Focused Operations Management shows how to do much more with existing resources in terms of throughput, response time and quality. It provides a system view and will touch upon performance measures, operations management, quality, cost-accounting, pricing, and above all, value creation and value enhancement.

Focused Operations Management for Health Services Organizations offers managers and staff the practical knowledge and tools they need to accomplish much more within existing resources. This text identifies common bottlenecks and constraints and focuses on the critical issues and processes faced by managers in the health care field. The book provides tools to significantly improve organizational operations as well as enhance quality and customer satisfaction without increasing the use of physical, human, and financial resources.

In Conducting Focus Groups, Caroline J. Oates and Panayiota J. Alevizou explain what is involved in conducting focus groups, outlining their main features, use in research, their design and the kind of rich, qualitative data they facilitate. Ideal for Business and Management students reading for a Master’s degree, each book in the series may also serve as reference books for doctoral students and faculty members interested in the method. Part of SAGE’s Mastering Business Research Methods, conceived and edited by Bill Lee, Mark N. K. Saunders and Vadake K. Narayanan and designed to support researchers by providing in-depth and practical guidance on using a chosen method of data collection or analysis.

Customer-orientation, customer-centricity, and customer relationship management (CRM) are not new concepts or practices. But information technology has unleashed tremendous opportunities in dealing with a customer and in creating value to the customer. And yet the majority of CRM investments and initiatives fail because firms do not have the appropriate orientation to serving the customer. The principal aim of this book is to get the reader to think about th firm and the way it conducts its business in a certain way—with a customer focus. It is now becoming clearly evident that all firms compete on service. Providing superior service becomes a prerequisite for any differentiation strategy to succeed. To provide superior service for a competitive advantage requires a concrete understanding of what service-orientation means. This orientation, in the form of frame of mind, is essential for the firm to take advantage of opportunities and to address the challenges so as to gain a competitive advantage. For excellent service firms, the challenges and opportunities in providing services are a constant endeavor. For others, these challenges and opportunities are not that obvious. A complementary aim of this book, therefore, is to instill into the reader the principles of managing services.

Health Care Operations Management: A Systems Perspective, Second Edition provides comprehensive and practical coverage of all aspects of operations management specific to the healthcare industry. It covers everything from hospital finances to project management, patient flows, performance management, process improvement, and supply chain management. This is an ideal text for university courses in healthcare management at all levels. It is also an excellent professional reference for healthcare administrators, clinical support managers, and supply chain professionals. The Second Edition has been thoroughly updated with the most recent data, statistics, and references. It also offers expanded coverage of quality, financial, and systems management, as well as a new chapter entitled “Operational Metrics in Health Care Organization”.

The Routledge Handbook of Service Research Insights and Ideas offers authoritative coverage of current scholarship in the expanding discipline of service research. Original chapters from the world’s leading specialists in the discipline explore foundations and innovations in services, highlighting important issues relating to service providers, customers, and service design. The volume goes beyond previous publications by drawing together material from different functional areas, including marketing, human resource management, and service process design and operations. These topics are important in helping readers become knowledgeable about how different functional areas interact to create a successful customer experience. This book is ideal as a first port of call for postgraduate students desiring to get up to speed quickly in the services discipline. It is also a must-read for academics new to services who want to access cutting-edge research.

Operations Management is all around us and is integral to every industry. Using contemporary and engaging examples this brand new text book brings to life fundamental Operations Management principles and theories that are applicable to both manufacturing and service situations, reflecting the very latest developments in this dynamic field.