ITeS - Transcending the Traditional Service Model

Summary form only given. The renaissance gave birth to the knowledge revolution, and the industrial revolution introduced mankind to the wonders of technology. The advent of information technology in the 21st century has brought about yet another revolution, the information revolution. The recent onset of IT has brought about technological, economical, social, and cultural changes on an unprecedented scale. Among which, IT enabled e-commerce, revolutionizing the way we go about the traditional exchange of goods, and more importantly, IT infused new life into the service sector, enabling a new breed of service called IT-enabled service (ITeS). Simply put, ITeS is the integration of IT and specific domain knowledge to increase the innovative values of conventional services produced by industries. ITeS can be sub-divided into two categories. The first of which is the integration of IT functionalities into traditional services. Examples include real-time interpretation services made possible with VoIP services and remote healthcare monitoring services provided via the Internet. The second of which is the transformation of IT itself into a service. The textbook example is Google, which provides services ranging from email, search engine, advertisement, news, and media, all based on the premise of the Internet technology itself. Coupling its manufacturing prowess and experience in software development with a dynamic, diversified, and mature IT environment, Taiwan is the perfect test bed for ITeS. However, ITeS is not without its challenges. For instance, language barriers, potential infrastructure compatibilities, and finding Taiwan's niche in the global ITeS value chain are all issues that need to be addressed. The author touches on the rise of ITeS, how ITeS can revolutionize the service sector, the opportunities for Taiwan in this nascent domain, and the challenges it might face while trying to transform from a labor-intensive manufacturing-centric society to one that's knowledge-intensive service-centric