Operationele Strategie

Together with CompTIA we offer the opportunity to participate in the Noventum Service Management "Cost-to-Serve" Benchmark.  The objective is to provide pragmatic help to enable companies to steer a path out of recession, back to growth and to provide insight into how optimised your service operation is when compared to peers (potential competition).

This benchmark has been designed as an annual event to provide long-term insight into progression and developing trends in the industry, providing the ability to compare historical results with current results to identify strategic shifts. Specific benefits include:

• Visibility of true costs and capacity to allow manageable growth
• An external reference point for your own operation
• Insight into how service operations are creating low cost high value operations with reduced volumes
• Insight into trends
• Indication of the measures that are being used

The scope of the current study will be product related services, to reduce the time taken completing the questionnaire, increase its relevance and to ensure much easier comparison and highlight the merging of these types of service offering.

The Benchmark will measure around 50 key performance indicators - identified as the most important measures by a working party of 25 service professionals (representing a good cross selection of interested parties). We will also include trend information gathered during the benchmark.

Data will be collected on-line using an easy-to-use questionnaire (circa 45 minutes) with output in the form of a confidential report for each individual participant charting their own company results against the other participants.

The time taken to execute the benchmark will be minimal and feedback is planned for the end of March 2010.

The report will present your data, as shown below, to enable a rapid and easy comparison of your result with the rest of the participants. Each result graph will be described from information gathered across the whole participant group. We will also provide an executive summary as part of the output for dissemination within the business.

Summary of content is as follows:

1. Preface
2. Background
3. Introduction
4. Understanding and using the report
5. Executive Summary
6. Results
   Section I - Measures from a Financial Perspective
   Section II - Measures from a Customer and Stakeholder Perspective
   Section III - Measures from an Internal Business Perspective
   Section IV - Measures from Staff Development and Growth Perspective

The increasing need for innovation to drive growth in service means that:

• A broadening and developing role of service coupled with close attention to performance is now required to survive
• Knowing how your services compare to others in the industry is key to your company's survival and growth in the current economy.

Benchmarking is becoming an important mechanism for improving business operations. To provide some background, this article will illustrate key service aspects, including results from our latest benchmark, published at the start of the year.

For further information please contact us.

One important driver of performance improvement in the service business is the degree in which service business are able to standardise their service delivery organisation. In our 2008 research named “The future of Service Management” (www.thefutureofservice.com) we saw that companies that were able to demonstrate both strong revenue growth and year on year improvements in profit margins were able to deliver high value added services through standardised processes. The less profitable service businesses typically see the complexity of their operations increase exponentially when growth takes of. The intangible nature of the service business with a strong dependency on the performance of individuals makes it one of the most challenging types of businesss to manage.   

One important driver of performance improvement in the service business is the degree in which service business are able to standardise their service delivery organisation. In our 2008 research named “The future of Service Management” (www.thefutureofservice.com) we saw that companies that were able to demonstrate both strong revenue growth and year on year improvements in profit margins were able to deliver high value added services through standardised processes. The less profitable service businesses typically see the complexity of their operations increase exponentially when growth takes of. The intangible nature of the service business with a strong dependency on the performance of individuals makes it one of the most challenging types of businesss to manage.   

Many companies are continuously working to improve their service organisation; like transforming from a product into a customer driven service organisation; standardise service propositions and processes, improve effectiveness and efficiency.

Businesses may desire to optimise their performance to optimise profits, but what is optimisation? A number of senior executives were asked to define optimisation during one of the senior executive forums held at the SME this year and it became apparent that there was no one solution or common agreement as to what optimising a business meant.

Outsourcing their service operations has seemed an attractive option for some companies. Research shows that all the major high tech companies use outsourced operations to some degree for specific regions or products, but generally with a clear strategic objective. Most of the larger companies use outsourcing quite discreetly, as they do not always want to advertise the fact, for a variety of reasons.

Today’s Service Managers and Directors face a growing list of requirements and responsibilities: they have to be strategically aware, supporting their boardroom colleagues in driving the business, while simultaneously raising the performance of their own operation. While coping with the multiplicity of demands, many managers admit they “make do” with the operation already in place, while trying to deal with the challenges presented by a rapidly changing service environment.

Getting paid for what you do

It sometimes takes the obvious to make us realize that we are too close to the problem to see it for what it really is.

I have heard of a man who had a mind to sell his house, and therefore carried a piece of brick in his pocket , which he showed as a pattern to encourage purchasers. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Are we guilty of the same thinking when, as service directors we try and sell value added services by advancing our break-fix capability, as a basis for assessing the value of the additional services on offer?

The various software-planning tools currently available provide capabilities that until recently only existed on the wish lists of most planners.

These various tools are already in use in leading edge businessess to provide the service parts logistics team with the ability to deliver, to extremely demanding high service levels, cost effectively.

There are scheduling tools designed to run on the web that can effectively re-deploy engineers as late as half way through their previous call, or that can allow the engineer to be scheduled on line by the customers themselves through the use of a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) telephone.

This article will examine some of the challenges facing business today, and what businesses need to do to provide the necessary infrastructure and produce suitably skilled personnel, to deliver the broad range of capabilities that will be demanded by the customer over the next few years.

Everyone is aware that in the last few years the service industry has undergone rapid and dramatic change.