Service Innovation Research Institute (PIKE)

The role of services in domestic economy and exports is growing. Services' share in domestic economy has been difficult to measure. Services are partly intangible and customers are usually involved in the production of services. The variation of services can be large, and it may be difficult to obtain information on the impact and benefits of the services. This is especially true for public services.

In economics, there is a long history of studies how productivity has developed, particularly on national and corporation level. In business, productivity enables the profits and therefore it is an important element of competitiveness. In public services the improvement of productivity is necessary for the management of the sustainability gap in public finances.

In engineering, productivity is being presented as a question: How the production of products or services is optimized, when their demand and required resources are known. In that case, the research focus is service or process-oriented. From economics point of view, this is so called micro or micro-micro level.

Service Process Engineering (SPE) is a science that studies services as process systems, in which experts from different fields work together in teams. Process modelling helps to examine existing services and to suggest potential improvements for their performance and costs. Process models are developed by the means of interviews and with the help of our wireless measurement tools. There exist mobile applications for process improvement, and the productivity impact of these applications can be measured in different processes.