- Smart companies use service‑management projects as an
opportunity to rethink their strategies
- Service management
can be used to cut costs, but companies that focus on this are
missing strategic opportunities
- Service management can be
applied to a broad range of functions, including IT, HR, customer
service, and finance
Not long ago, I was meeting with a major American bank about a
proposed service management implementation. The bank’s team told me
they could fund this project if they could eliminate 120 full‑time positions.
These conversations often involve talk of headcount reductions, so I
asked if they planned to let the affected employees go.
An executive gave me a puzzled look. "Of course not," he
said. "We're going to retrain and repurpose them. We need their
help with the company's strategic transformation."
I was glad to hear that, because it demonstrated that the bank
understood the difference between running a business and transforming
it. From my work with customers who are thinking about service
management solutions, I know that not everyone appreciates this distinction.
Service management allows
businesses to transform a broad range of business functions: IT, HR,
customer service, marketing, finance and more. Currently, most
companies use a patchwork of email, spreadsheets and legacy
applications to run these operations. Too often, the
"systems" they use are an unmanageable kludge that perplex
all but the most experienced users.
Service management replaces these antiquated software systems with
intuitive, cloud‑based collaborative workspaces that map out every
step of a process—for example, bringing on a new employee—and then
show front‑line workers exactly where they are in the process and what
remains to be done.
Some companies think service management is about reducing operating
expenses. It can drive cost savings, but this is a reactive approach
that I associate with managers who are forced to cut their budgets
just to keep the lights on.
Companies looking to grow and transform their business look at it
differently. They ask themselves questions like, "How do we
rethink our strategy to stay a step ahead of the competition? How do
we grow our revenues? How can we improve our employee and customer
experiences? How do we make sure we're getting all the benefits of
revolutionary new digital tools like AI?"
Those are just a few of the things you need to do to transform your
business. And I’ve worked with plenty of companies that are seeing
concrete business benefits from implementing service management
programs. Here are some examples: