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Self-service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when making purchases.
Aside from
Automated Teller Machine
An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fun ...
s, which are not limited to banks, and customer-operated supermarket check-out,
labor-saving of which has been described as
self-sourcing
Self-service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when making purchases. Aside from Automated Teller Machines, which are not limited to banks, and customer-operated supermarket check-out, labor-saving of which has been described as self ...
, there is the latter's subset,
selfsourcing
Self-service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when making purchases. Aside from Automated Teller Machines, which are not limited to banks, and customer-operated supermarket check-out, labor-saving of which has been described as self- ...
and a related pair:
End-user development
End-user development (EUD) or end-user programming (EUP) refers to activities and tools that allow end-users – people who are not professional software developers – to program computers. People who are not professional developers can use EUD ...
and
End-user computing.
Note has been made how paid labor has been replaced with unpaid labor,
[ and how reduced professionalism and distractions from primary duties has reduced value obtained from employees' time.]
Over a period of decades, laws have been passed both facilitating and preventing self-pumping of gas and other self-service.
Overview
Self-service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when purchasing items. Common examples include many gas stations
A filling station, also known as a gas station () or petrol station (), is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold in the 2010s were gasoline (or petrol) and diesel fuel.
Gaso ...
, where the customer pumps their own gas
Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma).
A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...
rather than have an attendant do it (full service is required by law in New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, urban parts of Oregon, most of Mexico, and Richmond, British Columbia
Richmond is a coastal city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada. It occupies almost the entirety of Lulu Island (excluding Queensborough), between the two estuarine distributaries of the Fraser River. Encompassing the ad ...
, but is the exception rather than the rule elsewhere). Automatic Teller Machine
An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fun ...
s (ATMs) in the banking world have also revolutionized how people withdraw and deposit funds; most stores in the Western world
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and state (polity), states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania. , where the customer uses a shopping cart
A shopping cart (American English), trolley (British English, Australian English), or buggy (Southern American English, Appalachian English), also known by a variety of other names, is a wheeled cart supplied by a shop or store, especially ...
in the store, placing the items they want to buy into the cart and then proceeding to the checkout Checkout may refer to:
* a point of sale terminal
* Google Checkout, Google's online payment services
* Check-Out (The Price Is Right), a segment game from ''The Price Is Right''
* in information management, it means blocking a file for editing; ...
counter/aisles; or at buffet
A buffet can be either a sideboard (a flat-topped piece of furniture with cupboards and drawers, used for storing crockery, glasses, and table linen) or a system of serving meals in which food is placed in a public area where the diners serve ...
-style restaurants, where the customer serves their own plate of food from a large, central selection.
Patentable business method
In 1917, the US Patent Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
awarded Clarence Saunders Clarence Saunders may refer to:
* Clarence Saunders (grocer) (1881–1953), American grocer, pioneer of supermarkets
* Clarence Saunders (athlete) (born 1963), Bermudian high jumper
{{hndis, Saunders, Clarence ...
a patent for a "self-serving store." Saunders invited his customers to collect the goods they wanted to buy from the store and present them to a cashier, rather than having the store employee consult a list presented by the customer, and collect the goods. Saunders licensed the business method to independent grocery stores; these operated under the name "Piggly Wiggly
Piggly Wiggly is an American supermarket chain operating in the American Southern and Midwestern regions run by Piggly Wiggly, LLC, an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers. Its first outlet opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, and is notable f ...
."
Electronic commerce
Self-service is over the phone, web, and email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
to facilitate customer service interactions using automation. Self-service software and self-service apps (for example online banking apps, web portals with shops, self-service check-in at the airport) become increasingly common.
Self-sourcing
Self-sourcing is a term describing informal and often unpaid labor that benefits the owner of the facility where it is done by replacing paid labor with unpaid labor.[
Selfsourcing (without a dash) is a subset thereof, and refers to developing computer software intended for use by the person doing the development.][(ACM.org (]Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
)
Both situations have aspects of ''Self-service'', and where permitted involve benefits to the person doing the work, such as job & personal satisfaction, even though tradeoffs are frequently involved,[ including long term losses to the company.][
]
Doing someone else's job
When a loan officer is asked to "self-source" they're taking on a responsibility that's not one of the top seven "Loan Officer Job Duties" listed by a major job placement service.
A situation where no payment is made is self-service, such as airport check-in kiosks and checkout machines.[ International borders have also experimented with traveler-assisted fingerprint verification.]
