Strategic service management (SSM) is a business strategy that optimizes a company's provided services through the effort of synchronizing: service parts and resources forecasting, service partners, workforce technicians, and service pricing.

Benefits of strategic service management¹

• Revenue opportunity through the servicing of manufactured products experiencing decreased sales
• Leveraged customer loyalty through increased post-sale service performance
  • Faster resolution time for customer support service calls
• Heightened asset accountability and tracking
• Increased worker productivity
• More knowledgeable workers to prevent common mistakes

Best practices²

• Bring field service management
  Field Service Management
  Field service management is an attempt to optimize processes and information needed by companies who send technicians or staff "into the field" . Optimization is difficult, since it involves intelligent scheduling and dispatching of multiple technicians to different locations daily, while...
  
   and parts logistics under one operational umbrella
• Address process deficiencies, clearly defining required improvements and success criteria, before evaluating technology solutions
• Leverage partnerships with service and logistics providers
• Prioritize aftermarket service as a top-line business opportunity
• Involve stakeholders early and often in transformational process
• Adopt a two-pronged approach to measure the efficacy of after-market services: operational and strategic
• Ensure SSM strategy is integrated enterprise-wide
• Shift focus towards forecasting
  Forecasting
  Forecasting is the process of making statements about events whose actual outcomes have not yet been observed. A commonplace example might be estimation for some variable of interest at some specified future date. Prediction is a similar, but more general term...
  
   and planning: technician capacity and work order demand

Results from strategic service management deployments³

• Avaya
  Avaya
  Avaya Inc. is a privately held computer networking, information technology and telecommunications company that is a global provider of business communications systems. The international head quarters is in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, United States...
  
   reduced Service parts inventory from $250 million to $160 million
• Sun Microsystems
  Sun Microsystems
  Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
  
   saved $40 million in the first year
• Dell
  Dell
  Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
  
   grew service revenues over 20% in one year

See also

• Field service management
  Field Service Management
  Field service management is an attempt to optimize processes and information needed by companies who send technicians or staff "into the field" . Optimization is difficult, since it involves intelligent scheduling and dispatching of multiple technicians to different locations daily, while...
  
  
• Workforce management
  Workforce management
  Workforce management encompasses all the activities needed to maintain a productive workforce. Sometimes referred to as HRMS systems, or even part of ERP systems...
  
  
• Market-adaptive pricing
• Service parts management
• Command center
  Command center
  A command center is any place that is used to provide centralized command for some purpose.While frequently considered to be a military facility, these can be used in many other cases by governments or businesses...
  
  

Footnotes

1. AberdeenGroup’s Industry Traction of Strategic Service Management, December 2005

2. AberdeenGroup’s Best Practices in Strategic Service Management Report , June 2005

3. Yes Ma’am That Part Is In Stock, BusinessWeek, August 1, 2005