Research projects in IT service companies

• Published in: Future-proofing
• Main Authors: Simone, Carla, Wagner, Ina, Müller, Claudia, Weibert, Anne, Wulf, Volker
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 03.02.2022
• Subjects: IT service companies; machine learning applications; outsourcing; call centres; socio-technical innovation; sustainable IT design
• ISBN: 0198862504; 9780198862505
• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198862505.003.0009

This chapter illustrates projects developed in the research laboratories of two IT service companies. At Xerox in Grenoble (France), the project supporting paper-saving was successful; the second project, which aimed at outsourcing data entry, was stopped because of the difficulty in reaching an adequate level of data quality; the last project, which aimed to support workers in a call centre, was problematic because of the conflicting views of the researchers and the deployers regarding the competences mobilized by workers. At IBM Research—Almaden in San Jose (United States), two projects aimed to introduce machine learning technologies: in the first case, this was to increase the use of available operational and transactional data to run internal sales operations; in the second one, it was to support IT service designers as they prepared architectural solutions in response to requests from clients. Both projects were stopped because of the difficulty the workers faced in appropriating this new and complex technology.