News

We are delighted to announce that Bouygues Construction has joined the Cambridge Service Alliance, Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), University of Cambridge as a new industry member alongside our existing partners HCL Technologies, Caterpillar Inc., Perkins Engines Company Limited and CEMEX.Press release

The paper 'Using AI to Track How Customers Feel — In Real Time' by Mohamed Zaki, Janet R. McColl-Kennedy and Andy Neely has been published in Harvard Business Review.SummaryThe most common methods of tracking customer sentiments has a big blind spot: They can’t pick up on important emotional responses. As a result, qualitative surveys, like Net Pr…

What is the future of services in the new pandemic-driven era? This was the topic explored at our 2020 Industry Day by senior executives from L'Oréal, Microsoft Research, Manchester United and start-up, Fairjungle. COVID-19 has disrupted every aspect of our lives. Our impressive line-up of speakers shared their fascinating experiences of, and refle…

Read about our latest research in our tenth anniversary Annual Review.In our new Annual Review you can read about our latest research, including:A practical, cross-functional approach to driving digital transformation through business model innovationHow digital twins could be the way that B2B firms are finally able to emulate the success of the pl…

We all know what a positive – or negative – customer experience feels like: a rush of pleasure or teeth-grinding frustration. Firms are acutely aware of the importance of how we feel – and how that translates into long-term loyalty – but feelings are a difficult and complicated thing to measure at scale.However, the advent of big data analytics giv…

Surendra Kancherla, Principal Architect - Digital Technologies, at CSA partner, HCL, says that COVID-19 is forcing firms to look afresh at their supply chain capabilities. The global crisis has exposed serious supply chain deficiencies. Kancherla says businesses should see this as an opportunity to start thinking about their supply chains as a stra…

At the Cambridge Service Alliance's most recent Community of Interest, Dr Erika Pärn considered the development of digital twins in the construction sector: the challenges it faces and whether android operating systems could provide a useful roadmap for business model innovation. Digitalising the construction sector is an urgent but difficult task.…

David Díaz, Assistant Professor at the University of Chile and Visitor at the Cambridge Service Alliance has been using machine learning to uncover bias in the way we respond to the shape of people’s faces. Diaz and colleagues have been using facial recognition software to explore the way in which we respond to different shaped faces. By exposing …

Cambridge Service Alliance doctoral student, Tim Pearce, explains how his work is contributing to advances in neural networks and how they are starting to help organisations make better decisions.While our understanding and application of neural networks are progressing at speed, there is still much work to be done. One of their drawbacks is that w…

According to Shep Hyken: "Customers are smarter than ever because they're experiencing great service from certain brands, and those rock-star brands are setting the bar higher for everyone else." In this white paper we explore the 'customer experience paradox' and how firms can use digital platforms to overcome it. Firms are finding that in spite …

Customer retention plays a critical role in a firm's long-term sustainability. Until recently, however, firms have tended to rely on one-dimensional survey techniques to measure their customers' loyalty. This white paper shows how machine learning can help overcome these limitations.We know from previous research that relying on satisfaction rating…

Research carried out by the Cambridge Service Alliance has shown that widely used methods for gauging customer satisfaction – such as ratings surveys and Net Promotor Scores – do not really tell you what your customers are thinking.Dr Mohamed Zaki and Professor Janet McColl-Kennedy, worked with CSA partners to devise a more nuanced way of understan…

Dr Veronica Martinez, Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Senior Researcher at the Cambridge Service Alliance, working with colleagues at Caterpillar, shows how blockchain can deliver significant supply chain benefits. Find out how they were able to implement this transformation technology in-house at a smallscale and manage its growth in a…

A new white paper from the Cambridge Service Alliance and HCL Technologies considers how the development of a digital thread is vital for business model transformation.But the authors also recognise that designing and implementing a digital thread is not easy. And these days, it's the cultural and organisational issues that are more challenging tha…

Sachin Bajaj, Senior Vice President, Digital & Analytics at HCL Technologies, explains why coronavirus - by forcing organisations to create a remote working environment at speed - could turn out to be the spur they need to realise the benefits of digitalisation.But to succeed they will need to overcome cultural barriers, according to research carri…