Improving the Product, Service & Experience

WHAT IS CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT?

Continuous Improvement facilitates a more complete understanding of what's going on in your business so that you can determine the areas that require enhancement, adjustment or correction. Customer LifeCycle Management Analytics is our continuous improvement solution for increasing the effectiveness of key service related functions such as failure analysis, parts inventory tracking and product life cycle analysis. The solution uses best of breed web-based business intelligence tools, empowering information to your entire service network, including your customers.

A DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH

For most companies a lack of data is generally not the problem - sorting through it is the challenge. Drilling up and down intelligently to the detail level gives you the ability to create an accurate picture of your services business and can show you trends and patterns to quickly respond to a dynamic market. Sustaining that advantage through continuous improvement allows you to consistently deliver high value to the customer and gain a competitive edge.

THE LAUNCHING PAD

Continuous Improvement is the launching pad for the shift to proactive service solutions. Some examples of SLM continuous improvement metrics provide the ability to:

• benchmark to measure effectiveness of parts promotions
• identify weaknesses and strengths in competitive parts availability
• recognize growth opportunities in service contracts
• identify cyclic patterns in product usage metering
• recognize trends in warranty cost-per-product
• monitor satisfaction surveys to enhance the customer experience
• spot changes in product lifecycles and customer behaviors
• benchmark technical assistance responsiveness and solutions

These types of metrics provide the business case to launch proactive solutions that fine-tune your services and enable you to manage resources with the highest return.

PUTTING IT TO WORK

4CS implements continuous improvement through service nodes that build, store, monitor and manage information. Service nodes evolve companies to a cohesive service network.

4CS uses a closed-loop methodology for service level optimization along with the following techniques:

• metrics (benchmarking, six sigma)
• analysis (alert dashboards, reporting on warranty, lifecycle data, usage information, etc.)
• feedback (surveys, complaints, focus groups, inquiries, comparisons)
• data intelligence (data mining, neural networks)

Continuous improvement initiatives gives you the visibility to the right information to begin to identify strategies and actions that make a difference to the customer, your marketshare and to your bottom line

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