The following study reveals some comprehensive details and increases the transparency concerning the acquisition of business services. Especially for the DACH region, valuable and first of their kind insights are revealed. Altogether, ten major areas are addressed and analysed, focusing on a comparison with goods purchasing and typical procedures that are applied within professional purchasing organisations. It becomes clear, that different key aspects are relevant for business services and that a distinction to goods purchasing is necessary. This relates for example to an individual servicestrategy, the application of adequate evaluation procedures and the consideration of a social component for a purchasing success. Moreover, specific regulations for goods and services will further increase. In addition, the required knowledge of a purchaser, especially in the field of value-adding business services, will increase. Firms need to invest more in their purchasers in order to always assure high expertise. In contrary, the level of automation will increase for non-value-adding processes, leading to a touchless acquisition of goods and services. Within these conflicting priorities, firms need to develop comprehensive and competitive strategies to overcome the challenges related to the purchasing of business services. Therefore, the Performance Excellence Study provides a starting point for a further enhancement and a continuous improvement in business service purchasing.

Prof. Dr. Erik Hofmann ist an der Universität St. Gallen als Assistenzprofessor und Vize-Direktor am Lehrstuhl für Logistikmanagement tätig. Zudem betreut er als Projektleiter das Supply Chain Finance-Lab der Schweizerischen Post an der Universität St. Gallen. Zu seinen Forschungsgebieten gehören die Schwerpunkte Strategien, Märkte und Performance Measurement in Logistik und Supply Chain Management. Prof. Hofmann habilitierte zu dem Thema "InterorganizationalOperations Management" mit Fokus auf internationale Wertschöpfungsketten.2010 erhielterden "Outstanding Paper Award" des International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (IJPDLM) fürsein Paper zumThema "Inventory financing in supply chains - A logistics service provider-approach".