Самообслуживание: практика и эволюция

Practice of serving oneself when shopping

Self service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when making purchases. Aside from Automated Teller Machines, which are not limited to banks, and customer operated supermarket check out, labor saving which has been described as self sourcing, there is the latter's subset, selfsourcing and a related pair: End user development and End user computing. Note has been made how paid labor has been replaced with unpaid labor,

For decades, laws have been passed both facilitating and preventing self pumping of gas and other self service.

Self service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when purchasing items. Common examples include many gas stations, where the customer pumps their own gas rather than have an attendant do it (full service is required by law in New Jersey, urban parts of Oregon, most of Mexico, and Richmond, British Columbia, but is the exception rather than the rule elsewhere). Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) in the banking world have also revolutionized how people withdraw and deposit funds; most stores in the Western world, where the customer uses a shopping cart in the store, placing the items they want to buy into the cart and then proceeding to the checkout counter/aisles; or at buffet style restaurants, where the customer serves their own plate of food from a large, central selection.

In 1917, the US Patent Office awarded Clarence Saunders a patent for a "self serving store." Saunders invited his customers to collect the goods they wanted to buy from the store and present them to a cashier, rather than having the store employee consult a list presented by the customer, and collect the goods. Saunders licensed the business method to independent grocery stores; these operated under the name "Piggly Wiggly."

Self service is over the phone, web, and email to facilitate customer service interactions using automation. Self service software and self service apps (for example online banking apps, web portals with shops, self service check in at the airport) become increasingly common.

Self sourcing is a term describing informal and often unpaid labor that benefits the owner of the facility where it is done by replacing paid labor with unpaid labor. Both situations have aspects of Self service, and where permitted involve benefits to the person doing the work, such as job & personal satisfaction, even though tradeoffs are frequently involved, they're taking on a responsibility that's not one of the top seven "Loan Officer Job Duties" listed by a major job placement service. A situation where no payment is made is self service, such as airport check in kiosks and checkout machines. Another situation is where a company's Human resources department is partially bypassed by departments that "source talent themselves."

An early use of the term is a 2005 HRO Today article titled "Insourcing, Outsourcing? How about Self sourcing?" that mined Wikipedia's history of a pair of banks that merged decades ago as Standard Chartered and, after September 11, rebuilt its personnel department in an innovative way. The concept is similar to self service, and one USA example is pumping gas: New Jersey banned customers from doing this in 1949; the technology began over half a century ago.

Selfsourcing is the internal development and support of IT systems by knowledge workers with minimal contribution from IT specialists, and has been described as essentially outsourcing development effort to the end user. At times they use in house Data warehouse systems, which often run on mainframes. Various terms have been used to describe end user self service, when someone who is not a professional programmer programs, codes, scripts, writes macros, and in other ways uses a computer in a user directed data processing accomplishment, such as End user computing and End user development. In the 1990s, Windows versions of mainframe packages were already available.

When desktop personal computers became nearly as widely distributed as having a work phone, in companies having a data processing department, the PC was often unlinked to the corporate mainframe, and data was keyed in from printouts. Software was for do it yourself/selfsourcing, including spreadsheets, programs written in DOS BASIC or, somewhat later, dBASE. Use of spreadsheets, the most popular End user development tool, was estimated in 2005 to done by 13 million American employees. Once terminal emulation arrived, more data was available, and it was more current. Techniques such as Screen scraping and FTP reduced rekeying. Mainframe products such as FOCUS were ported to the PC, and Business Intelligence (BI) software became more widespread. Companies large enough to have mainframes and use BI, having departments with analysts and other specialists, have people doing this work full time. Selfsourcing, in such situations,

It is crucial for the system's purposes and goals to be aligned with that of the organizational goals. Developing a system that contradicts organizational goals will most likely lead to a reduction in sales and customer retention. As well, due to the large amount of time it may take for development, it is important allocate your time efficiently as time is valuable. Knowledge workers must also determine what kind of external support they will require. In house IT specialists can be a valuable commodity and are often included in the planning process. It is important to document how the system works, to ensure that if the developing knowledge workers move on others can use it and even attempt to make needed updates.