Part 1: Do You Need a Service Parts Management Solution?

Five questions every service vice president should ask

Does your organization have an increasing number of parts, sporadic demand for said parts, customers clamoring for these parts, and all levels of your organization struggling to meet that demand?

Then the answer to the question in the title is a resounding yes.

There are three levels of employees in an organization who typically benefit from this sort of technology: service vice president, service parts planner, and field service technician.

This three-part series will look at each, their challenges, and questions each should ask before jumping into a management solution. Up first: service vice president.

As service vice president, you need a big-picture look at how the service supply chain works (or doesn’t work) and how that affects the bottom line. You need to understand the customer’s unique demands and ultimately deliver a strategy that offers parts availability and equipment uptime – when needed (and that, as you know, is never at a convenient time).

Could a Service Parts Management Solution help? Here are five questions to help you decide:

Question No. 1: What service challenges do you hope to meet?
Your customers might be unhappy, you’re buried in parts requests, and inventory is still “touched” by human hands without any sort of automation. These are typical challenges – and ones that you might familiar with.

Question No. 2: What are your critical pain points?
Pain points could include the above (that all lead to unhappy customers) as well as excess inventory, and no way to forecast what’s coming next.

Question No. 3: How do you plan to evolve your service offerings?
The key here is automation. You can evolve by tracking and automating your parts and inventory, but how?

Question No. 4: Are you looking to supplement current service contracts?
If you’re adding and managing new parts, you need to ensure you’re up to speed with existing supply chain strategies – in other words, don’t jump in with a new offering until you’ve nailed down your existing parts management.

Question No. 5. Are you losing customers due to poor service?
No? Congratulations!
Yes? You just answered your own question on the need to get your parts in place.

These five questions should help you at least start to think about whether a Service Parts Management Solution is right for you. You’re in charge in making key decisions for your company. You rely on information to make those decisions. Don’t underestimate the data you get from your parts and supply chain that can help you better navigate your course.

Our next post will look focus on service parts planners and their five key questions to determine the need for a Service Parts Management Solution.

Read Part 2: Five questions every service parts planner should ask

Read Part 3: Five questions that every field service worker should ask