It goes without saying that the more processes that are required to keep a business running effectively, the higher the importance process management should hold in your mind. Service organisations, such as repairs and maintenance contractors, are at the top of this scale with multiple, often complex, processes required to even complete a job, let alone complete it profitably.
Consider each step in your service cycle and just how many processes sit behind it, from diagnosing the job through to scheduling a resolution and monitoring progress. Even the most straight-forward step will have multiple processes sitting behind it.
The risk of neglecting processes A single ineffective process can have a detrimental impact and when you add the intricacy of service management processes, these issues can quickly escalate.
The most common reasons our customers come to Oneserve looking for help aligning and maintaining their processes are:
1. Inaccurate job diagnosis If the call centre doesn’t ask the right questions, and effectively record the answers to those questions, the knock on effects are immediate. Operatives can be sent to jobs they do not have the skills or parts to resolve and customers are disappointed at the lack of a quick resolution.
2. Inefficient schedules Juggling operative location, skills and available parts is a mammoth task, let alone the need to manage last minute schedule changes, such as customer cancellations. As a result, inefficiencies creep in and can quickly impact the bottom line.
3. Working blind If an operative attends a job but has limited information about the job requirements or history of that site, their productivity is immediately hampered. Likewise, if the office-based team cannot monitor job progress effectively they cannot respond to customer needs or invoice correctly.
4. Low first-time-fix rate The cost of returning to a job more than once eats into your profitability as well as your business reputation, but despite this, return visits are very common when ineffective processes are in play.
5. No audit trail Historical data is not only vital when reviewing performance, it is also an essential tool to prove compliance; something that is high up on the priority list for social housing organisations who are faced with increasing regulations. Having no reliable, historical data to look back at also suppresses your future planning and growth opportunities.
Despite all of the problems identified above having a significant impact on organisational performance, they are all avoidable.
Let us simplify your processes for you
At Oneserve we love processes, they are our bread and butter! We have built our software with processes at the core and make it our mission to first streamline your processes with our workflow management software, and then give you the tools and knowledge necessary to easily maintain them at optimal efficiency. Find out more, by speaking to one of our experts today.
