International Association for Management of Technology
IAMOT 2007 Proceedings
Using SLAs in IT management: coordinating mechanisms linking services and
processes
HEITOR MANSUR CAULLIRAUX, D. Sc.1
ENG. DANIEL KARRER2
ENG. PRISCILA SOARES FERRAZ3
CARLOS ALEXANDRE DA SILVA PRADO, D. Sc.4
Abstract:
The main objective of this article is to propose a framework for managing IT service
provision using service level agreements as lateral coordination mechanisms between IT area
and other organization’s functional areas and third-parties. The interplay between the IT
function and internal and external service providers is analyzed in detail and trade-offs
arising from the benefits of establishing service levels between them and the possible rise of
transaction costs are discussed. The framework provides valuable insights into the service
design, since the discussion of SLA as coordination mechanisms arises from a deeper look
into the relationship between organizational processes, strategic objectives and the services
themselves. The article also presents a set of tools that enable the implementation and
management of the IT service provision structure within an organization. A case study in the
IT area of the brazilian Independent System Operator (ISO) is presented, where both the
method and the tools are applied. It shows that positive results were achieved in what refers
to improvements on IT service provision.
Key-Words:
Services, IT, SLA
1. Introduction – The rising complexity of services
Much has been said about services in the last years. Many publications have raved about the
rise of the services economy, as how services have been playing a great role as opposed to
manufacturing and goods in the global economy. Reports from as early as 1995 show the
preeminence of the services sector, as can be seen bellow:
1
Graduate Production Engineering Program of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) – COPPE/UFRJ, ,
Technology Center, Block D – Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro/RJ – Brazil - CEP: 21.945-972, (55) (21) 25627415 – [email protected]
2
Graduate Production Engineering Program of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) – COPPE/UFRJ,
Technology Center, Block D – Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro/RJ – Brazil - CEP: 21.945-972, (55) (21) 25627415 – [email protected]
3
Graduate Production Engineering Program of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) – COPPE/UFRJ,
Technology Center, Block D – Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro/RJ – Brazil - CEP: 21.945-972, (55) (21) 25627415 – [email protected]
4
Industrial Engineering Department of State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) – Rio de Janeiro/RJ – Brazil CEP: 21.20550-900, (21) 2587-7156 – [email protected]
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Figure 1 – The share of services in the GDP
Reference: (World Bank, 1995)
Since then, data research done by many authors leaves no denial to this fact. According to a
The McKinsey Global Institute Report (2006), local services account for more than 60
percent of all jobs in middle income and developed economies, and virtually all new job
creation. There seems to be no doubt that, having focused for many years on manufacturing
oriented growth, policymakers all around the world recognize the contribution that services
can yield: India leads the world in offshore IT Services, Dubai has tourism as well as a
growing financial services hub, Singapore is building hospitals to serve patients form all
across Asia; the Philippines is developing call centers (FARREL, 2006).
The EU Services Directive divides services into three categories: services provided to
consumers, services provided to other business, and services provided to both consumers and
other business. According to the McKinsey Global Institute Report, in the US, which is
typical of a developed service economy, some 29 percent of the roughly 100 million service
jobs are ins consumer services, which include retail, food and accommodation services, and
personal services like car repair shops, dry cleaners, and beauticians. The report also points
out that as economies grow richer, business to business services represent an increasing share
of total economic activity. Today, they represent 27 percent of all US service sector
employment, almost as much as consumer services. These activities include: professional
services, such as law, accountancy and consulting, technical services, such as IT and software
support, wholesale trade services; and employment services like headhunters and temp
agencies.
This paper focuses on this category of services (business to business). The growth of this kind
of services can be partially attributed to the rise of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) in the recent years, and can be seen as an outcome of specialization. As a
matter of fact, technology in general has been an active enabler of most service relationships,
lowering the coordination costs among different firms and allowing the to form global value
chains, where each enterprise can specialize itself and benefit from economies of scale and
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scope. This trend may promise higher returns based on this international division of labor, but
it is definitely no piece of cake for managers.
2. The service Level Dilemma: How can an IT area deal with its service providers and
offer the best added value to its enterprise?
