BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - July 9, 2008) - In an extremely competitive service landscape,
Best-in-Class service firms are turning to schedule, dispatch and mobile
solutions to: increase the efficiency of their service organizations,
deliver better, faster and more accurate service, and to efficiently
contain service-related costs. As such these firms are actively taking
steps to map processes related to the lifecycle of incoming service work
orders and implement optimization tools to boost performance, as indicated
in "A Guide to Service Delivery Excellence: Service Scheduling and
Routing," published by Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS).
Aberdeen's benchmark survey of over 160 companies identified the need for
improved workforce utilization as a key driver for service and
manufacturing firms to consider work order and scheduling optimization
tools. In an attempt to improve utilization, leading firms were two times
as likely as all others to utilize optimized scheduling tools and nearly
three times as likely to provide their field technicians with mobile tools
to access work order or customer/asset related information.
"Over forty percent of firms indicate that their customer expectations
regarding speed of service have gone up in the last year and an increasing
number of firms are looking to shorten their service response windows,"
said Sumair Dutta, Research Analyst at Aberdeen. "However, Best-in-Class
service delivery isn't governed purely by the ability to provide a two-hour
response window. It indicates the need to map processes related to the
lifecycle of the entire service work order, to have visibility into
resources to execute on established processes, and to equip all
stakeholders with the tools necessary to adequately set and meet customer
service expectations."
In improving work order management, leading firms were reducing their
reliance on paper, developing flexible criteria and rules for their
scheduling solutions, and actively leveraging mobile service solutions to
provide field workers with adequate access to work order and customer/asset
specific information. The study also found increased customer involvement
in the service delivery process through access to self-service scenarios or
via customer visibility into technician or vehicle location and status. As
a result leading firms were experiencing:
-- A 9% decrease in mean time to repair over the last year
-- A 17% increase in technician productivity over the last year, compared
to an 8% increase for all other firms
-- An 8% improvement in meeting promised service response times over the
last year
-- A 71% level of workforce utilization, compared to a 50% performance
for all other firms
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the
following underwriters: Metrix, ServicePower, and I.B.I.S., Inc. To obtain
a complimentary copy of the report, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4897.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928
Telephone: (617)854-5200
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Zack Westenhoefer
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(617) 854-5354
zachary.westenhoefer@aberdeen.com