Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
* devise suitable strategic plans when developing new smart service;
* design an appropriate organizational configuration for implementing new smart services;
* take into account human resource considerations when designing and executing new services.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT METHOD(S) USED IN THIS COURSE IS WITH RESERVATION. A RE-EMERGENCE OF THE CORONAVIRUS AND NEW COUNTERMEASURES BY THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT MIGHT FORCE COORDINATORS TO CHANGE THE TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT METHODS USED. THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION ABOUT THE TEACHING/ASSESSMENT METHOD(S) WILL BE AVAILABLE IN THE COURSE SYLLABUS.

"Smart service management" is one of the elective courses offered in period 4 in the MSc Business Intelligence & Smart Services. The course is based on the idea that for benefiting from development of smart services it is not enough to learn and implement technical aspects of BI nor is the knowledge of customer-driven design of new services. Without a well-thought and full-fledged digital strategy, as well as a supporting digital organization, creating beneficial smart value proposition is not feasible. Furthermore, capturing the created value requires a well-developed smart and value-based pricing practice.

The course has three main objectives, i.e., how to successfully create, propose, and capture value in firms through developing new smart services. In order to fulfill these objectives, the course is divided into three general themes. First three sessions are dedicated to introducing students to different strategies regarding digital transformation of industries and disruption of businesses (smart strategy). Next sessions focuses on organizational requirements of digital transformation such as structure, culture, and leadership (smart organization). The rest of the course focuses on how firms can ensure to capture the (financial) benefits from their value creation efforts. In particular, we focus on pricing, which is generally the least understood of the 4Ps despite its tremendous implications for firms’ financial and strategic performance. Specifically, we examine economic, psychological, financial, legal and ethical aspects of smart pricing of services. Finally, we review recent innovations in pricing optimization techniques, enabled by data-driven analytics, also known as algorithmic pricing.

* Chapters from the book: Nagle, Thomas T., and Georg Müller. The strategy and tactics of pricing: A guide to growing more profitably. 6th Edition, Routledge, 2018.
* Academic articles
* Two case studies