Strategic Service Management

by Giacomo Squintani, Marketing Manager, EMEA, Servigistics

Last-minute shopping and trolley fights in the aisles. TV schedules crammed with repeats and specials. That sudden realisation you forgot to send someone a card as theirs hits your doormat. Yep, it’s that time of year again.

It’s that time when we look out through the mist of our window and hazard some predictions for the New Year. If you’re in Finance and you got your predictions right last year, why are you reading this? You should be enjoying your retirement. As for the rest of us, here are five predictions for 2009:

1.      Vendors will have to show unprecedented flexibility on payment terms. In software, SAAS will garner further popularity, both for its technical and financial benefits, and vendors unable to provide “software as a service” solutions may not be around to read the 2010 predictions;

2.      The roles of Field Technician and Account Manager will continue to merge, as companies seek both to reduce costs and leverage the on-site contact enjoyed by their The roles of Field Technician and Account Manager will continue to merge, as companies seek both to reduce costs and leverage the on-site contact enjoyed by their mobile workforce. The success of the new role (already in some places called Technical Account Manager), for employees and employers alike, will be heavily dependent upon clarity of goals and training in the newer part of the role, and on the ability to measure those;

3.      The drive to regain control of technicians’ schedules will encompass preventive, predictive maintenance and self-fix solutions. In its April 2008 “The Maturity of Product Service” report, AberdeenGroup spoke about an “increased focus of service and manufacturing firms on preventive and often predictive maintenance processes”, highlighting “the drive for zero downtime [as] the primary reason for the 41% increase in the percentage of assets being monitored remotely over the last year” - a trend which the current climate can only strengthen. In 2008, 26% of Best-in-Class companies had a Knowledge Management solution in place, against a general backdrop of 19%. Will you join the elite?

4.      Optimising after-sales pricing will play a critical role in driving profitability from stagnating sales volumes, and in locking out grey market competitors;

5.  Mobile devices will continue to deliver on their promise, limited more by privacy concerns than technology. Expect to receive time-limited, segmented special offers by SMS when your favourite retailer tracks you within half a mile of one of its stores before long, as the High Street fights back against the recommendations systems of its online competitors… and expect to deploy your mobile device more and more frequently in a business context.

Whether you’re managing the grocery budget or a multi-million dollar corporate budget, at times like these there is a danger of underestimating the importance of the long-term and making unhealthy decisions. So reducing SLA levels as a means to cut inventory is not recommended. Companies that prove uncompromising in their investment in service, on the other hand, will be best placed to ride the bumpy ride that 2009 will prove, and to establish strong foundations for the new world order that will follow, maybe sometime in 2010. But those who forget the lessons that have been learnt in recent years… they are in serious danger of making some costly mistakes all over again.

Let’s not leave it twelve months to discuss these predictions - what are you expecting from the New Year? And, whatever your goals for 2009, here’s wishing you all the best in achieving them!

5.    Mobile devices will continue to deliver on their promise, limited more by privacy concerns than technology. Expect to receive time-limited, segmented special offers by SMS when your favourite retailer tracks you within half a mile of one of its stores before long, as the High Street fights back against the recommendations systems of its online competitors… and expect to deploy your mobile device more and more frequently in a business context.

Whether you’re managing the grocery budget or a multi-million dollar corporate budget, in times like these there is a danger of underestimating the importance of the long-term and making unhealthy decisions. So reducing SLA levels as a means to cut inventory is not recommended. Companies that prove uncompromising in their investment in service, on the other hand, will be best placed to endure the bumpy ride that 2009 will prove and to establish strong foundations for the new world order that will follow, maybe sometime in 2010. But those who forget the lessons that have been learnt in recent years… they are in serious danger of making some costly mistakes all over again.

Let’s not leave it twelve months to discuss these predictions - what are you expecting from the New Year? And, whatever your goals for 2009, here’s wishing you all the best in achieving them!

As a tech reporter for the Austin Business Journal, the stories that would make me drool were the ones that seemed like science fiction, not news.

Hi-tech start-up promises to deliver a refrigerator that does the shopping for you – for example, automatically orders milk when you’re almost out or gathers and orders the ingredients for Monday night dinner.

The Matrix pitch: a C-level executive from a leading computer company told me about his work on a brain implant that would enable you to download information directly into the brain.

Almost ten years later, I’ve still not found a “smart” refrigerator and we have yet to download data directly into our brains, but look what we do have: ShopSavvy, a price comparison engine on Google’s G1 phone. It will transform the entire shopping experience.

Yesterday, my friend showed me how it works. Using the phone, he scanned the bar code on his baby daughter’s giraffe and Voila! There was the price of the giraffe listed on multiple sites, both online stores and bricks-and-mortar shops in his area selling that item by using the G1’s built-in GPS.

Imagine a similar tool for service. Simply input the model number, or scan the bar-code, with a brief description of the problem and Voila! There’s a list of the service providers in your area and estimates of price and time to repair the problem. It’s not as far off as those smart refrigerators and brain implant, so service businesses better have the people, parts, prices, knowledge and processes automated optimized and automated to make way for the Brave New World of service.

However, we’re one step closer to that level of automation through service knowledge management. Today, you can actually diagnose the problem on-line even before you pick up the phone to ask for outside assistance. That way, if you just need to plug the machine into the wall or clean a sock from the filter, you can save a ton of money. Conversely, call center reps can do the same before they send the issue to dispatch, and dispatchers can better manage the field techs based on problem-diagnosis. And the best part of all of it: Field techs can use knowledge management to guide them through the repair process if they face an issue they can’t diagnose on the field. Saves the customer money (you don’t have to pay for multiple home visits); saves the company money ( truck rolls only once); and the field tech can access the intellectual capital of more experienced techs who have retired (without lugging around multiple manuals that would require hours of page-turning to find an adequate diagnosis and solution).

Of course, I’m still waiting for the day that my washing machine can predict imminent failure before it even happens. And then walk me through the repair itself. And then give me a backrub….