whitepaper service excellence (uk) v1 1

Senority – Service Excellence

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1 Copyright: © 2010 Senority

Service Excellence

“Goal and Means”

for complex relations

Senority A multi-disciplinary network of experienced Service Excellence experts

Version: 1.0 Status: final

Date: April 2010


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As organisations dedicate themselves more and more to their “core competences” ever more complex forms of cooperation and collaboration with customers and their service providers have emerged. For years “Traditional” market segments such as manufacturing have successfully built deep relationships between customer and supplier so that a supplier’s products are delivered “Just In Time” for the customer’s production process to proceed with a minimal inventory. This requires advanced forms of cooperation and trust on multiple levels of the involved companies. Other markets also demonstrate ever advanced forms or strategic cooperation, and the value chain is intersected by organisational boundaries within different modalities of Business Process Outsourcing. Even within a relatively young industry such as ICT the market has gone through several generations of outsourcing, and services such as outsourcing of ATM related services are in full motion. Recent experiences, including IT outsourcing, indicate still much additional value is to be obtained by improving service maturity, cooperation, collaboration and the management thereof. Lack of communication (transparency) and trust (measurable) can cause multiple gaps in the relationship between customer and service provider to appear. Such gaps become most apparent when a provider does not deliver what was agreed upon, and this is being perceived as negative. Yet plenty of examples exist where the strategic relationships deteriorated and became toxic without the service provider explicitly failing to meet their agreements.

Below model (figure 1) demonstrates the gaps which Senority identifies within complex service models.

Figure 1 - Partnership gaps Service Excellence’s aim is to introduce and implement methods for business partners to deal with each other so to erase these fractures or at least minimize the impact. Current service contracts most often focus on the gap between a contract or Service Level Agreement (SLA) and actual performance. A tremendous effort is invested on isolated technical measurements instead of concentrating on supporting the business process. The limitations of such an approach become obvious as:

Contracts are more or less static and do not adapt at the same rate as the business changes occur;

Customers are not able to suitably mould and formulate their wishes and demands in a way adequate for contracts;

Therefore customer needs and expectations usually differ from the services agreed upon;

Performance levels are sometimes indicative of technicalities, but irrelevant from a business perspective.

Service Excellence “the next generation” of Strategic cooperation


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Thus, it is essential to not merely measure operational performance of the provided services, yet to continuously warrant these services match the customer’s requirements and needs. Organisations which manage both operational performance as well as customer requirements, dealing with their expectations, requirements and needs in a fulfilling way, can reach a situation of “Service Excellence”. Service Excellence approach Senority offers an extensive “tool box” in support of Service Excellence. Central to this is a process whereby all relevant signals “performance indicators” concerning the provided services’ are gathered and improvement needs are translated in concrete improvement actions. Premise of the Service Excellence process is to have both the relationship between customer and provider, as well as the provided service flagged as “green”. Figure 2 depicts the most important focal points of the Service Excellence process.

Figure 2 – Service Excellence Management Senority offers an approach by which not only actual service performance can be managed, but also other relevant aspects of the provided service can be integrally managed. This is supported by our Service Excellence tool “Evaluetor”. This unique tool greatly simplifies

the introduction and implementation of this way of working, and support the daily practise by continuous monitoring of performance indicators, and routing of “alerts” to pre-appointed stakeholders. Evaluetor contains several modules with specific functionality. First, there is “Delivery Performance” in which all information is collected concerning actual delivery compared to what is agreed upon. Although this type of information is under good control at most companies, several shortcomings can be identified:

Non-measurable agreements exist;

Measurable agreements exist, but no measurements are recorded nor reported;

Measurable agreements exist, but have little meaningful relevance (such as server uptime, rather than uptime of a business process).

