From: Nick Shipton, Sales executive, Xmbrace
Sir – We have all spent time scratching our heads trying to understand how we can continue to drive efficiencies through our organisations, yet balance that need with continuing to provide our customers with the quality and levels of service they expect.
Having installed scheduling systems into around 200 customers (mainly within a specific part of the organisation), we have seen excellent improvements both in the efficiency of the department but also in the levels of service that are achievable.
It has taken many years to break down the cultural issues within organisations to be able to achieve this but scheduling systems are now seen as a de-facto technology to enable organisations to find the right balance of delivering excellent levels of service at reasonable cost.
It’s then only a small step to think about moving this success into other areas of the business and not only repeating this process, but also moving it to a completely different level.
Being able to give an organisation complete visibility of all of its assets and moving towards having a joined-up scheduling solution, allowing them to share resources across services, arranging visits so that more than one task can be carried out at once, and having the technology available to push these services out to customers across a variety of channels including self-service.
The benefits start to accrue very quickly; we can actually begin to provide these much needed services without increasing costs and deliver more within the current landscape’s restrictions.
Corporate scheduling, and not just booking, is a step we should all be thinking about, allowing us to schedule both complex tasks and simple tasks within one solution.
