Abstract
IT service quality is determined by the value that the IT service brings to both the IT service provider and its customers, but service value is not measured in most IT service organizations today. We describe the fourth iteration of our IT service quality measurement framework and report on the evaluation of the framework in the Australian IT service industry. The data was gathered from 63 IT service providers through an online survey. The paper focuses on the application of the proposed IT service quality measurement framework in industry as well as the importance and feasibility of measuring and interlinking various IT service quality aspects. An important finding is that although the majority of respondents recognize the importance of IT service value, very few providers actually measure the value of their IT services. The findings also support the importance of taking a systemic approach to IT service measurement. It is clear that various service areas are inter-linked: IT service stability impacts on customer satisfaction, and process performance affects IT service stability. With the exception of three indicators, all the proposed indicators and measures were applied in the surveyed IT service organizations. Further efforts to confirm these findings will be under-taken within the global IT service industry.
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Aileen Cater-Steel leads a research group INVEST-Improving the Net Value of Enterprise Systems and Technology at the University of Southern Queensland. Her research interests include IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Standards and Governance, e-Learning systems, and IT outsourcing. She was Lead Chief Investigator on two ITSM projects that achieved funding from the Australian Research Council. She has published in top journals and co-edited three research books. Her work has been recognised with a citation from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council for outstanding contribution to student learning. Aileen’s PhD thesis was awarded the ACPHIS (Australian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems) prize. Prior to her academic appointment, Aileen worked in the private sector and govern-ment organizations where her career progressed from programmer to IT Manager. She is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and member of the ACS Professional Standards Board.
Marion Lepmets is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Regulated Software Research Centre in Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. Her postdoctoral research was funded by the National Research Fund of Luxembourg and she conducted it at the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor. Her research focused on evaluating process improvement impact on IT service quality. She has conducted research in process improvement and process assessment since 2000, graduated from Tampere University of Technology (Finland) with Doctor of Techno-logy in 2007, and has been teaching process management courses in both Tallinn University of Technology and Tartu University in Estonia. She is also involved in the development of software engineering standards in the International Standardization Organization (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7).
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Cater-Steel, A., Lepmets, M. Measuring IT service quality: evaluation of IT service quality measurement framework in industry. J Serv Sci Res 6, 125–147 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12927-014-0005-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12927-014-0005-5