costsavings - Bertrand Duperrin on Diigo

May

14

2012

The future of customer support: Outsourcing is so last year

""Unsourcing", as the new trend has been dubbed, involves companies setting up online communities to enable peer-to-peer support among users. Instead of speaking with a faceless person thousands of miles away, customers' problems are answered by individuals in the same country who have bought and used the same products. This happens either on the company's own website or on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and the helpers are generally not paid anything for their efforts."

www.economist.com/...future-customer-support

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customerservice customersupport outsourcing communities peers customers costsavings gamification lithium

Gartner, the research company, estimates that using communities to solve support issues can reduce costs by up to 50%
To motivate members to participate, Lithium, a software company that provided TomTom's and Best Buy's systems, turns the whole thing into a game.
2 more annotation(s)...
- Some of the issues frustrate customers most, such as billing errors, have to be dealt with by someone with access to confidential customer data.
- Moreover, Gartner warns that unsuccessful deployments risk a tidal wave of criticism on social networks. It expects customer satisfaction to fall in 70% of organisations shifting support functions over to users in the next two years.

Apr

17

2012

Creating Value Through Business Model Innovation

"Companies often make substantial efforts to innovate their processes and products to achieve revenue growth and to maintain or improve profit margins. Innovations to improve processes and products, however, are often expensive and time-consuming, requiring a considerable upfront investment in everything from research and development to specialized resources, new plants and equipment, and even entire new business units. Yet future returns on these investments are always uncertain. Hesitant to make such big bets, more companies now are turning toward business model innovation as an alternative or complement to product or process innovation. "

sloanreview.mit.edu/...ough-business-model-innovation

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businessmodel innovation businessmodelinnovation value costsavings improvement competitiveadvantage

In the operations area, much of the innovations and cost savings that could be achieved have already been achieved. Our greatest focus is on business model innovation, which is where the greatest benefits lie. It’s not enough to make a difference on product quality or delivery readiness or production scale. It’s important to innovate in areas where our competition does not act.4
A good product that is embedded in an innovative business model, however, is less easily shunted asid
2 more annotation(s)...
- Since it is often relatively easier to undermine and erode the returns of product or process innovation, innovation at the level of the business model can sometimes translate into a sustainable performance advantag
- In other words, a business model is a bundle of specific activities — an activity system — conducted to satisfy the perceived needs of the market, along with the specification of which parties (a company or its partners) conduct which activities, and how these activities are linked to each other

Sep

30

2011

Achieving Sustained Cost Reduction

"When companies go through boom times, they quite naturally take their eyes off costs. But to maintain profits when revenue goes downhill, most CEOs call for cost cutting. The scalpel comes out, and while it's necessary, it usually comes at a huge cost to employee morale."

blogs.hbr.org/...ving_sustained_cost_reduc.html

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costs costsavings costreduction costcutting sixsigma businessprocess organization finance

Big rounds of layoffs demoralize employees, drive out critical expertise, and put the organization on a downward spiral. Going through the traumatic experience of seeing friends leave and fearing for their jobs, few remaining employees believe their hard work and strong performance will save them.
More insidiously, right sizing departmental silos usually doesn't affect the cost structure permanently. Because the underlying work hasn't gone away, the fat creeps back. The cost reductions last only until everyone goes back to their old ways in a few years.
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- Companies launch process improvement projects with hard financial targets. These projects get costs out, but a number of people have told me that when the project leaders ("Black Belts") leave and move on to their next project, the costs creep back. The quoted financial savings from Six Sigma projects, while valid, aren't having long-term effects on their cost structure.
- To perennially keep costs down companies need to change the way that work is accomplished — the business processes of the organization. By continually focusing on improving the experiences that customers have with the organization, the quality of offerings, and the time it takes to bring them to market, they will get cost effectiveness as a byproduct
- The financial spreadsheet has become the focal point of top management's attention — so much so that CEOs now view the organization almost entirely through the lens of financial (and other) quantities, nearly oblivious to the concrete operations from which the financial results emerge

