Track: Service Systems and Service Management

Abstract

Proactive service procurement is a highly sensitive and risk prone phenomena due to being intangible in nature that requires innovative design-thinking approach by the suppliers and mutually comprehensible and acceptable by the buyers to ensure long term success and profitability of both the parties involved process. Services are affected by various factors, which should be taken into serious consideration while designing the process of service procurement. This paper, throws light on multi-factor proactive service design and its procurement process which helps in comprehending the critical nature and the significance of designing fool proof proactive service procurement framework to strengthen corporate risk management mechanism to ensure long term effective buyer supplier relationship. The study sample was taken from three European medium range enterprises engaged in energy sector businesses i.e., Mechanical and electrical products and service suppliers. The study findings highlight the multi-factor and critical nature of service offerings and its procurement procedures to suggest the serious requirement of installing systematic mechanism by the service industries to protect the interests of both buyers and suppliers through designing proactive procurement procedures (i.e., Plans and contracts etc.) for services to ensure long term profitable corporate relationships (i.e., Buyer and suppliers or Business to Business etc,). The study results revealed the following as the significant factors to be considered while designing effective proactive procurement procedures of services i.e., making right choices at the first place (Lean thinking approach), waste elimination, cost effectiveness, speedy and intelligent procurement. customer‘s profound satisfaction, competitive edge or advantage. This study provides real time corporate experiences and examples from the European medium range industries to demonstrate the utility and authenticity of the research findings and will therefore contribute in future, through result implementation while designing complex frameworks to strengthen and support the operations of proactive procurement of services.

 Keywords: Proactive service procurement, design-thinking, multi-factor, value chain, lean thinking, corporate risk management.