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The Service Supply Chain:
An Untapped Opportunity
Traditionally,
companies have focused on the customer-facing supply chain activities
associated with product sales. They gauged their supply chain
effectiveness on how well they performed against such measures as forecast
accuracy, order fill rates, and on-time deliveries. Yet in taking this
sales-oriented view, they overlooked a critical component of successful
supply chain management—servicing the customer after the sale has been
made.
Service supply chain
management remains a largely untapped source of competitive advantage.
During the recent economic boom times, companies tended to focus almost
exclusively on moving product out the door in support of record sales
numbers. The operational back-end practices so important to post sales
service were largely an afterthought.
But times have
changed. Customers today demand the same level of responsiveness and
product availability on post-sales service as they do on new products.
They want to minimize downtime of their systems—with minimal planning on
their part. They no longer measure repair parts deliveries in days, but
rather in minutes. In fact, typically replacement parts are no longer
stocked by the customer, but by the manufacturer.
In short, the
service supply chain today has a great impact on both top and bottom lines
than ever before.
Read the report:
The Service Supply Chain: An Untapped Opportunity
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