Flash Global's Chief Customer Officer Examines
Ways Flash Helps Customers Meet Service Level Agreements
PARSIPPANY, N.J., April 30,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Flash Global (Flash) is a
global service logistics provider, and their Chief Customer
Officer, Dan Silva, offers advice
for equipment manufacturers to enhance service contracts and meet
their customers' service level agreements.
A service contract, and its service level agreement (SLA),
between an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and its customer
is a promise. A promise of post-sales support for the OEM's
product. A mutually agreed upon framework to ensure that should the
customer experience unexpected downtime, a part and/or technician
will address it with a fix or a replacement per the agreed
timeframe in the SLA (i.e., 4-hour, next business day).
Too often, though, OEMs fail to meet their customer SLAs. Not
because of parts shortages or supply chain disruptions. Rather,
because the SLAs within the service contract are not adequately
tuned to reflect the realities of the OEM customer's business.
Often, the OEM is blamed for these "failures" – with
consequences that range from temporary customer dissatisfaction to,
in worst cases, loss of business and reputational damage.
How do you solve the issue of inconsistent SLA performance?
Simple. Write service contracts that contain more effective and
appropriate SLAs.
Here are 5 easy ways to do just that. And reap the benefits of
the result.
#1 Design Service Contracts with "Optionality"
Each service contract should be designed to allow your customer
the ability to choose (and pay) for their SLA options based on
their specific outage or maintenance situation. It goes without
saying that not every outage or every client in your portfolio
requires identical delivery timelines. Sometimes, an equipment
failure can be addressed on a best-efforts basis because your
customer has redundancy built into their architecture for that
specific piece of hardware. In other cases, the equipment in
question is a single, critical device so that outage needs the
fastest response time possible.
Over-servicing your customers can be costly and set ongoing
unrealistic expectations. Therefore, giving clients an array of SLA
options within their service contracts, tailored to specific outage
situations and their immediate remedy needs, not only can save you
money but give you the ability to manage your inventory to maximize
the success of your service contract performance.
Furthermore, and this is critical, these option-based SLAs in
your service contracts should be achievable on a consistent basis,
accounting for the product, region, nearest distribution center
with requisite stock, delivery window, penalty for delay and any
other mutually agreed upon parameters.
#2. Insist on Real-time Visibility
OEMs can lose up to 30% of their ROI on inventory because of
parts sitting idle, aging out, or getting "lost" in the warehouse.
Poor visibility and data inaccuracies are the root cause of this
ROI drain. They also are prime causes of service support
failures.
The solution: Adopt systems and processes that enable
'in-the-moment' inventory visibility across your entire service
supply chain. Real-time visibility is critical to meeting your
customer SLAs. Without it, your SLA performance is likely to be
sub-par.
In-the-moment inventory visibility also enables you to optimize
your total inventory investment – thereby avoiding obsolescence, or
over- or under-stock situations. For example, having access to
real-time inventory movements and consumption allows for daily or
weekly trend analysis to monitor demand patterns against
transportation spend. This comparison can help identify where you
may be overspending on delivery due to lack of inventory
availability. There is nothing more costly than having to
consistently ship inventory coast to coast or pay for costly
next-flight-out air transport due to a lack of inventory visibility
and predictive intelligence.
Visibility has a direct effect on your brand, your customers'
satisfaction and, ultimately, on your bottom line. It is a
must.
#3 Set Clear Disposition Directives
A well-thought-out and efficient returns management
authorization (RMA) process is an essential component of your SLAs
– and foundational to your bottom line. Quickly and efficiently
recovering assets from dark sites or at a customer's data center or
location allows you to assess their condition or health and decide
on proper disposition.
In contrast, coordinating and transporting supposed defective
products to a repair center, finding out after inspection that
there was 'no fault found', and needlessly absorbing the costs of
transportation, time and effort is very expensive.
Partnering with a company that can offer advanced replacement of
your material alongside defective returns management, asset
recovery, onsite assessment, repair loop management and
dispositioning services saves money, and reduces the time it takes
to get your assets back into your service parts network supporting
your service contracts.
#4 Know your Lifecycles
Fully understanding the lifecycle of your equipment and service
parts is foundational to effectively structuring your service
contracts and their SLAs. Armed with parts obsolescence and
lifecycle data, you can develop a proactive service parts supply
chain.
This means being able to use data to inform and design a service
supply chain accordingly – predicting demand and ensuring that the
appropriate parts are at the right location, ready for use when
needed. No more guessing. Guessing can result in stock outages,
delivery delays and other failures that jeopardize your SLAs.
Fully understanding equipment and parts' lifecycles results in
better service to your customers, reduced inventories, controlled
costs, and greater ROI. For your customers, it translates into
increased asset uptime. All of which helps you cement your customer
relationships – and boost profitability for both you and your
customer.
#5 Find the Right Partner
Outsourcing any element of a business can be daunting. OEMs must
trust the partners they choose, as they will be representing the
OEM's brand.
Outsourcing the service supply chain is no different. Look for a
service supply chain partner that has a proven track record of
partnering with its customers to design the optimal service network
that delivers on their service contract strategy. Therefore,
thoroughly vetting a service supply chain provider, and how its
performance in delivering on its customers' SLAs is essential.
Using SLA performance as one of your selection criteria is smart
business.
A Bottom-Line Benefit
OEMs promise their customers, within their service contract
SLAs, various post-sales support, and services. By adopting these
five practices to improve performance in meeting SLAs, OEMs are
better positioned to increase their SLA achievement rates, protect
their brand, bolster customer satisfaction and retention, eliminate
costly inventory waste, and improve the bottom line.
About Flash Global
Headquartered in New Jersey, Flash Global designs and implements
end-to-end service supply chain strategies for rapidly expanding
companies, including many of the world's top high-tech companies.
Flash creates global solutions that are locally fueled, enabling
companies to efficiently scale in countries worldwide. Companies
leverage in-region and in-country expertise throughout Flash's
worldwide infrastructure of distribution centers, a global customer
response center, and forward stocking locations to seamlessly move
products across international borders and serve their customer
base.
At Flash Global:
Kelly Gray
Marketing & Communications Lead
kgray@flashglobal.com
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/5-ways-to-improve-your-sla-performance-302130824.html
SOURCE Flash Global