Another situation is where a company's Human resources
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include m ...
department is partially bypassed by departments that "source talent themselves."
History of self-sourcing
An early use of the term is a 2005 HRO Today article titled "Insourcing, Outsourcing? How about Self-sourcing?" that mined Wikipedia's history of a pair of banks that merged decades ago as Standard Chartered and, after September 11
Events Pre-1600
* 9 – The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ends: The Roman Empire suffers the greatest defeat of its history and the Rhine is established as the border between the Empire and the so-called barbarians for the next four hu ...
, rebuilt its personnel department in an innovative way.
The concept is similar to self-service, and one USA example is pumping gas: New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
banned customers from doing this in 1949;[ now NJ is the only state "where drivers are not allowed to pump their own gasoline."][
]
Self-service
In 1994 it was considered a radical change to propose permitting self-service at the gas pumps, in Japan, and the New York Times reported that "the push .. (came) from Japanese big business ... trying to cut costs."[
]Automatic Teller Machine
An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fun ...
s are another example, and their expansion beyond banks have led
to signs saying Access To Money, which refers to a company with that name; the technology began over half-a-century ago.
Selfsourcing
Selfsourcing is the internal development and support of IT systems by knowledge worker
Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include programmers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics, whose job is ...
s with minimal contribution from IT specialists, and has been described as essentially outsourcing
Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...
development effort to the end user. At times they use in-house Data warehouse
In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for Business reporting, reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central Repos ...
systems, which often run on mainframes.
Various terms have been used to describe end user self service, when someone who is not a professional programmer programs, codes, scripts, writes macros, and in other ways uses a computer in a user-directed data processing accomplishment, such as End user computing and End user development.
In the 1990s, Windows versions of mainframe packages were already available.
Data sourcing
When desktop personal computers became nearly as widely distributed as having a work phone, in companies having a data processing department, the PC was often unlinked to the corporate mainframe, and data was keyed in from printouts. Software was for do-it-yourself/selfsourcing, including spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cel ...
s, programs written in DOS-BASIC or, somewhat later, dBASE. Use of spreadsheets, the most popular End-user development tool,[ was estimated in 2005 to done by 13 million American employees.][
Some data became siloed Once ]terminal emulation
A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote termi ...
arrived, more data was available, and it was more current. Techniques such as Screen scraping
Data scraping is a technique where a computer program extracts data from human-readable output coming from another program.
Description
Normally, data transfer between programs is accomplished using data structures suited for automated processin ...
and FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
reduced rekeying. Mainframe products such as FOCUS
Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film
*''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore
* ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
were ported to the PC, and Business Intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...
(BI) software became more widespread.
Companies large enough to have mainframes and use BI, having departments with analysts and other specialists, have people doing this work full-time. Selfsourcing, in such situations,[ is taking people away from their main job (such as designing ads, creating surveys, planning advertising campaigns); pairs of people, one from an analysis group and another from a "user" group, is the way the company wants to operate. Selfsourcing is not viewed as an improvement.
''Data warehouse'' was an earlier term in this space.
]
Issues
It is crucial for the system's purposes and goals to be aligned with that of the organizational goals. Developing a system that contradicts organizational goals will most likely lead to a reduction in sales and customer retention. As well, due to the large amount of time it may take for development, it is important allocate your time efficiently as time is valuable.
Knowledge workers must also determine what kind of external support they will require. In-house IT specialists can be a valuable commodity and are often included in the planning process.
It is important to document how the system works, to ensure that if the developing knowledge workers move on others can use it and even attempt to make needed updates.
Advantages
Knowledge workers are often strongly aware of their immediate needs, and can avoid formalizations and time needed for "project cost/benefit analysis" and delays due to ''chargebacks''.
Additional benefits are:
* Improved requirement determination: Since they're telling themselves what they want, rather than someone else, this eliminates telling an IT specialist what they want. There is a greater chance for user short-term satisfaction.
* Increased participation and sense of ownership: Pride and self-push will add desire for completion, sense of ownership and higher worker morale. Increased morale can be infectious and lead to great benefits in several other areas.
* Facilitates speed of systems development: Since step-by-step details preclude formal documentation, time and resources are concentrated, whereas working with an IT specialists analyzing would be counterproductive. Selfsourcing is usually faster for smaller projects that do not require the full process of development.[
]
Disadvantages
=Inadequate expertise
=
Many knowledge workers involved in selfsourcing do not have experience or expertise with IT tools, resulting in:
Pride of ownership has been found to be a major cause of overlooking errors.
