Two IfM students, Aiesha Maxwell and Guangjie Ren, received the Best Student Paper Award for their paper “New Technology Adoption in Field Service Operations: An Exploratory Study”. They received the award after presenting the paper at the POMS College of Service Operations and EurOMA Conference.

The paper addresses the issue that whilst after-sales service organisations are increasingly applying new technologies, such as ICT, to their operations to improve service quality, there is little knowledge as to how the technology is chosen, implemented and integrated into the organisation.

A process model for after-sales service organisations to follow when implementing new technologies has been suggested. The model provides companies with general steps to follow, depending on their circumstances, to ensure the implementation of new technologies runs smoothly.