Business design for IT services
Summary
In this course, students practice designing digital business services. The students learn to apply the principles of technical sales while developing their own projects. Through this process, students gain insight into the co-creation of relationships between a company and its customers.
Content
This course is for engineers who are interested in creating a better relationship with the users of the engineers'technology. The experience the students gain is useful especially in the context of startups. This is also relevant for intrapreneur (engineers who seek to bring innovation in companies) and for anyone who seeks to establish and evolve their business relationships.
The course participants begin their projects by exploring an area that interests them. They evaluate with whom they can establish a company/customer relationship. They engage in a concrete relationship with someone interested in their idea. They establish the relationship by developing, delivering, and measuring the service. And they evolve these relationships through the digitalization of these services. These are not necessarily chronological stages of journey that the engineer needs to progress through.They are the five experiences that the students practice in the course.
To complete this journey, we provide the tools to help the course participants to develop the four following capabilities: (i) the curiosity - the receptivity to uncovering the unexpected, (ii) the awareness - the capacity to assess a reality in order to optimize solutions (iii) the service understanding - the capacity to represent what the company exchanges with its customers, (iv) the actions planning - the capacity to make the result concrete through actions.
Indeed, this is the SEAM method. We began developing it 1997, at EPFL. SEAM is a system thinking method that reconciles multiple theories from various disciplines from business engineering. SEAM is an open method.
Come practice with us! It might be uncomfortable and difficult, yet fun and interesting. By transcending this, you will learn new tools to reframe problems that are apparently impossible to solve.
Keywords
Entrepreneurial motivation, information inquiry, ecosystem analysis, competitor analysis.
Business definition, business services, IT services, segmentation, lead, prospect, opportunity, qualification, value proposition, quotation, break-even model.
The SEAM canvas, customer-relation management tool.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, the student must be able to:
- Create a precise and detailed description for a new business design
- Analyze environmental as well as organizational factors in a business design
- Design a business model in details (service, value, finance)
- Assess / Evaluate alternative business strategies
- Synthesize multiple marketing theories (from seminal publications)
- Represent the key concepts of a business design (ecosystem, value, finance)
- Interpret evidences collected through extensive interviews
- Investigate innovative views of a business design
Transversal skills
- Collect data.
- Access and evaluate appropriate sources of information.
- Write a scientific or technical report.
- Make an oral presentation.
- Summarize an article or a technical report.
Teaching methods
Experiential learning + individual work
Dans les plans d'études
- Semestre: Printemps
- Forme de l'examen: Oral (session d'été)
- Matière examinée: Business design for IT services
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
- Semestre: Printemps
- Forme de l'examen: Oral (session d'été)
- Matière examinée: Business design for IT services
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
- Semestre: Printemps
- Forme de l'examen: Oral (session d'été)
- Matière examinée: Business design for IT services
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
- Semestre: Printemps
- Forme de l'examen: Oral (session d'été)
- Matière examinée: Business design for IT services
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
- Semestre: Printemps
- Forme de l'examen: Oral (session d'été)
- Matière examinée: Business design for IT services
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
- Semestre: Printemps
- Forme de l'examen: Oral (session d'été)
- Matière examinée: Business design for IT services
- Cours: 3 Heure(s) hebdo x 14 semaines
Semaine de référence
Lu | Ma | Me | Je | Ve | |
8-9 | |||||
9-10 | |||||
10-11 | |||||
11-12 | |||||
12-13 | |||||
13-14 | |||||
14-15 | |||||
15-16 | |||||
16-17 | |||||
17-18 | |||||
18-19 | |||||
19-20 | |||||
20-21 | |||||
21-22 |
Légendes:
Cours
Exercice, TP
Projet, autre