A 1992 study showed that because Excel
ExCeL London (an abbreviation for Exhibition Centre London) is an exhibition centre, international convention centre and former hospital in the Custom House area of Newham, East London. It is situated on a site on the northern quay of the ...
"tends to produce output even in the presence of errors" there is "user over-confidence in program correctness."
* Lost hours and potential: potentially good ideas are lost. These incomplete projects, after consuming many hours, often draw workers away from their primary duties.
* Lack of organizational focus:[ These often form a privatized IT system, with poor integration to corporate systems. Data silos may violate policy and even privacy/ HIPPA/HIPAA laws. Uncontrolled and duplicate information can become stale, leading to more problems than benefits.
* Lack of design alternative analysis: Hardware and software opportunities are not analyzed sufficiently, and efficient alternatives may not be noticed and utilized. This can lead to inefficient and costly systems.
* Lack of security: End users, as a group, do not understand how to build secure applications.
* Lack of documentation: Knowledge workers may not have supervisors who are aware that, as time goes on, changes will be needed and these compartmentalized systems will require the help of IT specialists. Knowledge workers will usually lack experience with planning for these changes and the ability to adapt their work for the future.][
]
=Shadow IT
=
Although departmental computing has decades of history,[ one-person-show situations either suffer from inability to interact with a helpdesk or fail to benefit from wheels already invented.][
]
Self-service tools
Although self-service tools are also used by professionals, among the basic members of various categories from a more detailed list of self-service tools are:
* simple office equipment - even in a "paperless office" individual office workers use scotch tape dispensers,[ staplers and staple-removers. The ''New York Times'' mentions their applicability to ''Home Office'' businesses.][
* hand-operated tools - screwdrivers,] pliers, wrenches, hammers, handsaws[
* mechanized/power hand-held tools - power drill, power saw
* - Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel, dBase (or Access) represent areas of functionality used for ]knowledge management
Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...
, both in finding stored information and in entering new content. of these exist both for locally stored (desktop computer) programs and internet/cloud-based.
Human resource
Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include ...
departments have enabled Employee self-service, including providing employees with tools for skill building and career planning
Career management is the combination of structured planning and the active management choice of one's own professional career. Career Management is an umbrella term that covers Career Planning & Career Development on an individual level or at an ...
.
See also
* Automated retail
Automated retail is the category of self-service, standalone kiosks that operate as fully automatic retail stores through the use of software integrations to replace the traditional retail services inside in a traditional retail store. These sta ...
* Automated teller machine
An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fun ...
* Decision support system
A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and h ...
* Expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if†...
* Insourcing
Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...
* Interactive kiosk
An interactive kiosk is a computer terminal featuring specialized hardware and software that provides access to information and applications for communication, commerce, entertainment, or education.
By 2010, the largest bill pay kiosk network ...
* Self checkout
Self-checkouts (SCOs), also known as assisted checkouts (ACOs) or self-service checkouts, are machines that provide a mechanism for customers to complete their own transaction from a retailer without needing a traditional staffed checkout. When ...
* Shadow work
In economics, shadow work refers to a special kind of unpaid labor.
It includes assembling of goods that come "in pieces", self-checkout at super markets, and self-service at gas stations. Jobs that are necessary for completing a purchase that ...
* Ticket machine
A ticket machine, also known as a ticket vending machine (TVM), is a vending machine that produces paper or electronic tickets, or recharges a stored-value card or smart card or the user's mobile wallet, typically on a smartphone. For instanc ...
* Unmanned store
An unmanned store is a retail concept in which there are no service personnel and cashierless store, no cashiers in the store. The transactions are handled through a mobile application. Unlike an automated convenience store, the unmanned store conc ...
* Vending machine
A vending machine is an automated machine that provides items such as snacks, beverages, cigarettes, and lottery tickets to consumers after cash, a credit card, or other forms of payment are inserted into the machine or otherwise made. The fir ...
External links
* https://oemkiosks.com/?page=qsr
*Stephen Haag, Maeve Cummings, Donald McCubbrey, Alain Pinsonneault and Richard Donovan ''Third Canadian Edition Management Information Systems for the Information Age'' Mcgraw-Hill Ryerson, Canada, 2006
References
{{Authority control
Software distribution
Information systems
Decision support systems
Retail formats
Outsourcing
Business terms