As many of you know, I recently authored a white paper titled Reverse Lifecycle Management: The Next Opportunity in Reverse Logistics. I received a lot of favorable comments from people who took the time to download and read the article. Thank’s so much . There were, or course, a few readers who expressed words of caution about the promise of the Reverse Life-cycle Management (RLM) concepts discussed in the paper. One person commented that an optimal RLM system based on best practices might be a good idea but without good project management and a willingness by the client to re-engineer some business processes the best solution can easily turn into a nightmare. Another person expressed concern about the quality of data being captured by the system. Their view was that a RLM solution may be world class but if it doesn’t collect that right data to improve operating effeciency and productivity or product performance, then it is useless.
Well, I couldn’t agree any stronger. Good project management and executive level buy-in are critical to a successful RLM implementation. I would say these components are important to any type of initiative that involves change. This is also true with respect to caputuring good, useful and reliable data as expressed by the old adage… “garbage in/garbage out”. RLM must consider the needs are all stakeholders, and that is an important distinction and decision that designers of a RLM solution need to take into account. Who are the stake-holders? Where do they fit in? What is their relationship? Where to they have an impact? These are are questions that must be answered when determining what type of data needs to be captured in the RLM solution.
One of the greatest benefits of RLM, and there are many, is that it provides a systemic platform for capturing, managing, analyzing and disseminating critical business intelligence necessary for optimizing an Reverse Logistics Operation regardless of the end-user's demographics (i.e., years in business, number of employees, market served, number of customers, type of business, etc.). Basically, RLM is a strategic framework for defining system functional requirements. Our view, which is supported by very extensive market research is that the current R.L. systemic infrastructures of most OEMs/3PSPs/Retailers/etc. are very fragmented and lack critical feature functionality for capturing critical data about the R.L. Supply Chain. Up until now, RL Supply Chain professionals have not had many available options for resolving systemic issues such as data accuracy, visibility, root cause analysis, etc. Instead, these professionals have had to either ignore the situation, create workarounds, or use brute force to resolve problems as they occurred. This in turn has had negative consequences on operating costs, personnel productivity, and the overall customer experience.
RLM is a new industry standard and will help entrenched management mitigate and avoid the above challenges by helping them to anticipate, plan, and monitor RL events. I hope you will see the value of the RLM concept. Please share with me you thoughts, comments, and criticisms so that we may continue to build awareness of the challenges and potential solutions to Reverse Life-cycle Management.
I have been following a number of discussions on LinkedIn related to the definition of exceptional service within the Aftermarket. Most of the comments take the view that front line service personnel are the key to exceptional service and that these people should be trained to delivery service with a smile, have concern for the customer, and have authority and responsibility for front line decision making. These comments suggest to me that a “warm and fuzzy” disposition is all that is needed to ensure exceptional service.
The cold and hard truth is that exceptional service involves so much more. There is no doubt in my mind that all employees, from the CEO to the front line worker, are critical to the success of any business and that customers love it when service is provided to them by someone with a smile, a warm heart, and empathic ear. However, I can think of countless times when I've seen businesses who offered horrible service in terms of timeliness, accuracy, consistency, etc. while losing money hand over first even though they empowered their front-line employees and trained them with good people skills.
To me, exceptional service means to know what the customer wants and deliver it on time, every time on a consistent, predictable, and repetitive basis. It is the role of a Service Executive to understand and deliver extra-ordinary services. The key to extra-ordinary service is to define the tangible aspects of service from the customers' perspective (That's Market Research 101). In essence, define what the customer’s expectation is in terms of time, accuracy, and availability. Obviously this may differ from industry to industry and/or segment to segment. That’s why market research is so important.
Next, have a system and processes in place to deliver service on a consistent and repetitive basis. Obviously, we will want to train all employees on these processes. Exceptional service also requires you establish a problem-resolution process to account for mistakes/error as they will happen; we are only human and nothing is “fail safe”. Last but not least, measure performance and improve where needed. Make sure everyone from the CEO to the front line worker knows what the metrics are. Continuously ask the customers for feedback on how to better meet their needs and proactively offer solutions which you've identified through your knowledge management process.
In summary, the cold, hard truth is that exceptional service is not only about people and communication, but about data, technology, and processes. State of the art service management solutions, collaborative computing platforms, mobility solutions, analytics and other related technology make it possible for any company to create an environment where every employee, from the CEO to front-line, can deliver exceptional services.
To learn more about the cold, hard truth of exceptional service and how your company can deliver it too visit our website www.blumberg-advisor.com or contact us at 215-643-9060.
The Field Service Automation landscape looks very different than it did 25
years ago when I began my career. Back
then, the market was in its early growth stage. Today, the market is mature.
