Design decisions in the front office - back office issue:A Study of Trade-offs in the Financial Services Sector

摘要

This dissertation presents the results of a research study that involved the development of a framework that provides insight in and so supports design decisions regarding front office and back office activities in service delivery processes. Building on the evidence from five case studies in the financial services sector, three design decisions have been elaborated. They are the definition of front office and back office activities, the decoupling decisions and organizational arrangements. Together, these three design decisions form a coherent front office - back office configuration. The case studies were used to investigate in detail how service characteristics, strategic priorities and organizational constraints influenced the design decisions. It is concluded each design decision can be characterized by a trade-off between performance objectives. Yet, the research also reveals that by coordinating the design decisions and using information systems, trade-offs can be overcome. In this way, the resulting framework is an important step towards a design theory on front office and back office work in financial services.