The Critical Success Factors to Service Transformation

In a recent survey, key senior executives - including CEOs, financial controllers and service directors from a number of high tech manufacturing companies (such as Rolls Royce, Alstom, Airbus, BAE) - outlined to us the critical success factors they have used to achieve successful service transformation over the last three years. These lessons learned from high tech manufacturing companies are applicable to many different industries and can help to make the transition from primarily product-based businesses into knowledge driven and brand driven service businesses:

The majority of companies have established their service transformation by focusing on key critical success factors, and given in more detail here:

• Get closer to key customers: 
  – Working in partnership with the customer to build strong long term relationship  
  – Establishing an ongoing and in-depth dialogue with customers to define their business challenges 
  – Understand how customers experience value, from both tangible and intangible benefits
• Strengthen the service propositions: 
  – Focus on cost, business case, and risk reduction for the customer. 
  – Addressing the business challenges of customers, utilising technology in the context of the customer's business 
  – Offerings that address the issues of cost containment, sustainability and response
• Focus on high quality service delivery: 
  – Deliver existing business and win new business, to scale-up, innovate, and respond.   
  – Best perceived quality will maintain consistently high price levels and contribute to building the Brand 
  – Growth of service revenues can only be achieved through standardisation 
  – Customers increasingly demand standardisation of their experience through design and management of all elements of the service experience delivery
• Deliver consistent, reliable, repeatable and sustainable solutions: 
  – Provide compelling and cost-effective propositions. 
  – Services need to be designed and developed just like products. Doing so will make it possible to deliver high quality services to fulfil customer expectations
• Establish more effective remote support: 
  – The model will move towards a faster, lower-cost, and effective remote support.

All the successful companies have put a change process in place to achieve successful service transformation, where the key phase is the movement from Product Availability Service to Knowledge-driven and Brand-driven, and requires:

• Senior management fully aware and supportive of the business opportunity to be achieved through service transformation
• Creation of a deliberate service strategy to grow the service business
• Building up internal capabilities:– High added value service propositions, knowledge driven (not technology only)
  – Service management Practices
  – People competencies (trusted advisor)
  – High quality end-to-end processes
  – IT capabilities including remote services and mobile applications
  Supporting the change process has been the ability and desire to measure the service results (of which customer experience is key), and operational benchmarking with other more mature service industries.
  
  The executive summary research report provides further insight into these critical success factors, describing what has worked in the high-tech manufacturing industry, and why these success factors have been successful in implementing service transformation; how they are achieved, and how it can be used in other industries. 
  
  Download Executive summary.  The survey results link will be directed to your email address upon submission of the download form.