By automated comparison of delivered results with the contractual agreements, with Service Excellence meaningful statements can be made concerning the performance gaps. If there are issues, these are captured within the process and, if this wasn’t already, dealt with via incident and problem management, covered within the “Improvement Management” module to guarantee the necessary follow-on actions are started and monitored. All this with the aim of facilitating the continuous improvement of provided services. Within the “Relationship Status” module the process measures softer aspects of the provided service and the relationship. Perceptions and opinions of different actors and stakeholders are being collected and tracked. The different opinions of both the providing as well as the receiving side of the relation are being shared via a Service Excellence portal which greatly improves and stimulates transparency and communication. Pervasive to multiple organisational layers existing issues and other potential forms of dissatisfaction are collected in a structural

Delivery (SLA)

Performance

ImprovementManagement

RelationshipStatus

Contract Compliance


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manner so to be monitored and dealt with within the “Improvement Management” section. Finally, Service Excellence will register if existing contractual agreements are being met and if these agreements are still adequate enough for the existing situation. Identified issues arising from this part of the process will again be fed into “Improvement Management” to ensure the relationship and the provided services are at an optimal level. Below figure 3 demonstrates Service Excellence’s continuous improvement cycle:

Figure 3 - Service Excellence process

Implementing Service Excellence Although figure 3 depicts a relatively simple process, realizing it is a complex endeavour. Clear agreements on roles and responsibilities for the process are needed along with a high degree of discipline in executing the process.

Service Excellence supports an organisation’s capability to deal with transparency and measurability. Service providers often tend to react defensively when their delivered services are being criticized, or to refer to another part of the organisation, whereas customers most often fail to satisfy many of the prerequisites needed for successful delivery by the service provider. Service Excellence forces an organisation to deal with critique and perceptions in a constructive manner. This requires a way of working anchored in the organisational genes, from both the side of the service provider, and from the customer. Senority’s Service Excellence approach has proven to be highly effective in real life due to the following critical success factors:

Transparency about opinions and sentiments regarding the services provided forces both the customer and the service provider to communicate about matters relevant to keep the relationship on the desired level;

Executives from both organisations are better equipped to manage the strategic relationship based on facts instead of emotions;

Because identified issues are translated in improvement actions, both parties have the guarantee something is done with remarks and comments, and avoid hiding behind contractual agreements;

Progress of the improvement actions is transparent in an insightful way for both parties;

By recording agreements in Evaluetor, these can be automatically compared with real life measurements resulting in alerts which are used to notify predefined stakeholders within the overall process at the moment certain thresholds are reached.

Evaluetor allows for both parties to view a given situation from their own preferred angle using the same information, and agree upon follow-on actions as well as monitor the progress on these.


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Evaluetor has proven to be a useful aid in realizing strategic Governance, Risk Management and Compliance programs as a worthwhile facilitating tool, helping to guide a company to Service Excellence rather than forcing it.

The Service Excellence approach allows parties to adapt and adjust both the provided service and the relationship at the moment when this has maximum effect, rather than draw negative conclusions in hindsight, something which is clearly disadvantageous for both parties.

How to start with Service Excellence Depending on organisational maturity, Service Excellence can be started with in multiple ways. For some organisations becoming open and receptive for a customer’s opinion is already a large step, whereas other organisations will already have partial solutions in place which are in urgent need of being integrated. Typical work streams in a Service Excellence programme are:

Service Excellence core team – Focus and initiate the Service Excellence initiatives and coach the internal organisation;

Communication – it is highly important to inform all involved parties in an understandable and timely fashion;

Internal Customer Satisfaction – record the perception of the providing party concerning their client’s degree of satisfaction;

Customer Interview process – introduce an interviewing technique which can create a controllable offset for a continuous improvement plan;

Contract Management – expose and make the contractual agreements accessible and relate these to Performance Indicators;

Governance – facilitate communication concerning the relationship on different layers of the organisations.

Business Benefits. Organisations which manage to increase the added value of strategic service provisioning obtain various benefits:

Durable customer relations;

Structured and documented governance process;

Reduction of integration issues;

Less risk within a contract’s scope;

Lowering the costs of “non-performance”;

Increased insight of the value chain across organisational boundaries;

Engaged and proactive service providers;

Engaged and informed employees;

Professionalizing the value chain;

Increase yield of contracted value

Trust. If parties engaged in a strategic relationship would invest as much time and effort on keeping up with the evolving relationship and provided services, as is spent on negotiating and securing the initial contract, the value of these contracts, for both parties, will increase exponentially. In a time with increased pressure on cost reduction and more added value this is an irresistible proposition.


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