Improving Productivity of Service Businesses With a New Efficiency Evaluation Technique (Classic Reprint)

Download or read book Improving Productivity of Service Businesses With a New Efficiency Evaluation Technique (Classic Reprint) written by H. David Sherman and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-05 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Improving Productivity of Service Businesses With a New Efficiency Evaluation Technique How can a manager evaluate the productivity of a bank branch, a hospital, or other service organization? A bank branch may have outstanding profit performance based on a measure of the revenues earned on funds less the costs of funds generated, and less the operating costs. This measure does not, however, indicate whether the branch is using its resources efficiently or whether it could reduce its operating costs and further increase profitability. Similarly, if one hospital provides patient care at a cost of $300 per day and another provides patient care at $350 per day, can a manager draw any conclusions about their relative productivity without further considering the mix and nature of patient care provided? Measuring the productivity of these and other service businesses requires techniques that are more sensitive than accounting and ratio type measures and which can explicitly consider the mix of service outputs produced. This article explains how to apply a recently developed method for measuring and improving the efficiency of service businesses. The technique, referred to as Date Envelopment Analysis, has thus far been applied to banks, hospitals, computer manufacturer field service organizations, and educational institutions, as well as other service organizations. Introduction The service sector of the U.S. economy has been estimated to account for over 60% of Gross National Product and employment. Add to this the service components of manufacturing firms and it is clear that service sector productivity is a substantive issue as suggested in the following examples. Over 20% of computer manufacturer revenues are generated from customer service activities. These companies need to monitor and manage the service aspect of their business to help achieve their growth and profitability goals. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."