Cases

Sometimes daily occupation overrules good business practice. What was once new and groundbreaking is now taken for granted. Our client, who invented state of the art technology, became a world player in his field. At a certain moment, demand for their products was growing faster than production capacity could create.

Times were changing, the competition picked up the technology and the product became a commodity. With a focus on service improvement, Kite and the management team were able to succesfully learn from customer feedback, and set up an optimal service delivery.

Map

The customer was aware of the fact that his business model was no longer sustainable. However all beliefs, control systems, plans etc. were build to support the product strategy. Through interviews and workshops, Kite assessed the current and to-be strategy and workflow. The new strategy, which was crafted around the services supporting the product, was not taking off. With a part of the management team, the actual situation was confronted with the intended strategy.

Plan

The European management (guided by the assessment) concluded that the current practice of management was not even at the “Olympic minimum” to be allowed to play in the field of services. On all systems, the management in charge was asked to create short-term action plans. These plans were brought together in a 2-year change plan dealing with all aspects of the change and taking in to account that the organization had to reach a higher ‘service maturity’.

Build

Whilst experts were redrawing the business processes and implementing them in new ICT systems, all customer-facing employees were team-by-team immersed into service orientation. The feedback from these employees was embedded in the overall plan and the management was trained and followed-up during many short clinics sessions (3 hours on the spot, in-depth and single-topic sessions). This approach avoided decoupling of the management team (and the project) from daily practice and enforced the new KPI’s and service strategy.

Land

During the last phase, the new systems became operational and the focus lay on service improvement. The matured organization was able to learn from customer feedback and to cope with good service delivery practices as were it ‘daily practice’.