Patterns for Value-Added Services Illustrated with SEAM

The basic idea behind the provision of a service is to hide the service implementation details from the client in such a way that more value is provided to the client. Very often support services allow too much of their implementation details to be visible to customers resulting in poor value proposition. In this paper we describe a project that aimed towards the requisite abstraction of the support service implementation for the research funding at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). We show the current service, the problem it creates for its customers, and propose four patterns for improving the value that customers receive from a requisite service abstraction. The four patterns are: provide a simple service interface, incorporate needed external actors into the service view of the organization, recognize new customers and use data and process linking technology. These patterns are applied in a to-be model.