Disconnected people, processes, and assets across enterprises negatively affect business performance, manufacturing quality, dynamic supply chains, sales momentum, and accuracy, with increasing risks that are impacting maintenance and service operations constantly.

Historically companies focused on efficient asset operations and cost reduction, but increasingly companies are looking at the assets they provide to enable new, differentiated customer experiences and services.

In simple terms, this means that  companies now need to get more value from their assets  by adopting best practices in predictive service delivery and reliability-based maintenance. This requires companies to tightly integrate planning and service execution in end-2-end processes, including cross organizationally via collaborative processes and networks.

Service models, evolved: Innovation drives new revenue streams

The reinvention of service models leading to new revenue streams through the delivery of innovative service offerings and companies’ products as a service.

The result of this being:

• The introduction of outcome-focused service offerings requires the ability to define outcome-based contracts, including performance measures and service level agreements.
• The delivery of new immersive customer experiences means that companies must provide fast and reliable customer service across all channels and contact points, cutting resolution times with cross-departmental case management.
• A need to simplify the agent or operational expert experience: new solutions must focus on increasing agent productivity and more importantly first contact resolution with rich AI based self-service environments to initially deflect a vast volume of the issues, supported by a unified agent workspace that continues the resolution journey, not re-starts it, supported with contextual knowledge and a 360-degree view of customers, partners, employees, products, lifecycle etc.
• Urgent requirements for a single management framework that supports all end-to-end lifecycles: A single, contextual, dynamic, secure, role optimized solution that integrates all aspects of service from installed base management, warranty, contact center, service ticketing, field service, in-house repairs, billing, finance, employee support and many more to enable best-practice and innovative outcomes and clearly speedy resolution.
• A need to focus on solutions truly capable of optimizing service efficacy: a service layer, simply stuck on the top with non-optimized integrations, rich with stale costly data duplication and high in maintenance overheads is not going to ever be successful.

The efficacy of servicing

Efficacy refers to the ability of something to produce a desired effect. It's essentially a measure of how well something works in achieving its intended outcome. Efficacy is often used in a formal setting, particularly in research or medicine. For example, scientists might study the efficacy of a new drug to see how well it treats a specific disease.

The key aspect however of efficacy, is the focus on the intended outcome. Something can be very effective at doing one thing, but its efficacy is low if it doesn't achieve the specific goal we have in mind.

The systems to deliver service today must enable customers to improve the efficacy of servicing, with rich compossible end-2-end process capabilities that reach symbiotically into the systems of record, to minimize unnecessary duplication, transaction errors, in-accurate AI capabilities.

Simply put, it must just do the job right, in the right place, in the most optimal way possible, to deliver the best (and potentially multiple) outcomes for all concerned. As Tolkien might say: One system that can connect to the processing required for all types of servicing across an organization and its ecosystem. One system that can share AI and ML across all service domains and continuously automate and optimize operations across all systems of relevance within the “Issue to Resolution and Outcomes cosmos”. One system to control it all …

Addressing the resolution with comprehensive outcomes doesn't just happen within one ticket or case, it can take many cases and parallel business processes to achieve the ultimate results for the customer and the businesses involved.

The value is to keep this all together in one solution so the enormity of the insight it can deliver trumps any possibility achieved by multiple service solutions disconnected across the enterprise. That takes complex governance, visibility, data compliance and access controls. Massive complexity to solve, but for enterprises that have been solving these types of challenges for years, it's just another way to enable their customers to run their service organizations and channels better.

Key areas and definitions of service

Realizing the new potential for service management and the possibilities it can deliver to the business is a journey many companies have already embarked on. However, sometimes the costs of operating these new models are far higher than initially expected due to the solutions used, the complexities involved and the need to streamline the process along the entire journey, eliminating unnecessary operational utility expenses. So, let’s now investigate these challenges and some of the reasons why the existing solution models are not always optimal.

Realizing service management optimized outcomes essentially requires you to focus on three key areas:

1. Reinvent service models: Grow revenue by delivering innovative service offerings and products as a service through outcome-based contracts, including performance measures and service-level agreements (SLAs). This requires the introduction of new collaborative service processes built on a foundation of shared data and content – a shared digital thread in which all players and partners in the experience can work together and exchange information instantly. For example, you can provide an immersive customer experience that includes omnichannel engagement and collaboration to build, nurture, and sustain the customer relationship over time. Providing a window into the end-to-end product service lifecycle by integrating all aspects of service, such as installed base management, warranty, service ticketing, field service, in-house repairs, billing, and finance, consistently to both agent and customer.
2. Deliver service precision: Use advanced scheduling technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to prioritize service engagements, improve resource utilization, reduce travel times, and enable an agile service response. Service technicians or resolution specialists (even a clinician), can become more empowered when using mobile work tools that put the necessary intelligence and information at their fingertips, automate tasks, and help ensure the safety of themselves, the patient/customer, and their work environment. In addition, for example, services can be integrated across the supply chain to optimize spare parts or maybe expand the talent pool through innovative crowdsourcing and collaborative work management.
3. Revolutionize equipment performance: Boost equipment performance, manufacturer gained value from it, and extend asset life by shifting from a reactive to proactive service approach, where technology-enabled intelligence directly from the equipment is used to optimize service needs. Monitoring health and performance continuously with IoT technology, enables predictive service by using AI and advanced analytics for failure prediction. And when combined with failure mode catalogs and historical data, service mitigation recommendations can be prescribed and automated. By managing equipment risk, reliability, and health, companies reduce downtime and continuously improve the asset’s performance and extend its life. Although asset operators are traditionally responsible, IoT-enabled condition monitoring opens the door to new equipment performance services, and new business models (for example in the automotive industry: miles as a service). Manufacturers critically need to leverage IoT health data as part of the collaborative digital thread – from design to operate – combining it with a customer’s service and configuration history and performance data to drive continuous improvement and optimize business margins.

Without a true single end-to-end connectivity potential, where transaction context can be maintained and enrichened throughout the process journey, value is lost, costs to operate escalate, and failed SLA’s finalize the inevitable outcome.

End-to-end service infrastructure: The foundation and the future

SAP is probably one of the very few companies out there who can say we own all the critical parts necessary to deliver an interconnected end-to-end service infrastructure, reliably and consistently.

But let me finish with a few facts about SAP and our approach to the delivery of business systems I have grown to understand in the 15+ years I've been here:

• SAP has always put value creation front and center. This company seeks to find the best possible version of a business in industry, and with our solutions, help it succeed. We don't chase technology, but are relentless in analyzing the technology across the bigger picture that we exclusively understand.
• As the market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run better by redefining how businesses can optimally work, creating networks of intelligent enterprises that provide transparency, resiliency, and sustainability across all process chains.
• Our end-to-end solution footprint of applications and services enables our customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference worldwide.
• Infusing AI into this common, consistent model, across all a company’s business processes, enables you to accelerate your potential and the journeys your organization and customers can go on, delivering intelligence beyond just a single pillar of the organization execution systems, like so many point solutions do today.

Simply put: we use the latest technology to deliver innovation that solves real needs and builds real business value. Always have. Always will.