07.06.21 -- Predictive Service: From Objective To Reality In 2021

There’s a moral imperative for businesses to increase their sustainability. While individual waste and pollution certainly has a greater-than-zero effect on the health of our planet, businesses, by virtue of their scale, have an outsized effect on our ability to impact our environment, and while these organizations may not have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to be conscious of their waste, they certainly have a duty to humanity.

A recurring theme among service leaders in recent months has been the prioritization of knowledge management within their digital transformation roadmaps. While knowledge management has long been considered “important” to some degree, this increased focused makes sense when you pause to consider a variety of factors at play within service that are shining a light on the need for a strong knowledge management program.

Like most of the major service trends, predictive capabilities come up in almost every conversation. Some organizations have already achieved this nirvana, but many are still at the point of recognizing the potential but not yet translating it into their reality. It is expected that we’ll see significant evolution in this area in 2021, and that’s because while there are challenges to overcome, as with any change, the opportunities are simply too immense to delay in pursuing.

Reverse logistics is an often overlooked component of true field service excellence. Does your firm have the capabilities in place to maximize its potential? The bar for reverse logistics maturity today is much higher than it’s been in the past and getting the workflow right throughout all of your channels of operation will be key to the future success of your service practice.

Manufacturers, retailers, and other businesses have, over the course of the last several years, diversified their product offerings by productizing service. We call this servitization. Making a business transformation of that magnitude depends on a company’s ability to bring a much stronger service value proposition to play.