Service Lifecycle Management For IT Equipment: Tackling The Profitability Crunch

Your customer contacts the call center. Their equipment is down. Your service representative begins to document and diagnose the problem. A trouble ticket is generated and a service technician is dispatched to resolve the problem. This scenario is repeated countless times a day, it is routine for your service organization. But from the customer’s perspective — this is not routine at all. It may be a central piece of equipment such as a server that is down or it may just be an individual PC or printer. No matter what the situation is, it is stopping your customer from running their business. Somebody is not working — or not working in a fully effective way — and they are relying on you to get them back in business. This is your chance to prove your value and re-earn your service contract.

Managing service processes effectively allows service companies to continually prove the value of their offerings. Effectively running any services organization can be greatly enhanced by following the tenets of Service Lifecycle Management (SLM). SLM, coined by industry analyst firm AMR Research, is a strategic approach to improving customer service while simultaneously reducing service costs. Leading service organizations are increasingly reaping the benefits of adopting SLM principals. Companies that focus on servicing Information Technology (IT) related equipment, in particular, are turning towards SLM to address the increasingly challenging IT Services market. Three things are clear about servicing IT assets in the current climate:

• The job is not getting any easier
• Competition is getting stiffer
• Profit margins are getting smaller