Field Service functionality can be found in different types of applications
which we categorize into ERP/CRM (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.),
Integrated Service Management (i.e., Astea, Metrix, Vertical Solutions, Amdocs,
etc.), Field Mobility (e.g., Antennae Software, Agentek, etc.), Service Parts
Optimization (e.g., MCA, Servigistics/Click Commerce, Baxter, etc.), and Field
Service Optimization (i.e., Service Power, Click Software, TOA, etc.). Applications are available for purchase either
through an On Premise (i.e., License) or On Demand (e.g., SaaS) solution. As
such the decision making process is much more complex.
In the past, the business user had a very vocal voice in the selection of Commercial Off the Shelf Systems (COTS). Sure
the perspectives of technical and economic decision makers were considered but
now these participations have a greater role in placing constraints and/or
mandates on the types of systems that are purchased. The technical platform on which the field
service application is written is often more important as the feature
functionality of the application itself. The ability of this application to integrate
with other corporate systems is also extremely important consideration and
constraint. One thing which is continued
to remain certain is the applications will continue to evolve and new vendors
will continue to enter the market while others disappear.
Given all these complexities, we believe end-users can benefit from working
with an independent and objective third party advisor such as ourselves to help
define the solution, recommend a qualified vendor short list, and evaluate proposals. We believe our understanding of where this
market place has been and where is it heading, combined with our knowledge of
the current state of the art and vendor market is critical in helping clients
to select and implement solutions which meet the needs of today and the
requirements of the future.
In our last blog post we wrote about early development in Field Service Automation (FSA). There have been many advances since those early days (circa 1986). Back then, most
of the vendors were focused on winning business from large and very large
end-user organizations. After all, the
conventional wisdom was “that’s where the money is”. As
consultants, our firm played a hand in promoting Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) Solutions and helping end-users define
their requirements, and evaluate and select qualified vendors. We encouraged our clients to give serious
consideration to the depth and breadth of software functionality, its
applicability to their business needs, and the stability of the software
platform over the technical features and bells and whistles of software’s user
interface. As the market become
increasingly competitive many software developers took heed of our advice by
expanding their functional capabilities and implementing segment specific
marketing campaigns.
Over time we saw new developments in Field Service Automation. First,
we saw the development of wireless technologies which led to the roll out of field
service mobility solutions. At first, the vendor evaluation and selection was based on network coverage and
device feature functionality. Overtime, the focus moved toward the capabilities
of the middle software and its ability to integrate with corporate systems and
provide a user friendly interface to the field. In parallel to the wireless
evolution we also saw the development and roll-out of point solutions focused
on various aspects of Field Service Management from dynamic scheduling to parts
forecasting to remote diagnostics. Software developers were constantly looking
at ways to incorporate new technologies such as RFID, GPS, Remote Monitoring, and
advancement in Internet technology into their applications. Over time, we also saw new players come and
go either through acquisition or market shake out. We also saw sales cycles and resulting
implementations become longer, as field service applications become
increasingly more complex and involve cross functional integration with other
corporate systems.
Be sure to check back with us soon as we provide more informaiton on today's FSA environment provide advice for selecting and implementing an optimal solution.
After checking around the web and other industry sources, I was surprised to see that no one had ever written about the evolution or history of Field Service Automation. I think this is an important topic because like so many things in life, you can't understand the present until you grasp the past. So, at the bequest of a few clients and my own passion for this subject, I've decided to do a series of blog post exploring the history of Field Service Automation.
My first assignment as a neophyte management consultant back the mid 1980'sinvolved a benchmark evaluation of the state of the art of Field ServiceManagement Systems (FSMS). Back then, commercial off the shelf technology(COTS) was just coming on line to automate the process of managing a fieldservice organization. The technology automated basic processes from handling ofa customer service request, to dispatching a Field Service Engineer, tomanaging their spare parts inventory, to depot repair of defective reports, toreporting and analytics. Up until this time, only the very large, manufacturers(e.g., IBM, H-P, Xerox, etc.) with large field service organizations couldafford to develop automated solutions that were often mainframe based and veryexpensive to design, implement, operate, and maintain. Others were using manualbased processes such a pen and paper or magnetic scheduling boards to managethe service delivery process.
While our consulting firm played a key role in designing and implementingsome of these early enterprise systems, we could see that the emergence of thePersonal Computer would reduce the overall lifecycle cost associated with FieldService Automation. We also observed the emergence of a number of softwaredevelopers who offered COTS systems which could be implemented much faster thancustom designed solutions for the fraction of the cost. Thus, I was handed theassignment to benchmark the state of the art as we anticipated that more andmore of our consulting assignments would be around the recommendations ofCOTS. I remember counting over 24 vendors focused on Field ServiceAutomation. Mind you this was waybefore the days of Enterprise Systems like Oracle and SAP. Over the years, many of these initial24 vendors where either acquired by others or disbanded. However, a number of these initialvendors, such as Astea and Metrix, have been able to stand the test of timebecause they have been able to adapt to market needs and requirements anddevelop enhancements to their applications via acquisition and/or organicdevelopment.
Be sure to check back here at Reverse Logistics Today for the next post in this series. We will be looking at the next wave of development and how our firm continued to emerge as experts in this field (no pun intended).