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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…

Check out our recent commentary paper published at the Journal of Services Marketing The purpose of this paper is to discuss digital transformation and its four trajectories – digital technology, digital strategy, customer experience and data-driven business models – that could shape the next generation of services. This includes a discussion on wh…

Cambridge Service Alliance Community of Interest Meeting - April 2019 We heard from some of the world’s leading B2B and B2C firms on how digital disruption is affecting their industries, their business models and how they manage innovation. We also heard from some of the world’s leading researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Karlstad, …

This study identifies the key themes and research priorities in servitization literature over thirteen years from 2005 and 2017, based on four major research streams (general management, marketing, operations, and service management).Servitization: A contemporary thematic review of four major research streams - by Chris Raddats , Christian Kowalkow…

This paper builds a conceptual framework to explore whether big data combined with new manufacturing technologies can facilitate redistributed manufacturing (RDM). Digitalization and the growth of big data promise greater customization as well as change in how manufacturing is distributed. Yet, challenges arise in applying these new approaches in c…

In collaboration with CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University, Sweden, the first Community of Interest meeting took place on the 4th April 2019.In collaboration with CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University, Sweden, the first Community of Interest meeting took place on the 4th April 2019 at the University of Cambridge. In thi…

HCL joined the Cambridge Service Alliance as a strategic digital services partner. Professor Andy Neely talks about the impact CSA has created over the years and how alliance members have benefited from it.