Question 1A

The SelfService Company is currently using the Virtual Assistent. It is a tool a companys
can place on their website. It will communicate with its customers, for instance
automatically answering questions. Its like chatting with a person, although the main
difference is that it can handle thousands of simultanious chats 24/7. It also helps people
find information, support users in completing forms, attracs attention to specific content
and advice and provides guidance in various customer journeys.
In the near future, the customer information hub will allow SSC to begin a personalized,
customized, optimized, conversation with each customer, long before they need to ask.
The SelfService company thinks its future lies in a roadmap to having customers build their
VA themselves, with the Selfservice company delivering professional services in Quality
Assurance. The SSC already sees 3 possible scenarios about this roadmap. Scenario 1: It
starts selling its own VAs (as OEM) to knowledge management system providers that sell to
its current market. Scenario 2: It starts selling its VAs (indirectly) to its current market,
using major suppliers. Scenario 3: it keeps selling its VAs directly to its current market.


A combination of performance in operation and technical sophistication would be the
best performance parameters, since the Virtual Assisent relies on the complexity of the used
technology.




Question 1B
Relevant to the knowledge base, dimensions are:
First, the individual assets. These are the skills and knowledge of individuals that form the
organisation. SSC has employers with skills that can implement VA systems besides the basic
employers and manager every company has.
Second, the technological assets. The company has several teams of engineers, which have
undergone a intensive training of several months.
Third, the administration assets. The SSC has a simple structure with a central department
for knowledge management, technical support and R&D (in Maastricht) and country
organizations handling business development, sales, project and accountmanagement.
Fourth, the external assets. The SSC has several relations with external parties, including
competitors. It recently bought a small chat/live-support company.
Fifth, the projects. Every new customer means a new project for the SSC. It takes usually like
8 weeks for a new project to finish. Projects involve a lot of learning, working and
developing.













Question 1C
A sustainable competative advantage = A long-term competative advantage that is not easily
duplicable or surpassable by the competitors.

As shown in the picture, all 4 conditions must be met for a (sustainable) competative
advantage, which are heterogeneity, ex post limits to competition, imperfect mobility
and ex ante limits to competition.

Heterogeneity: The market in which the SelfService company operates is low on
heterogeneity. There are many competitors for the SelfService company.
Worldwide there are about 40 organizations providing some sort of virtual agent; 20
of them can be considered direct competitors, being real players in the market..
Ex post limits to competition: Its pretty hard to enter the market and get comparable
market shares to the SelfService company. The SelfService company and it competators
already have their own information advantages, reputations and economies of scale.
Ex ante limits to competition: those limits are relatively low in this market. There arent
really sources which arent predictable before entering the market
Imperfect mobility: It will be a tough job for new companies to copy the organisational
structures, hire the best managers in this field, en optain relevant knowledge. Thus, the
market is high in imperfect mobility.
Summarizing those factors, its clear that the company hasnt such a big competitive
advantage. There are many competitors, which makes it hard for SSC to become the leader
in the field. There are a few dozen direct competitors.
Question 1D
Like the SelfService company already stated herself the problem with the current
technology and execution model is that we need quite an extensive group of knowledge
editors and knowledge managers to build and maintain our VAs.. and to make the
situation even more concrete, consider the following. We are currently working with the
company SalesForce, which is putting an enormous effort in an international rollout. If 1%
of their customers base would adopt a VA, we would have to deliver over 1000 project.
So I would advice the company not to make big risky capacity expansion without first
exploring the possibilities with comprehensive reports. I would advice to continue their focus
on technical innovation, analyzing the gap and carefully selecting one of the scenarios.