In this new reality, the IT area within an enterprise arises as a particularly important player,
for it is attributed with the role of coordinating the provision of IT services so that the whole
value chain can work. This area is somewhat stuck in the middle: it is still seen as a support
area by many business executives, giving it a commodity flavor. However, a growing share
of business executive, especially managers of enterprises in rapidly changing environments
(DAVIS AND EISENHARDT, 2005) see IT as playing a crucial role in the firm’s
coordination and services provision capability.
In many markets and countries the technology is transcending its traditional role as a back
office function to a strategic role in the organizations, not only supporting business process,
but also conforming new strategies (HENDERSON&VENKATRAMAN, 1993). Is there a
debate in course in core competences literature in the wyas in which technology assets
embedded in a set of skills and technologies can themselves forming core competences that
differentiate the organization in terms of organizational efficiency and in terms of client
offers (QUINN, 1992).
According to Currie&Willcocks (1998) the organizations are looking for increasing the IT
services portfolio outsourced, since the internal IT infra-structure are eroding. The IT
outsourcing approach is often chosen for costs savings, focus on core competences or because
the IT function is usually considered not efficient or technically not competent. The basis the
service providers in general provides better services with lower costs (or both) (KING &
MALHOTRA, 2000; CORBETT, 2004; SPARROW, 2003; HYDER ET AL., 2004).
Although there is no consensus on market numbers, the estimated growth rate for IT
outsourcing marketing is around 10 to 15 percent per year (SPARROW, 2003). The tendency
of growth is confirmed by IDC Forecast data (2002, apud CMU, 2005). According to the
institute, the IT services outsourcing will achieve 110 billions in 2006.
This provides us with our dilemma: the IT area seems to have a lot of different stakeholders
to satisfy: the internal users, the firms internal areas and the other firms that take part in the
value chain. But that is only half of the deal: IT also has to coordinate a myriad of external
services providers and internal service providers to effectively and successfully deliver its
services.
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Figure 2 – IT as a coordination center in the firm and its value chain
Hyder et al. (2004) presenting the results of a research in with around 20 to 25 percent of
outsourcing relationships ends in a two years period and that 50 percent are not sucsseful in a
five years period. Between the reasons for those failures is the inability to manage and
coordinate those relationships.
The interplay between the IT function and internal and external service providers must be
discussed in terms of transactions costs. Williansom (1985,1991) presents the concept of firm
as governance structure instead of the concept of firm as production function. The firm costs
refers not only to production costs - the cost of capital, labor and materials – but transaction
costs. According to Lacity & Willcocks (1995) transaction costs can be defined as
coordination costs which consist of the costs of monitoring, controlling and managing
transactions. Failures in coordinate the transactions occur due to the fact that the cost
transactions economies are denied when decisions to outsourcing is made (WILLIAMSON,
1985).
For the aforementioned reasons, the IT area can be seen as having an important coordination
part in providing the firm’s services – and consequently matching its demand with its value
proposition. Hence, we are posed with the Service Level Dilemma: How can an IT area deal
with its external and internal service providers and still offer the best added value to its
enterprise? What is the best coordination mechanism to deal with this complexity?
3. Services coordination mechanisms: are market mechanisms the answer?
Drawing from the organizational design literature, we find an array of useful coordination
mechanisms in Galbraith, Downey and Kates (2002). These mechanisms are presented by the
authors as ways to escape the traps that emerge from the organizational M-form popularized
by Chandler (1967). According to these authors, these mechanisms can be used as critical
tools to design an organization (or an area) that is dynamic, and possesses the ability to
reconfigure itself in the face of environmental change (ability termed in Teece, Pisano and
Shuen (1997) as dynamic capabilities).
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These mechanisms are, in order of increasing complexity:
a. Networks – interpersonal relationships and communities of practice that underlie all other
types of lateral capability. They are mainly used to coordinate work informally.
b. Lateral Process – Coordination mechanisms that aid the movement of decisions and
information through the organization in a formalized flow.
c. Teams – these are cross business structures that bring people together to work
interdependently and share collective responsibility of outcomes.
d. Integrative Roles – managerial, coordinator, or boundary-spanning positions charged with
orchestrating work across units.
e. Matrix Structure – used to create dual reporting relationships in order to manage the
conflicting needs of functional, customer, product or geographic forces.
These five types of lateral capability can be placed on a continuum of complexity and can be
catgorized on those that will occur on their own or the ones that need to be purposefully put
into place, as shown bellow.
