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Service bureau

Company that provides business services for a fee

A service bureau is a company that provides business services for a fee. The term has been extensively used to describe technology-based services to financial services companies, particularly banks."...services to the financial service companies (particularly banks)." {{cite web

The business model question

One writer described the ideal service bureau customer as only needing vanilla: very little customization per customer. The phrasing is catering "to the bell curve of customer requirements."{{cite web :Did they develop their own platform or license or purchase it?

To its customers, a service bureau offers a combination of expertise in technology, process and business-domains. The bureau business model depends on the ability to productize services and deploy them in volume to a large customer base. In the modern context, technology often becomes a key enabler to achieving this scale.

Histories

Data processing service bureaus were opened by IBM in 1932, first just in major USA cities, then internationally.{{cite web

Keypunching (a term that long-preceded "data entry") was often part of what was offered.

As Batch processing systems replaced Tab Equipment,{{cite web

A few decades later, sharing of mainframes via Timesharing was a step forward.IBM's ad was headlined: "This man is sharing a $2 million computer"{{cite book

These concepts already existed - advertising and Ad agencies. Initially newspapers sold space in bulk to print space brokers; they resold the space, but individual customers made their own ads.{{cite web

Some service bureau functions

Management of a national survey of corporate catering (300,000 questionnaires){{cite web
A specialized service bureau might be good at doing direct mail, perhaps just for a single target.e.g. car buyers. {{cite web |url=https://goosesocietyoftexas.com/bob-brockman

### Landart: a more detailed example Although Landart Systems, Inc (LSI) opened in 1973 as a DECsystem-20-based timesharing bureau that also did computerized typesetting,{{cite magazine |magazine=Hardcopy The 9700 could accept input via direct computer link or from magnetic tape, thus allowing the next step: a service they called Laserlink."The company, Landart Systems, is offering LaserLink, an interactive timesharing service that combines high-speed Xerox 9700 laser printing, graphics {{cite magazine "The Laserlink service consists of the Xerox 9700 Electronic Printing System with ..." {{cite magazine |magazine=Computerworld |date=November 22, 1982 |page=51 Founded by John Gilmour, a data processing manager whose Wall Street employer folded, the initial goal was to have the various services needed to perform typesetting, financial computer graphics, word processing and general timesharing under one roof. Laserlink and another specialty, electronic publishing (which was then uncommon) allowed Landart to advance. ## References ## References 1. Halterman, TE. (26 June 2015). ["Buy a 3D Printer or Use a Service Bureau? - Sculpteo Runs the Numbers"](https://3dprint.com/76629/sculpteo-report-buy-or-bureau/). 2. Daines, John. (2002). ["Lyons Electronic Office - The world's first business computer"](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/downloads/55575). ::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_bureau) and is available under the [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the [article history page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_bureau?action=history). ::

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