Many businesses have looked to improve their service where they can see a promise of increasing margins.  But many of these companies have little or no investment in technology to support their service organisation.  And so it happens that often the people in the operation who succeed do so in spite of the existing or legacy systems and not because of them. 

Historically businesses have focused on performing well function by function, resulting in the creation of silos, and even some parts of the business working at odds with others.  Figure 1 highlights the point, as research indicates that almost two-thirds of businesses struggle to integrate the service business with other company systems that were designed to interface with sophisticated service solutions: the resulting information flow is at best hybridised; at worse requiring to be re-entered onto the second system (double keyed). So integration across a business is becoming the centre of attention as it becomes obvious that growth will be difficult to engineer.   

 Figure 1

As the service environment has become more sophisticated and complex, this lack of integration has often been the root cause of problems such as service level agreements (SLAs) being sold that are almost impossible to achieve, or new products sold when secrecy has kept the Service operation in the dark, as well as business rivals.  A lack of “joined-up” operation is often the main cause why businesses seem to grow quite quickly only to fall back at a certain stage.

Figure 2 shows the way many companies develop over time and illustrates typical growth patterns. Growth is characterised by a rapid spurt at the beginning which begins to tail off as the business grows.  Quite often at this point, a short term action, or an internal department investment in new systems will result in another growth spurt, but the effect will become less after different issues have an impact, and eventually the business will plateau.

 Figure 2

Companies willing to accept the need for balance and optimisation are beginning to realise that growth takes place in a number of ways at different times.  Small businesses are often seen as good providers of service – they have been able to align their systems with a focus on their customers. The larger an organisation becomes, such customer affinity and alignment seems to be less emphasised or more difficult (costly) to retain, and its lack is reflected by lost loyalty of customers and therefore profitability is jeopardised.
 

Service enterprises either failing to recognise a need, or reluctant to invest or implement a properly structured strategic process, will inevitably suffer from a lack of focus and cohesion across operations, resulting in divergent activities.  Divergence introduces inconsistency, inefficiency and increased costs into the service operation.   These symptoms are quite often wrongly diagnosed as stemming from poor engineer productivity - management then assume they have to improve productivity, and/or achieve better service performance. Outsourcing and/or headcount reductions may be used in an attempt to move the line back into acceptable performance and growth, but outsourcing a problem is not necessarily the best solution and a very different cure might be a wiser course.

Studying these situations closely within many companies highlights the real need to integrate people and processes better, and consider how the various business departments and dependencies can work better when integrated effectively through technology and systems.   If these aspects are not fully considered as the business grows, then valuable people may leave, the processes may become corrupted and most importantly the technology interfaces begin to splinter.  Splintering of technology results in significant impairment of information flow and in the service environment this implies poor communication with engineers and the customer, reducing customer satisfaction and leading to reduced loyalty.  The seat of the problem is often that a growth environment becomes more complex, so maintaining good quality communication becomes harder to achieve. Many businesses attempt to deal with splintering communications through the acquisition of numerous software tools - but then do not join everything together – this can result in a tendency to pull the business apart.  The objective must be for departments to work closely together, and see each other as an ally rather than an opponent.

It is with this as a consideration that the real concept of an integrated customer relationship management team makes sense, when the role of the sales, service and marketing departments is to work together to form a strong bond between the supplier and the customer through a number of areas.

Many companies have begun to achieve synchronicity through building account teams that combine marketing, sales and service, with all seeking to invest time in the customer, pooling information on the customer, respecting each others competencies to enable them, together, to provide solutions.  Teamwork demands clear demarcation lines for each person’s role and the different skill sets.

The most effective companies back their products with teams from the whole business (not just Sales and Service), including, front office, back office and admin support, and all must desire to deliver maximum customer value.  Unfortunately in many businesses the breadth of these roles are not effectively represented, but Marketing, Manufacturing and R&D should play an extremely important role in any interplay with the customer, reinforcing the two sides of the grid, with manufacturing supporting the machine, and marketing supporting the customer, as shown in figure 3.

  Figure 3

Few businesses, even when operating with an inclusive team, manage to utilise information from their service operation into either Manufacturing or Sales operations regarding the customer or product characteristics.  Research shown in figure 4 highlights that most companies generally gain information regarding service performance but not the needs of the customer, therefore the information they obtain is of limited value.

Figure 4

Either no one seeks information or there is no response to information given.  When information is available, through some of the latest fully–(including service) integrated ERP solutions, the business is able to realise the value and utilise it to differentiate from others.

In most businesses, the role of the engineer has changed dramatically from only a few years ago, though businesses are using the same engineers.  Utilising the engineer throughout the business is achieved by software solutions integrating service and call centre operations enabling fast and accurate communication across the business.  However, at issue still is the changing role of the engineer and the need for recognition of the importance and value of this new role. Establishing a broad-based operation in which interconnected departments respect each role will boost the support operation as a valued part of the whole business. 

Manufacturing and Sales tend to focus on new product or extra features and options, rather than considering the equipment in the field - the attitude is that past sales are in the past, and any work spent on a past product is seen as lost time.  Against time-to-market deadlines, this focus on new product is probably valid, however, service operations and customers live in the “now” and are focused on product and customer problems, using feed-back and repair data to avoid dissatisfaction as well as future early-life failures and warranty costs - a significant value of joining up the business and having systems that can utilise the data.

The relationship between departments has historically been one of a distrustful distance causing infamous service comments like “Who sold you that?” because of the experience with the product in the field.  The service team, as an extension of manufacturing, and manufacturing and R&D as an extension of service in the factory, should result in a productive and effective relationship, however the ability for these two operations to form a link through technology has been poorly taken advantage of, if available at all.  Manufacturing has had systems such as Materials Requirement Planning (MRPI) Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRPII) and Enterprise Requirements Planning (ERP) since the early eighties, but it is only recently that ERP solutions have fully considered service and its potential other than as a simple extension of the manufacturing process – break/fix.  An important part of the service manager/service director roles has been to prove the value of service.  MDs, CEOs and CFOs are demonstrating awareness of the importance of considering their brand in terms of individual tailored product and service per customer, recognising the value of combining their teams to work with and support each other.  Understanding how customers use the product, and the stresses different customers impose, assists companies to understand the different product requirements of the market and to foster loyalty within their customer base, and achieve a differentiation which raises the barrier to competition. Many software applications have attempted to consider the bigger picture, but have their heritage in manufacturing and not service, tending to major in the break/fix role of service (traditional adjunct to manufacturing) and not the current broader role including Marketing, Sales, R&D, Manufacturing and Logistics. 

If the broader system has its heritage in service, and can truly accept input from the rest of the business, then the benefits from both can be available and the picture in Figure 5 emerges.  Service is the core building block, supported by systems providing full integration with all the functions of the company to create a successful business.

Figure 5
 
Achieving an integrated structure that works effectively requires the business to establish a strategic direction that enmeshes skill sets across the business and uses customer-facing personnel to provide solutions that will win customers.  The service operation must be regarded as a strategic weapon within the arsenal available to the business. 

Without an effective structure and capable system, it will be difficult to support cost-effective business growth and increasing customer satisfaction demands.  The ability to out-do competitors and sell solutions to customers requires differentiators, and these will come from an in-depth knowledge of customer requirements provided by top quality staff, and integrated systems. Systems that integrate the various silos of the business facilitate the strategy that was previously a pipe dream - as the systems become available, this pipe dream is turning into reality to provide businesses with a winning differentiation that will enable them to continue to grow.