AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

The goal of this thesis was to develop a new service concept for Company X which provides agency work in the social and health care sector. The company offers several different services but in this thesis the focus was on providing a short-term agency work. This means employments that last less than a week and the need for them comes rapidly with only a few days of notice. Company X has struggled with personnel changes and the need for a new service concept was seen as necessary. The chosen approach was service design in order to gain the customers’ perspective on the new concept. The value of concept was considered especially from the angle of the possibilities that digital services can provide. Moritz’s service design process model was used as theoretical framework and the research can be divided into two different sections. The goal in the first stage was to map out the structure of the current service and in the second stage the focus was on creating the new concept. In order to understand the current stage and especially the challenges from customers’ point of view a service blueprint was created. The tools of case study were used and it included theme interviews with the customers and the employees. The tool for creating the new service concept was a business model canvas. Idea interviews with the clients and benchmarking discussions with the employees were used to collect data. As a result of this thesis a new service concept was created and one of the most important outcomes was that there is no need for automation at this stage because the personal service is valued highly. However the large number of small clients is a problem and therefore they need to be prioritized so that those who have the biggest potential to develop are served first. There is a need to create a client database that would contain every necessary small piece of information about different clients. Later on this should be further developed for example to offer the most suitable free employees to the received orders. The trade of products is often related to the personnel agencies. Mainly that image comes from the terms of the client contracts and it is strengthened by the negative public reputation related to agency workers’ work conditions. For these reasons the service design is an approach that would provide new tools in the field. The traditional approach of the Information Systems discipline would have been for example to concentrate on the efficiency with design science research. There was a need for more comprehensive view so the chosen approach was different. The results of this thesis indicate that service design is useful in the personnel agencies and also from the viewpoint of research and development of information systems. Furthermore the additional dimension on developing the service would come from the agency workers. They should be perceived as internal clients.; Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli kehittää uusi palvelukonsepti Yritys X:lle, joka välittää vuokratyövoimaa sosiaali- ja terveysalalla. Yrityksellä on useita eri…