Figure 3 – Array of coordination mechanisms as a way of dealing with complexity
According to the authors, the key of choosing among these lateral mechanisms is to use only
the ones that are required by the strategy and structure in order to minimize complexity and to
build them on a strong foundation. As the complexity of those mecanisms increases, the
management time and energy also increases and therefore transactional consts are elevated.
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However, the coordination mechanisms mentioned above work in a “product based reality”
where information and decisions are mainly transmitted inside the firm. In another words,
this means that they are excellent ways to deal with complexity inside the firm. As seen
before, however, the dilemma with services is that complexity arises from business to
business relationships, where IT plays a particularly important role.
Our hypothesis is that the solution to this problem lays in market coordination mechanisms.
This insight comes from the work of Coase (1937) and Richardson (1972) with the nature of
the firm and its relationship with markets. Both author set the path to break the idea that firms
could be envisaged as islands of planned co-ordination in a sea of market relations. The firm
is most accurately seen as a mix of planned coordination mechanisms and market
mechanisms. This idea has a special appeal for the service level dilemma, where the IT area
has to deal simultaneously with market and non market stakeholders. The best way to
coordinate service provision would be, therefore a mix of market and non market
coordination mechanisms: processes and Service Level Agreements, usually named SLAs.
4. Services coordination mechanisms: are market mechanisms the answer?
Processes and services share a very close relationship. Considering processes as the
mechanisms that firm utilize to fulfill its operational and strategic objectives, one can very
rapidly agree that the services that are provided to the multiple stakeholders can be seen as
combinations of the outputs and outcomes of the processes that are performed by the
organization.
Processes are a specific ordination of activities throughout time and space with a begining
and an end, besides a set of clearly defined inputs and outputs (DAVENPORT, 1993; 2000).
We contend that services can also be seen as the output of processes. However, services are a
particular kind of output, different from products, that share particular characteristics:
intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability and perishability (Lovelock and Gummenson,
2004), as well as non-apropriability and technical feasibility (Vargo and Lusch, 2004).
Although there are current discussions around the validity of using those characateristics as
differentiators of products and services, they are still commonly used in service literature.
Thinking of processes in terms of the clients of the organizations can be very different from
process view assuming internal areas perspectives. In general each area or function unit in the
organization is responsable for a set of specific activities or part of a process and not the
whole process. This point of view is enforced in case of support processes whose activities
are not directly linked to the generation of products or providing vallue-adding services for
the final clients. Those are the cases of resource management, technology manangement and
other functions in the organization. How it´s possible to position the support activities in the
overall processes discussions which is originally related to value creation for the client of the
organization?
The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) proposes a new perspective and
presents the IT are as a service provider internal of the organization. In line with the model,
we propose architecture of coordination mechanisms, composed of SLAs (service Level
Agreements between the IT area and its clients), UCs (Underpinning contracts – service
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levels between the IT area and external service providers) and OLAs (Operational Level
Agreements between the IT area and its internal service providers). The architecture is
ilustrated in the Figure 4 below.
Figure 4 – The structure of proposed coordination mechanisms
The structure proposed deals with the paerticular world of services through the proposition of
a combination of processes and Service Level Agreements established by the IT area.
5. The case study
5.1 IT area of the brazilian Independent System Operator
The brazilian Independent System Operator (ISO) was created with the finality of operating
the electrical national interlinked system and administrating the basic net of energy
transmission in Brazil. Its institutional mission is operating the system in an integrated way,
with transparency, equity and neutrality to guaratee the security, continuity and economicy of
electric energy supply in the country.
Among the IT responsibilities in the brazilian ISO are supporting the current organizations
activities and at the same time enable a future vision of the organization, besides assist the
firm’s users, the firm’s internal areas and external agents of the electrical sector. To achive
those goals the IT department decided to make internal improvents in the provision of IT
services, by launching an improvement project. These improvement actions included creating
coordination mechanisms to deal with external and intenal services providers, besides other
actions within scope of this project.
The expected benefits included:
a) Aligning IT services with business needs,
b) Defining IT area, users, areas, external agents, internal and external service providers
rights and responsabilities,
c) Establishing quality services levels, leveling clients and users expectations and
allowing IT area performance.
