The service provider
In the USM Customer-Provider Interaction Model, the service provider is the party responsible for delivering the service to the customer. In that setting, the provider of that service provider is called a supplier.
USM specifies the provider as a system, based on Systems Thinking. The essential components of that system are:
This is where the slogan under the Provider in the USM Customer-Provider Interaction Model comes from: "People do things with stuff".
According to the first law of Systems Thinking, none of these components can do what the system can: none of the components can deliver a service on its own.
According to the second law of Systems Thinking, the performance of the system is determined by the performance of the whole, not by the performance of a single component. This is why USM handles the concept of routines as the combination of the three essential components. And these routines are then specified in terms of the logical combinations of the process building blocks: the eight standard USM workflows. It's these eight workflows that deliver the service, and therefore, the value.
The second law of Systems Thinking also explains why the improvement of a single component is in no way a guaranteed improvement of the whole. This refers to one of the most prominent thinking errors of today: the idea that replacing a tool will guarantee the improvement of the service. Or the idea that a reorganization (of the people component) will guarantee an improvement of the service. A sustainable improvement of the service delivery can only be achieved with an integrated improvement of all three components of the service provider's system. In the default USM deployment plan, each improvement sprint covers an integrated improvement of all three components of the provider's system.
