A Productive and Profitable Service Chain
With the right technologies in place, you can manage your service chain and parts to increase your productivity, customer satisfaction and revenue.
Staying profitable and keeping your customers happy - it’s what every business strives for. But they don’t all do it successfully. So how do the successful ones stay successful? Many focus on their service chain through the use of best-of-breed technology solutions and parts management.
A pre-requisite of effective service-chain operations is the application of technology to control field service systems. In the form of service management software, this technology will help you with the management of your contracts and warranties, inventory and logistics and contact centers. You’ll be able to manage every small detail of your service chain and ensure your corporate and field employees, as well as your customers, are all on the same page.
MARRY BUSINESS PROCESS AND TECHNLOGY
According to a recent Aberdeen Group report, "best practice" companies distinguish themselves in several categories, one of which is the business process behind their service management. One process that is specifically mentioned is the ability to update work orders and contracts and reconcile invoices in the field. This is usually done through a mobile device running mobile field service software that’s connected to their back office systems.
This business process gives the field service worker the ability to provide better customer service by handling customer questions regarding contracts and invoices. In addition, it minimizes the work needed to be done by technicians and dispatchers, which increases the productivity of employees, and eventually revenue streams.
Another area that Aberdeen’s best practice companies excel in is knowledge and data management. An example would be a company where all stakeholders have on-demand, real-time access to the same service-related data via their service management software. Access to this data can speed issue resolution and increase customer satisfaction and employee productivity. Also, your technology solution should optimize work schedules based on service order type, technician skills and capacity. This will give you the ability to send the right technician to the right job, once again increasing responsiveness and productivity, while lowering costs.
Using these technology tools along with business process improvements can prove invaluable to your service chain’s daily operations as well as your strategic vision. It will help you satisfy your customers, increase employee productivity and increase your company’s revenues.
MANAGE PARTS. INCREASE REVENUE
Now on to parts management, which is where much of your revenue increases can come from. This is because the typical company provides services and parts for more than seven years after the initial sale. In fact, according to the Aberdeen Group, aftermarket services and parts account for 20 to 30 percent of revenues and about 40 percent of profits for most manufactures.
With those kinds of numbers at stake, you can see why it’s important to plan and align your service parts inventories, resources and processes. Unfortunately, many companies are under-performing in this area.
So what are your first steps? Well, the first thing you’ll want to do is ensure your parts data is clean and that it makes sense. This means you’ll want to validate your data’s accuracy and completeness, as well as classify it to ensure common parts are treated the same. This process can take some time and manpower, but it’s well worth it in the end.
Next you’ll want to align your service parts planning and operations across your service network. This means aligning them with your central offices, field stocking locations and repair depots.
Finally, you’ll want to take all of your data and automate your service parts planning and execution with a reliable service parts management solution. By using software to manage this process, each operation in your service network can see the spare parts inventory and usage in real-time and make decisions based on that data.
DON’T RELY ON ERP
Many organizations feel they can use their ERP system for parts management. However, most traditional ERP systems have proved ineffective at managing planning and execution beyond the walls of the organization and out in the field.
The Aberdeen Group recommends a best-of-breed service parts management solution that incorporates network visibility and event management capabilities with advance analytics and service-specific planning features. In fact, the service parts management system could be part of your overall service management software solution.
With a good service management software solution and a parts management plan in place, you’ll be on your way to increased customer satisfaction and revenues that will make you a hit at the next board meeting.