Service centers
Application maintenance, managed services, support: maintenance contracts with service levels, volumes, requests that arrive without warning, and a margin decided by each month's productivity.
Operational structuring
Structuring a service center, a customer service or a services team
Roles, processes, indicators, rituals: we lay the foundations that are missing when the business has grown faster than the organization. So that margin stops leaking away between what is sold, what is produced and what is invoiced.
For which organizations
Three organizations that live on commitments kept.
What they have in common: they sell human time committed to a client, internal or external, and their profitability depends on how that time is steered.
Customer services
The first point of contact, and often the first to absorb the flaws of the rest of the organization. Queues, complaints that keep coming back, information that does not flow between customer service and production.
Professional services teams
Integration, deployment, consulting, engineering: fixed-price or time-and-materials projects, a workload plan that makes the margin, consultants who must be staffed at the right time.
Where margin is lost
Between the sale and the cash, five handovers.
Each handover is a place where information is lost. A services company is not profitable because it sells well: it is profitable because none of these handovers leaks.
- Sell. What is promised to the client, and what is actually written in the contract. The gap between the two becomes unbilled work.
- Staff. The right people, at the right time, without overloading the same ones. An overloaded team produces less and leaves sooner.
- Produce. What is delivered, at what cost, with how much remaining to do. A drift seen in the first month can be corrected; seen at closing, it has to be paid for.
- Invoice. What is produced and what is invoiced: verbal requests that are never written down never will be.
- Collect. What is invoiced and what is paid. An outstanding balance that nobody follows ends up in dispute.
What we structure
Simple foundations, which hold without us.
Roles
Who decides, who does, who is consulted, who is informed. A single, identifiable owner for each commitment, rather than a list of assignees. No absence should block a client.
Processes
From the client's request to the invoice, a written, short path known to all. Approval circuits and decision criteria, rather than habits.
Indicators
Few, and action-oriented: margin per contract, remaining work, workload against capacity, commitments kept. Minimalist reporting gives time back to productive work.
The information system
An audit that starts from the business: which tool holds the reference for which data, what is entered twice, what is entered nowhere. Rationalize before adding software.
In the field
What we have structured, in situations of falling profitability.
2
service centers turned around
2
customer services restructured
1
professional services team restructured
1
software vendor turned around
These interventions are described, without client names, on our results page. We held these posts before supporting others in them: operations management of IT services companies, project management, technical management, information systems management.
The tool we drew from it
The field experience of these structuring projects, turned into a tool: pylotik
A commitment made verbally then forgotten, minutes never approved, an overrun discovered too late, an outstanding balance nobody follows, an overloaded team nobody has heard: this is field experience turned into a tool.
Maintenance contracts
Period, volume in days, catalog, committee and indicators tracked with the client.
Financial tracking
Ordered, produced, invoiced, paid, and the margin at completion, fixed-price or time and materials.
Team steering
Staffing, workload plan with overload and underload alerts, time entry.
The overview is on our software page, and the case of services companies on pylotik.com: project management software for IT services companies.
Frequently asked questions
What we are asked about structuring.
What is operational structuring?
It is putting in place the roles, processes, indicators and rituals that allow an organization to keep its commitments without depending on a few people. It becomes necessary when the business has grown faster than the organization.
How can we improve the profitability of a service center?
By looking at where margin is lost: in the gap between what is sold and what is written in the contract, in staffing, in production drift seen too late, in requests never invoiced and in outstanding balances not followed. Each of these handovers can be structured; none is fixed by a single indicator.
Do we need to change software to get structured?
Not first. Software amplifies what it finds, order and disorder alike. We structure roles and rituals, then choose the tool that carries them. That is the purpose of the information system audit.
Do you work in internal services, such as an information systems department?
Yes. An information systems department or an internal support service has its clients, its commitments and its service levels: the same principles apply.
Has your business grown faster than your organization?
30 minutes to talk it over with someone who has already structured service centers.
Free strategy interview