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First of all the IT services catalogue was created through a series of structured interviews
with IT managers. This catalogue is a central piece of the project, as it compiles a list of the
services that are offered by the IT area to all its stakeholders. A general example of this
catalogue can be seen bellow:
Service
A.1
Service A
Service
A.2
Service
A.3
Service
A.4
Service
A.1.1
Service
A.1.2
Service
A.1.3
Service
A.2.1
Service
A.2.2
Service
A.2.3
Service
A.3.1
Service
A.3.2
Service
A.4.1
Product 3
Product 2
Product 1
Product 2
Contracted Service
Levels
Product 1
Sourcing Type
Offered Service Levels
Organizational Unit 1
Area 1.2
Area 1.3
Product 3
Processs
Product 2
Services
Product 1
Area 1.1
Service Provider
Contract
Expiration Date
Internal Area X
xx/xx/xx
UC 1
SLA1 SLA2 SLA1 SLA1 SLA3 SLA1 SLA2 SLA1
xx/xx/xx
OLA 1
SLA2 SLA3 SLA1 SLA2 SLA2 SLA2 SLA1 SLA1
xx/xx/xx
OLA 2
SLA3 SLA1 SLA1 SLA2 SLA3 SLA1 SLA3 SLA1
xx/xx/xx
OLA 2
SLA1 SLA2 SLA1 SLA1 SLA3 SLA1 SLA2 SLA1
SLA2 SLA3 SLA1 SLA2 SLA2 SLA2 SLA1 SLA1
Process A
Insourcing
Process B
Outsourcing
Process C
Outsourcing
Process D
Outsourcing
Process E
Outsourcing
xx/xx/xx
OLA 3
Process F
Insourcing
IT Area
xx/xx/xx
Key Performance
Indicator X
SLA3 SLA1 SLA1 SLA2 SLA3 SLA1 SLA3 SLA1
Process G
Insourcing
Internal Area Y
xx/xx/xx
OLA 2
SLA1 SLA2 SLA1 SLA1 SLA3 SLA1 SLA2 SLA1
Process H
Outsourcing
Third Party Service
Provider X
xx/xx/xx
UC 2
SLA2 SLA3 SLA1 SLA2 SLA2 SLA2 SLA1 SLA1
Process I
Insourcing
IT Area
xx/xx/xx
Key Performance
Indicator Y
SLA3 SLA1 SLA1 SLA2 SLA3 SLA1 SLA3 SLA1
Third Party Service
Provider X
Third Party Service
Provider Y
Third Party Service
Provider Y
Third Party Service
Provider Z
Figure 5 – The proposed tool for Service Level Management through processes and SLAs
Compiling the services catalogue included defining the set of services and subdividing them
in different aggregation levels. It should be pointed out that there is a limitation related to the
impossibility of guaranteeing the sufficiency of the list of services and the pertinence of the
IT services categorization. By sufficiency we mean the degree by which our representation
matches the actual array of services that are provided by the IT Area. Cronk & Sharp (1998)
highlight that some services will be considered as “indivisible” by the organization, and
therefore it is very hard to achieve a complete list. This happens partially because of the
aforementioned characteristics of services: intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability and
perishability (LOVELOCK AND GUMMENSON, 2004), as well as non-apropriability
(VARGO AND LUSCH, 2004).
After that each IT service was related to the process that is performed by the IT area to
produce it. As we have already mentioned before we see services as a byproduct of processes.
We envisage services as representing a combination of the output and the outcome of
processes that are executed by a given organization (in this case, an IT Area). This
relationship can be exemplified as the figure bellow:
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Figure 6 – An example of the relationship between processes and services
Alongside these are the actors that are involved in the delivery and in the performance of the
services (The IT Area itself, another internal area or a third party service provider). These
actors all have to work the sourcing type, the contract service levels (OLAs and/or UCs) and
the Service Levels offered to the client.
King & Malhotra (2001) define four IT sourcing types: outsourcing, insourcing, strategic
alliances and internal markets. Outsourcing is the use of external agents for performing the IT
activities. Insourcing means that the organization itself executes the IT functions internally.
The strategic alliances occur when the activities are conducted together by two or more
organizations. There are diverse formal and legal types through which this alternative can be
materialized, as in a joint-venture. Finally, internal markets are structures that provide services not
only for the organization but also to the external market. This classification was used to fill up the
Sourcing Type column of the matrix.
A more detailed classification can be seen in the figure bellow. It shows a good example of the
multiple kinds of relationships among the IT Area and its services providers.
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Figure 7 – The multiple kinds of relationships between the IT Area and its service providers
Reference: (HYDER ET AL., 2004)
An extract of the final matrix can be seen bellow. Some things are important to point out:
a) The services are gathered up to match the classification within the Independent
System Operator’s Service Desk Tool. This classification is shown on the first level of
the services tree: Micro Computer Support, Database Support, Corporate Systems
Support and Telecommunications Support. This is highly important because it ensures
that the management structure provided by the matrix matches the monitoring
capability of the organization (mainly represented by the service desk tool);
b) The SLAs provided by the IT were segmented by the products of the stakeholders.
This reflects the fact that support the database of payroll system may not be as
important as support the database containing information that is crucial to the
operation of the electric system. Hence, the SLAs were divided into three categories
(not critic, average and critic) and allocated regarding the stakeholders relevance.
c) This matrix contains hyperlinks to other databases. This matrix was meant to be the
universal management tool that integrates all the knowledge that exists within the
company regarding the IT service provision. Therefore, through this tool one can
access the process flowcharts, the contracts related to the services, the service
provider’s contacts and even procedures and scripts related to the service provision.
d) Finally this tool was also meant to register monthly the delivered OLAs, UCs and
SLAs, so that management can take appropriate action when needed.
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1st Level - QBY Systems
2nd Level - QBY Systems
3rd Level - ONS
4th Level - Third Party Support
QBY Systems 31/05/2007
Other Third Party - see
attached chart
Micro Computer Support
Password retrieval/change
Service Desk 1st Level Support
Service Desk 2nd Level Support
Password Management
Outsourcing
1st Level - QBY Systems
2nd Level - QBY Systems
3rd Level - ONS
4th Level - Third Party Support
QBY Systems 31/05/2007
Other Third Party - see
attached chart
Desktop Maintenance
Service Desk 1st Level Support
Service Desk 2nd Level Support
etc..
1st Level - QBY Systems
2nd Level - QBY Systems
3rd Level - ONS
4th Level - Third Party Support
QBY Systems 31/05/2007
Other Third Party - see
attached chart
Database Backup
Service Desk 1st Level Support
Service Desk 2nd Level Support
Service Desk 3rd Level Support
Database Tunning and backup process
Co-Sourcing
1st Level - QBY Systems
2nd Level - QBY Systems
3rd Level - ONS
4th Level - Third Party Support
QBY Systems 31/05/2007
Other Third Party - see
attached chart
Database Tunning
Service Desk 1st Level Support
Service Desk 2nd Level Support
Service Desk 3rd Level Support
Database Tunning and backup process
Co-Sourcing
1st Level - QBY Systems
2nd Level - QBY Systems
3rd Level - ONS
4th Level - Third Party Support
QBY Systems 31/05/2007
Other Third Party - see
attached chart
Applications Maintenance
Service Desk 1st Level Support
Service Desk 3rd Level Support
Applications Corrective Maintenace
Applications Preventive Maintenance
Applications Evolutive Maintenance
Outsourcing
1st Level - QBY Systems
3rd Level - ONS
4th Level - Third Party Support
QBY Systems 31/05/2007
Other Third Party - see
attached chart
System development
Service Desk 1st Level Support
Service Desk 3rd Level Support
New system development
Third-party contracting
Co-Sourcing
1st Level - QBY Systems
3rd Level - ONS
4th Level - Third Party Support
QBY Systems 31/05/2007
Other Third Party - see
attached chart
Database Support
Systems Support
Product 3
Outsourcing
Product 2
Service Desk 1st Level Support
Virus Verification
Product 1
Virus parameters update
Contracted Service
Levels
Product 2
Contract Expiration
Date
Product 1
Service Provider
Offered Service Levels
Organizational Unit 1
Area 1.2
Area 1.3
Product 3
Sourcing Type
Product 2
Processes
Services
Product 1
Area 1.1
1o nível - 20 min
2o nível - 40 min
3o nível - 90 min
4o nível - diversas ver tabela em anexo
1st Level - 30 min
2nd level - 120 min
3 rd Level - 120 min
4th Levell - see
attached .xls
1st Level - 20 min
2nd level - 120 min
3 rd Level - 120 min
4th Levell - see
attached .xls
Not critic SLA
Average SLA
Critic SLA
Figure 8 – The applied matrix – a powerful instrument of integrated service provision
Another important thing to point out is that this matrix represents all the relevant
relationships and actors that work together to provide IT-enabled services for the Independent
System Operator. This allowed management to envision a clear structure of responsibility,
accountability and management of the provision of services.
