Service Lifecycle Resource Planning: Integral To Effective Service Management Operations

By Author: Rakesh Kumar
Total Articles: 33
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The ability to efficiently manage service lifecycle is imperative for the success of service businesses. And an effective Service Lifecycle Resource Planning helps define this success roadmap for service organizations. Service business is rich in data, but we need to store customer service & maintenance records, service enquiries, contract details, service level agreements and others. And researches have confirmed the unfailing role of leveraging the power of accurate service data to manage every business segment in the customer service lifecycle.

The focus of this article centers on how to use real-time data feeds to optimize People, Parts, Facilities, Logistics and partners; and mobilize service lifecycle resource planning in the best possible ways.

Track Engineers’ or Technicians performance- Engineers are a critical resource for any service organization. In most cases, engineers fill out time sheets on paper, and then feed them to payroll for processing. Now does that include engineer’s performance optimization? For streamlining your service lifecycle resource planning, the motive ...
... should shift from collating engineer’s daily performance data to measuring and analyzing their performance and taking corrective actions. Consider this: For the repair and service operations of Inverters and Batteries, if you aren’t using real-time data, you are probably loosing control on:

Parts and Spares Management- Consider this: Every time your service call had been on hold because of the non-availability of part(s), your service TAT (Turn-Around-Time) increases. So does that raise an alarm? In situations where various parts are ordered from multiple vendors and further distributed to many third-party service providers, the need to order components in the right quantity, at the right time in the right place and without excess and overage gets imperative. In the absence of strong visibility over movement of parts and spares, procurement & production planning process remains unaided, and hence disturbed. On the flip side, you can take uniform decisions with clear visibility on parts movement and apply efficient supply chain models like Hub-And-Spoke or just-in-time inventory model.

Facilities- One of the fundamental problems in setting up a third-party service provider is to synchronize the deliverables. These outsourced facilities are your investment centers and a major part of the service lifecycle resource planning process. To minimize stretched delivery time-frame, sub-standard quality output and inappropriate categorization of responsibilities, you need real-time data that lets you view and analyze the performance level of your partners and help you in making unanimous and timely decisions.

Logistics and Partners- The other important function in the Service Lifecycle Resource Planning is that of Logistics and Partners. Let us first recall the important transactions involved with the Logistics department. Imagine the blow your service business could get in absence of data that caters to various functions like generating indent for parts, approving and dispatching parts, tracking the movement of inventory receiving and utilizing spares for repair & warranty, collating service & warranty claims, verifying claim payouts, measuring performance against payouts and many more similar activities? Chances are high that the TAT of your service partners goes immeasurable, exceed the acceptable time limit and enter threat zones, you also may have to sit on a pile of inventory which is actually not required and your accounts may bleed due to unverified claims & cash outflows. In contrast, if you had access to real-time data, you could have actually avoided these service inefficiencies and operated without adding on the after-sales service operations costs.

While there are arguments that a robust ERP system can take care of all the functional decisions related to service management, these can be just an oversight and a simplistic way to cover-up the argument. For a strong and streamlined service and repair functionary, you need to base the functional decisions and executive decisions on in-depth analysis of data and reports. In majorities of the industries where after-sales service and support is critical to the users (individual or business groups), an integrated enterprise service management system is considered a must have tool in managing Customer Service Lifecycle operations and maintain market position while also growing and taking businesses global.


Rakesh Kumar is an after-sales service process optimization expert and associated with Zed-Axis Technologies Pvt. Ltd & Zed-Service? - A 360 Degree Customer Service Management Software and Customer Service Software - one of the flagship products of Zed-Axis Technologies Pvt. Ltd. For any queries/feedback Please visit www.zed-service.in