Assessment 2 Part B:
Your organisation and its Strategic Service Vision (Stages 3 & 4)
Due: Friday 11th September: 11.00pm
Length: up to 2250 words
Continuing on from your first assessment, Assessment 2 (Part B) will once again be structured around Heskett’s ‘strategic service vision’ framework although your focus will be specifically on stages three and four. Your role will be to develop an ‘operating strategy’ and discuss those relevant features of the ‘service delivery system’ for your created organisation.
In addition to the above, the following questions/tasks should be addressed:
Q1. Productivity and quality are both key facets of the service process. Using the academic literature, explain how your organisation will balance the quality of its service whilst maximising its productivity.
Q2. Construct a simple blueprint for one service process in your organisation.
Q3. Select any two methods for managing capacity and explain how these could be used to better match supply and demand for a service offered by your organisation.
Q4. Explain how your employees can affect the quality of service received by your external customer. What measurements could you use to gauge and manage the satisfaction of your employees?
Q5. Choose any service quality model as described in Chapter 12, and analyse and apply the model to your own organisation.

Guidelines to your Strategic Service Vision report – Part B
Once again, this assessment is designed as an experiential learning exercise by having you apply theoretical concepts to a potential real-world situation (through your created organisation) in a critical manner.
The report should conform to the following format, and should also include a professionally laid out table of contents prior to the executive summary:
Executive summary [250 words]
An executive summary of a report is a summary that contains a statement of the report’s purpose and an overview of the findings. Write in past tense (e.g. The purpose of this report was to…). If an executive summary is well written the reader should be able to understand the main points, findings, and conclusions of the actual report without having to read the full report.
Section one – Introduction [150 words]
This is a brief statement of the purpose of the report, what its objectives are, and an overview of how the report is structured. You should also include a brief overview of your created organisation.
Section two – Operating strategy [500 words]
As you will see from Heskett’s framework, you need to identify the important elements of the strategy although be mindful of the Service Management Trinity and limit your discussion to Operations, Marketing and Human Resources. There are several ways in which you can approach this and you may like to refer to Topic 4 in the Study Guide as a framework for your discussion.
Section three – Service blueprint [300 words]
You are to prepare a service blueprint here [Q2] and a diagrammatic presentation of this is warranted. You should identify and discuss two (2) critical points within the service delivery process that are likely to have a significant bearing on the customer’s experience. Clarify why these points in the process are particularly important and how you would manage them.

Section four – The service delivery system [300 words]
This is your opportunity to detail some of those actions that will support your operating strategy. Topic 2 identifies some important questions although you should focus specifically on the following:
a) What should be the nature of the service process at each step?
b) What should be the serving protocol – reservations system, first-come, first served, or a priority system for certain types of customers?
c) Given that services are perishable, what capacity management issues do you foresee and how do you plan to address these issues [Q3]
In addition, you should address the issue of productivity and quality [Q1] As each organisation will address these differently, aim to discuss the trade-offs that are relevant to your chosen organisation and seek to support this with academic literature.
Section five – Service employee management [300 words]
As noted by Lovelock et al. (2015), the encounter with service staff is often the most important aspect of a service. Given this importance, it is prudent to attract and hire employees that add value and gain your organisation a competitive advantage. This can present many management issues such as training and staff retention. Discuss how your employees can affect the quality received by your customers [Q4]. Furthermore, how will you gauge and manage the satisfaction of your employees.
Section six – Quality management measures [300 words]
This final section will draw upon information discussed in Topic 4 and 6 in the Study Guide. Although an essential element of this section is to identify a service quality model [Q5] such as that discussed in Chapter 12 of your text, you are to bring together many of the service provisions discussed previously, which will ensure the provision of quality services. To get you started, you may wish to develop a ‘service guarantee’ and match elements of this guarantee to some of the key aspects of the service delivery system or employee management.
Section seven – Conclusion [100 words]
Within this section re-state the purpose of the report, and then provide an overview of main points covered in your analysis. Ensure that you do not include any new information, only that which has been discussed within the main body of the report.

Reference list
All works cited must be included in your reference list.
Appendices
This is an optional section in which you are able to place relevant material which would have otherwise disrupted the logical flow of your report e.g. business data reports. Material included in this section will not count towards the overall word count for this assessment.
Marking Criteria [35 marks]
Section 2 Operating strategy 6 marks
Section 3 Service Blueprint 5 Marks
Section 4 The service delivery system 6 Marks
Section 5 Service employee management 6 Marks
Section 6 Quality management measures 6 Marks
Referencing 3 Marks
Report Presentation 3 Marks
General marking criteria
Demonstrated ability to critically analyse sources
You are expected to ask critical questions of the material you read. Only minimal marks will be awarded in cases where you have merely re-stated what the authors have already said. Can you identify any potential flaws in the concepts? Is there a difference in opinion between scholars? Who do you think is right, and why? These are potential areas of critical analysis you could focus on.
Evidence of original thought and creativity
You must show that you have developed an ability to think about how the theories and concepts covered might be applied in the real world though their links to your own created organisation
Quality of presentation structure; overall content; quality of bibliographic details;
written expression
You should present your work in a logical, easy to read format. It should also conform to the structure outlined previously. NOTE: any suggestion of plagiarism, ghost written assessments or use of ‘sham referencing’ will be immediately reported for Academic Misconduct