Astea International, Inc.

Industry Traction of Strategic Service Management

Adoption of Strategies and Technologies by Industry Sector

Mark W. Vigoroso, Vice President, Service Chain Management Research, Aberdeen Group

Aftermarket service is rapidly climbing to the top of corporate agendas in multiple industries. Product-centric OEMs have historically viewed post-sales service as an inevitable cost of doing business, but leading companies looking for profit margin, revenue growth, and competitive advantage are now crafting new business models and deploying technology solutions to more strategically leverage their service operations.

But some industries have been more aggressive than others in embracing these new business models and enabling technologies. A particular industry's propensity to effectively adopt and deploy strategic service management processes and technologies depends on such factors as:

• Complexity of deployed assets;
• Frequency of new product introductions;
• Mission criticality of deployed assets to the asset operator;
• Size and composition of field service force;
• Structure of service parts inventory holdings; and
• Type of service work orders (i.e. break/fix, preventative maintenance, reconfiguration)