Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi (NR)
Udupi, Feb 16: A two-day international conference on Services Management with its main theme 'Process and Technology - Key Drivers of Customer focused Services,' was held here at the T A Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) in Manipal on Friday February 15.
The conference aiming at providing a platform to share and understand the latest trends and concepts behind process and technology decisions in services management/marketing, was inaugurated by K Lakshminarayan, vice-president I-flex Solutions Ltd, Bangalore. The faculty members of B-schools or department of management studies of Universities participated in this conference.
Brief background on the resource person:
Christopher Lovelock, an MBA from Harvard and a PhD from Stanford University is an author, teacher, consultant, and a leading authority on service management who has taught at the Yale School of Management since 2001. Earlier, his distinguished academic career consisted of different academic stints at Harvard Business School, Lausanne, Switzerland, Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford.
Similarly he served at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. A prolific and award-winning writer, he is author or co-author of numerous books on services. Widely acknowledged as a thought leader in services, he was honored by the American Marketing Association in 1995 with its prestigious award for Career Contributions in the Services discipline.
Delivering a speech, the key speaker and main resource person Christopher Lovelock pointed out "Innovation comes from employing tested, user friendly IT and integrating it to deliver new standards of services." Moreover, according to him mental stimulus processing and information processing are dominated by information-based processes, but IT can be used in all services.
Speaking on the subject 'Technology, Processes and Systems in Services - Why IT?' he opined that the greatest opportunity for radical innovation exists in information-based services. When customers play an active role in service delivery, human work methods technology applies to them also, he added.
Other speakers on the occasion were K K Pai, chairman of the governing council of TAPMI and Prof D Nagabrahmam, director of TAPMI. Prof Simon George, director of the international conference informed that the meet will discuss all aspects of services management, and experts from India and abroad will also address the delegates.