Nicola Bateman: New operating model skills framework for service organisations
SOMS – Service Operating Model Skills is an industrial framework to specify the skills required for people designing, implementing and maintaining operating models. It has been developed by the Centre for Service Management at the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University in response to requests from coaches and facilitators in this sector such as organisations who implement and manage operating models and management consultancies.
SOMS provides a framework to identify the skills required by people designing, implementing and maintaining operating models and is based on research from the Centre for Service Management. The design of the framework emerged out of ongoing research by PhD student Ross Chester-Buxton in the CSM who is developing a Service Audit Tool.
Operating model explained
The operating model is the operational design that makes it possible to deliver the business strategy. It is the blueprint for how an organisation operates across a range of domains to deliver its objectives. An operating model provides the architecture and framework for business operations – giving core stability with flexibility in key areas. These are the operating model elements that need to be designed to provide flexibility, dependability and quality of service within compliance and regulatory requirements.
The design of the operating model addresses where people and resources are located, what skills and infrastructure is required and how the organisation monitors and improves performance. This is reflected in the seven SOMS elements of: the customer experience; delivery; process context – organisational structure and infrastructure; people capability; demand and capacity management; performance management & improvement; strategy; governance and leadership.
An example of an operating model was demonstrated in our own field of academia in the Higher Education Funding Council for England http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2016/201603/.
SOMS at CSM
The SOMS framework consists of seven elements (Figure 1) and is part of CSM with its own website.
Figure 1: SOMS framework
This Blog post was written by Dr Nicola Bateman, former Deputy Director of the Centre for Service Management and member of the Visual Decision Practices Research Interest Group. Anyone interested in SOMS should contact Rosamund Chester Buxton on R.B.ChesterBuxton@lboro.ac.uk