Using Technology to think and act differently - Summary

Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group

Running a service organization has not changed much over the last 15 years − customers still want service, engineers want freedom, companies want control of their costs. But now they want more, cheaper, faster service - and they want it now. Companies have used service application systems to achieve these goals, for example they have increased their number of engineer visits per day or out-sourced an area of their business to take advantage of scale or cheaper labour. But there is this need to re-engineer the way of working and empower the engineer to be more effective.

The purpose of this article is to look at this new paradigm of operation that is as different from current operations as the iPod is to the CD walkman and this future paradigm might be experienced and the impact of new ways of working on service operations and the total business.