Figure 9 – The Service management Structure
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5.2 The solution – an integrated framework to manage services, processes and SLAs
Though the developments of the Independent System Operator Case, several lessons were
learned and a larger framework linking processes and services through the use of market
mechanisms emerged. The rationale behind the framework is the following: The
organizations operations can be better understood when modeled by process flowcharts. This
concept is widely known and accepted as BPM (Business Process Modeling). These
processes are the way the organization has to operationally execute its strategy, and therefore
processes are real world instruments by which the organization achieves its operational and
strategic goals.
A byproduct of processes is services. We envisage services as a combination of the output
and the outcome of services. In our particular case study, of an IT internal area, these services
are the link that connects several external service providers and internal service providers that
come together in the act of IT services provision to satisfy a multiple array of stakeholders.
This services (and hence the service providers) have different relevance to the business and
different natures, and therefore should be managed differently. This cognition is achieved
through the construction and maintenance of the services matrix.
Figure 10 – The complete framework that links services, processes and market mechanisms
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An important corollary of this framework is that the practices used to manage the external
service providers are highly dependent of several different dimensions such as the relevance
of the service they are providing/supporting, the nature of the service, the complexity of the
acquisition market, the possibility of substitution of the service provider and the total net
income loss in the case of failure.
Therefore, service providers must be managed differently. This allows the top managers to
better divide their attention span, and also to not get caught up in the service provision
operation instead of the service provision management.
Hence, we also propose a Service provider management chart, where the service provider’s
management (and the relevant management practices) is segment according to dimensions
related to the services they provide, as bellow:
Figure 11 – Service provider management chart
Together, the service provider management chart and the services matrix compose our
proposed process-based framework for managing services through market coordination
mechanisms.
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7. Conclusions and directions of further research
Although this framework has only been applied in a very specific context – that of an IT
services provision within the Independent System Operator (ISO) in Brazil – we content that
it can be applied in any other area whose job is to fuel an organization with services. This
happens because, although taken from IT Sourcing and IT Services literature, the contents of
the model are highly unspecific. However, further research would have to be made to verify
more thoroughly which adaptations would have to be made in order to apply this framework
to other specific situations.
In the particular case of the Independent System Operator (ISO) the gains from using the
model can be already seen. Although this improvement project is recent, and therefore
financial measures like the Return on Investment and global services provision are still been
gathered, some more subjective measures can already be pointed out:
a) The model has provided a clear definition of the problem of the complexity of the array of
providers and multiple stakeholders for which the services are provided. Through the model
the whole IT Area could be made aware of the nature and dimensions of the problem – and
therefore start working on a solution;
b) Top managers were able to prioritize their actions and span of attention through. The
services matrix allowed them to become less concerned about operational problems that
happened all the time with various services – and started to spend more time doing
management work of the critical services;
c) This priorization of services was clearly stated to all members of the organization and
service providers, through the institution of SLAs, OLAs and UCs that reflected them.
d) The actual management of the services provision became the issue of a particular area – a
sourcing management office. This area centralizes the management of all provision of
services, dissociating the operation of the services structure from its management. Operation
and management still worked very closely together to make the whole structure work, but
management has become a job on its own right. This has allowed a better division of labor
and a focus on improvement.
e) The knowledge that was dispersed among different people and organizational levels, a lot
of times in a very tacit way, was formalized in a tool of shared understanding of the provision
of services. The services matrix, alongside with the modeled processes, the service contracts
and SLAs, came together to be a live tool of management, and register all actions taken to
improve of change the services provision structure. This allowed the organization to be less
dependent on specific employment, and the risk of operational failures due to the lack of
competence or specific knowledge has diminished.
In concluding the discussions it remains to be seen that future research is needed to further
investigate the validity and applicability of this model for overall areas that provide services
to the organization.
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DAVENPORT (1993). A Natureza da Reengenharia de Processos. 2 ed. In: Reengenharia
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DAVENPORT (2000). Mission critical: realizing the promise of enterprise systems, 1
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