Jun

13

2011

Smartphone Invasion! BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Is Changing How We Work

"But the smartphone revolution of the last three years has changed how mobile workers operate. Instead of IT departments being able to force a particular set of mobile solutions on the workforce, employees now expect to be able to use the smartphones -- and increasingly, iPads -- they bought for personal use."

www.businessinsider.com/eep-employees-connected-2011-5

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BYOD IT security devices costs costsavings mobility mobilephones appstore

Managing devices. IT departments need to make sure their management tools can do things like enforce strong passwords and wipe data from lost devices.
Access to apps. Big enterprise software vendors like SAP are betting big on mobile access, but it's a work in progress: not all important corporate apps are easily accessible from mobile devices today.
3 more annotation(s)...
- For custom corporate apps, creating a browser-based interface is the easiest solution, but with differing levels of Web standards support in each mobile browser, Web apps may not work the same way on all mobile platforms. That means corporate developers may need to create native clients for the big mobile platforms -- at least iOS and Android.
- One relatively new idea that's gaining traction is an "enterprise app store" -- an internal Web page that offers a single download point for all the corporate apps employees need, as well as a selection of popular third-party apps that have a reasonable work purpose
- Management practices. Reimbursing employees for a portion of their mobile devices and wireless plans is common practice, but companies may also want to consider reimbursing work-related app purchases.

Dec

31

2010

Collaboration

"They wanted agile and responsive ways of interacting across our worldwide business operations. Our workforce asked for tools to do their jobs better and strengthen client relationships. Their imperative: faster access to each other, quicker answers and better ways to connect with clients across 120 countries.

Our vision for Collaboration 2.0 was to create a suite of tools that would be so easily adopted that it would answer all these demands. Collaboration 2.0 outperformed our expectations. The trickle-down effects are improved team productivity, reduced travel and phone charges via a new world of virtual collaboration and strengthened client relationshi"

www.accenture.com/...Collaboration.htm

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enterprise2.0 collaboration casestudies accenture collaboration2.0 socialmedia ROI costsavings

With Accenture People (our internal Facebook-like tool) as a foundation, we quickly ramped up adoption of our new tools by linking them to employees’ profiles.
4 more annotation(s)...
- Links between Accenture and client companies that also use the same tools are rapidly growing, with obvious benefits for all.
- Increasing usage and adoption
  100,000-plus people use profile pages an average of three times a month to find experts and connect with colleagues.
  About 100,000 Accenture employees have customized their profiles (options include pictures, bios, hobbies, etc.).
  4,634 updates per month made to employee profiles.
  10,706 blogs created annually, increasing at a rate of more than 200 percent annually.
  3,336 microblog posts made per month.
  1,579 specialized groups created to date.
  7,886 items added to Accenture Media Exchange.
  110,850 desktop audio calls made per month.
  764 entries posted to our internal encyclopedia.
  14.9 million IM sessions/conversations occur per month.
  139,269 desktop sharing sessions occur per month.
  3,900 telepresence hours used per month.
  15.17 million audio/video/desktop conferencing minutes per month.
- Reaping cost savings
  More than 20 million minutes of company-standard monthly VoIP audio/video usage, resulting in avoided mobile and landline long distance/international voice costs.
  More than 5,000 annual video conferencing meetings resulting in avoided travel costs.
  Telepresence usage has slashed travel costs and the savings are exceeding our annual targets, thus far returning more than two times our monthly operating cost.
- Improving employee satisfaction
  We have achieved our highest scores to date on employee surveys for: “I can easily find information I need to do my job” and “I can easily find people with expertise/skills I need to do my job.”
  Our employees tell us Collaboration 2.0 plays a crucial part in the timely completion of projects for clients, while improving client satisfaction:

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The future of customer support: Outsourcing is so last year

Creating Value Through Business Model Innovation

Achieving Sustained Cost Reduction

Smartphone Invasion! BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Is Changing How We Work

Collaboration

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