in the automotive- and manufacturing industry. Today companies are also highly exposed with today’s media and social media which make the quality assurance even more important to avoid bad publicity. This report consists of an investigation about how the automotive- and manufacturing industry work with their suppliers’ to mutually achieve the required quality targets. Toyota Motor Corporation has single handily been a trademark for high quality for a long time in the automotive industry. Their successful organization is based on different principles which have created The Toyota Way. Thus the authors’ of this report has chosen to select some of these principles, which are thought to be appropriate for the reports purpose. The principles are investigated and described so that they can be compared to the case study at Volvo Cars Torslanda. The purpose is to find potential improvement possibilities and recommendations for both Volvo Cars and for the manufacturing industry. The findings and analysis has shown that a more cross-functional way of working in teams between different departments should be used in a greater extension. Thus to achieve greater knowledge in the decision making process concerning the organization and to improve the quality assurance work concerning the suppliers’. Another recommendation is to greater encourage job rotations among the quality engineers concerning the different quality reviews. The authors’ are sure that greater job rotation can encourage better motivation at work and support to become an even more learning organization in addition to achieve the greater quality assurance. With these findings and recommendations the authors’ believe and suggests that further research can be done with a deeper approach towards the specific recommendations to find further improvement possibilities concerning the automotive- and manufacturing industry.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how stores in the retail sector and in business to consumers´ relations, are engaged in the CRM systems use and management. The purpose is also to see if the information that is gathered by the headquarters is transferred down to the stores.   The research follows a realistic philosophy combined with an abductive approach and a qualitative method. The choice of design to this research was an exploratory research combined with a case study strategy over a cross-sectional time horizon. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with managers in the six different retail stores.      The findings from this thesis showed various results when it came to the use of the CRM system and the amount of information that the stores got access to from the headquarter/partner. None of the stores managed their CRM systems themselves, it was only managed by the headquarters or partners of the retail chains. The amount of information that was transferred down from the headquarters or partners, affected how much the stores used the CRM system. The stores that got much information had more knowledge about the CRM system and used it a lot more than stores that got less information.   The limitations that can be found in this thesis is that it is only a small amount of stores within the retail market that has been examined, this might give a misleading result for the rest of the retail market and the global market as whole.

It is clear that there is a strong drive for organisations to adopt the shared service model with the intention to gain some economic benefits. This research also acknowledges the theory on supplier relationship management, as well as relationship quality management and how these two bodies of knowledge are connected to shared service and ultimately how they affect the relationship benefits between buyers and sellers in business to business environments. With the growing importance to distinguish one’s business from others to gain competitive advantage, relationships have become a crucial differentiator. It is important to appreciate whether the shared service model enhances relationships or not. This research therefore sought to examine the relationship quality measure elements such as trust, satisfaction and commitment as well as the relationship benefits; social, psychological and functional which are impacted by the introduction of a shared service. The research findings offer some important insights into how the introduction of a shared service model into an organisational structure impacts these relationship benefits. When comparing a shared service structure to that of a decentralised model it was evident that all elements of relationship quality and benefits changed. The results indicated that once the shared service became the central point of contact and communication for many of the suppliers, relationship quality and relationship benefits declined. Further, the results found were that many of the anticipated benefits of shared service were also not seen or experienced by the suppliers. This research involved two phases, a qualitative phase component and a quantitative phase. The qualitative phase involved face-to-face interviews with five significant suppliers to Sasol, companies in industries such as Civil, Manufacturing as well as industrial goods suppliers. The quantitative phase involved an electronic survey, distributed to all of Sasol’s suppliers. The data gathered from these interviews and surveys, together with the reviewed literature helped to measure the affects of shared service on supplier relationships. One hundred and forty questionnaires were processed and data was subjected to a variety of statistical analysis. This research will add to the limited knowledge of shared service as well as equip managers implementing shared service with some strategic insights. When implementing shared service it is imperative to look beyond mere cost savings and to also consider the relationship affects for all concerned when changing the relationship dynamics. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / ccgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted