eCourier, Cablecom, và Bryan hang động: cung cấp các giá trị thông qua kinh doanh thông minhKhách truy cập vào trang Web eCourier được chào đón với dòng chữ: "làm thế nào hạnh phúc là bạn? Thi eCourier hạnh phúc ngày hôm nay!" Những từ đó và trang web màu tím vui tươi đại diện cho công ty khách hàng sự hài lòng của tập trung. Và công ty đạt được rằng hạnh phúc thông qua tập trung vào hoạt động kinh doanh thông minh. Kinh doanh thông minh di chuyển ra khỏi tháp ngà của nhà phân tích chuyên ngành và được được đưa đến các đường phía trước. Trong trường hợp của eCourier, couriers có mang 2.000 gói xung quanh thành phố London mỗi ngày, hoạt động kinh doanh thông minh cho phép công ty để giữ cho thời gian thực tab trên sự hài lòng của khách hàng. "Đây là một khác biệt quan trọng trong thị trường cạnh tranh ngày chuyển phát nhanh của London, nơi khách hàng có thêm rất nhiều khả năng để có kinh doanh của họ ở nơi khác hơn là để báo cáo một vấn đề để chuyển phát nhanh hiện tại của họ," nói viên chức Giám đốc công nghệ của công ty và cofounder Jay Bregman. Chỉ là một thư mục trực tuyến, London Online, cho thấy khoảng 350 danh sách cho các dịch vụ chuyển phát nhanh. Trước khi thực hiện hoạt động kinh doanh thông minh, eCourier tìm cách để xác định nó như là một khác biệt quan trọng. Cofounders Tom Allason, tổng giám đốc của eCourier, và Bregman ditched ý tưởng điện thoại dispatchers và thay vào đó đã cho couriers của thiết bị cầm tay GPS kích hoạt để couriers có thể được theo dõi và đơn đặt hàng có thể được truyền đạt bằng điện tử. Họ cũng tập trung vào làm trực tuyến Đặt phòng dễ dàng và bổ ích, và nhiều được đầu tư vào các ứng dụng người dùng thân thiện: khách có thể theo dõi trực tuyến chính xác nơi chuyển phát nhanh của họ là, loại bỏ gói phân phối phỏng đoán. Hôm nay, 95 phần trăm giao hàng được đặt trực tuyến; Điều này có nghĩa rằng eCourier cần một nhân viên nhỏ hơn nhiều để theo dõi, theo dõi, và đặt hàng, mà lần lượt làm cho công ty hơn khả năng mở rộng. Bregman nói rằng điều này là đáng chú ý trong một thị trường nơi mà nhiều chuyển phát nhanh công ty sử dụng điện thoại dispatchers và phỏng đoán đang ở đâu gói. Đặt vé và theo dõi tự động hóa-mặc dù sáng tạo-đã không hoàn thành câu đố hạnh phúc của khách hàng. Mà không leadingedge kinh doanh thông minh, quản lý tài khoản có thể bỏ lỡ những vấn đề tương tự mà cản khác dịch vụ chuyển phát nhanh — cuối giao hàng, couriers hay cau có, hoặc thậm chí một ý đoạn đường nối lên trong việc giao hàng. "Chúng tôi chỉ có một giao hàng từ một người nào đó quyết định sử dụng một công ty phân phối khác nhau," ông Bregman. So eCourier started to use software from a company called SeeWhy to try to generate customer data more quickly. “What’s unique about SeeWhy,” says Bregman, “is its ability to report what’s happening with customers instantly.” When a new booking enters eCourier’s database, the information is duplicated and saved into a repository within SeeWhy. The software then interprets the data by comparing it with previous information and trends, and if it notices an anomaly, it takes action. If a customer typically places an eCourier order every Thursday morning between 9:30 and 10:00 and there’s been no contact during that time, eCourier’s CRM team will receive an alert shortly after 10:00 that includes the client’s history and the number of bookings it typically places in a day. Bregman says there’s a fair amount of fine-tuning to get the metrics right. For example, the company had to tweak the system to recognize expected shifts in activity so that it doesn’t send a slew of alerts once the after-Christmas drop in business occurs. Getting that perfect balance of when to send alerts and how best to optimize the system is an ongoing process, he says. The SeeWhy software is designed to establish a “normal” client booking pattern from the first use, which is deepened with each subsequent booking. A sharp drop-off in bookings, an increase in bookings, or a change in dormant account activity generates an alert that is sent to that client’s account manager; the manager uses the opportunity to problem-solve or, in the case of increased activity, upsell to overnight or international services. “These capabilities have provided a big payoff,” says Bregman. He also believes the system saves his company the expense of having to hire people to monitor “who’s happy and who’s not—we’re able to do a lot more on our customer team with a lot less.”Other approaches to judging customer dissatisfaction exist. Cablecom, a Swiss telecom company, used SPSS’s statistical software to mine customer data, primarily from trouble tickets—such as the average duration of a ticket, or how many tickets had been opened for a customer over a specific time period—to build a model that could flag when a customer was at a high risk of leaving. “But the model proved to be only about 70 percent accurate,” says Federico Cesconi, director of customer insight and retention.So Cesconi used SPSS’s Dimensions survey research software to create an online customer survey, and from that he was able to determine that customer dissatisfaction usually begins around the ninth month of service, with the bulk of the customer losses occurring between months 12 and 14. Cesconi then created another survey that he now offers to customers in the seventh month of service, which includes an area where they can type in specific complaints and problems. “Cablecom calls customers within 24 hours of completing the survey,” says Cesconi. “The two approaches together provide the best view of customers ready to bolt, and the best chance at retaining them.” In 2002, global law firm Bryan Cave faced the milliondollar question: How do you make the most money with your resources while simultaneously delivering the highest customer value? The problem was pressing. Clients of the firm, which now has 800 lawyers in 15 offices worldwide, were demanding alternatives to the traditional hourly fee structure. They wanted new models, such as fixed pricing and pricing that was adjusted during a project.But making money from these new billing strategies required the complicated balance of staffing and pricing. Projects weighted too heavily with a law partner’s time would be expensive (for the law firm) and not optimized for profit. Devoting too little of a partner’s time would leave clients feeling undervalued. Optimizing profit and perceived value had to be achieved by spreading partners’ time throughout a number of cases and balancing the remaining resources needed for a case with the less-expensive fees of associates and paralegals. “Clients are most likely to stay with you if you deliver just the right mix,” says Bryan Cave’s CIO John Alber.
The law firm’s traditional method of analyzing collected fees and profit used a spreadsheet that was complicated and took too long. “Spreadsheets provide a level of detail that can be valuable for analysts,” says Alber, “but the information in a spreadsheet can be confusing and difficult to work with.” Alber says he decided it was better to build an easy-to-understand interface using business intelligence tools. Although the company will not release specific figures, both profitability and hours leveraged—the hours worked by equity partners and all other fee earners at the firm—have increased substantially since the company implemented its first BI tool in 2004, according to Alber. The tools also allow lawyers to track budgets in real time so that they can make adjustments quickly. The BI tools even provide a diversity dashboard, which tracks the hourly mix of women and minorities working on the firm’s cases, a feature the company will license to Redwood Analytics for sale to other law firms. The firm developed this diversity tool to bring transparency to the diversity reporting process required by many clients. In other words, the tools provide Bryan Cave with a method of customizing its fees and helping clients better understand what they get for their money.
As an illustration, Alber points to the customized pricing one lawyer gave to his real estate client. “Developers think in terms of square feet,” says Alber, “and this client couldn’t understand why legal fees for a 400,000-square-foot building might be the same as for a 4,000-square-foot building, though it required the same amount of the lawyer’s time.” So the lawyer used the pricing and staffing modeling tools and historical analysis tools to determine whether it made sense for the law firm to charge clients based on the size of their projects.
He found that while there was risk of underpricing large buildings, the deal volume in small buildings offset that risk for the law firm. The result made per-square-foot pricing possible. “It may be possible that someone with enough willpower or manpower could do that using traditional analysis,” says Alber, “but this lawyer had the information right at his fingertips.” Business intelligence enables “us to be in touch with clients and shift things around in response to what customers are asking,” says Alber. Adopting new and improved project management, pricing, and customer service capabilities required planning, appropriate pacing, and user buy-in. “In today’s environment, you can’t do value innovation without being in touch with the economics of your business, without really understanding where you make money and where you don’t, and that’s what business intelligence tools do,” says Alber. “Our goal,” he says, “is to build the best longterm relationships in the world.”
Source: Adapted from Diann Daniel, “Delivering Customer Happiness Through Operational Business Intelligence,” CIO Magazine, December 6, 2007; Diann Daniel, “How a Global Law Firm Used Business Intelligence to Fix Customer Billing Woes,” CIO Magazine, January 8, 2008; and Mary Weier, “Dear Customer: Please Don’t Leave,” InformationWeek, June 18, 2007.
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. How do information technologies contribute to the business success of the companies depicted in the case? Provide an example from each company explaining how the technology implemented led to improved perf
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