Value-driven service matching

Today's economy is a service economy, and an increasing number of services is electronic, i.e. can be ordered and provisioned online. Examples include Internet access, email and Voice over IP. Just as any other kind of services, e-services often are offered in bundles, and many consumer needs require the construction of e-service bundles. For example, a need to communicate with family abroad, can be satisfied by Voice over IP, which also requires Internet access. The problem is how to compose an e-service bundle so that the needs of the consumer are met optimally and the suppliers can provide the services in the bundle in an economically sustainable way. This is a requirements engineering problem: matching consumer needs to (combinations of) solutions. In this paper, we propose a technique to match a consumer need with a multi-supplier bundle of commercial e-services. The technique is intended to be used by suppliers when they build a service catalogue that describes what they can offer with their technical infrastructure in terms of what consumers can buy. It is also of interest to brokers who match consumer needs to what is offered by various suppliers in their catalogues. The technique is illustrated by means of a case study in which we used the technique to structure part of the catalogue of a Dutch telecommunication company. The technique is related to goal-oriented RE but it starts from consumer values rather than goals, and it matches existing solutions to needs, rather than creating a new solution.