After Market Service Supply Chain

Current State:

For decades, companies have struggled with the apparently competing forces for an excellent customer service and best-in-class operational cost. Supply Chain no more ends at delivering quality product to end-customer/consumer. In recent past, companies realized that they can run their service business as a profit center and make both their customers and shareholders happy at the same time. In this era of business, not just product rather Supply Chain competes. The advantages of accomplishing excellence in service supply chain management includes increased customer satisfaction, customer retention, increase in product sales, and service contract agreements revenue with higher margins.

The management of an enterprise’s service is moving from a low-value, back-office inventory management function to a critical business requirement for customer retention and overall cost management. A continual focus on optimal customer service and the evolution of collaborative commerce (c-commerce) is also driving new trends in aftermarket process integration and trading-partner collaboration. Leading enterprises are integrating service parts planning and deployment processes into customer service offerings, as well as integrating service parts requirements with new production requirements to reduce inventories and improve customer response.

Controlling Factors:

When we talk about After Market Service Supply Chain, there comes few additional concepts of Good Inventory, Good-New Inventory, Refurbished Inventory, Bad Inventory, Return Wash Rates, Repair Wash Rates, Reverse flow of Material, Fill Rate, Service Level Contracts, etc. Industry is now demanding 98-99% Service Level across different sectors. ERP’s are also synchronized with such modules like Oracle SPP (Service Parts Planning), SPF (Service Parts Forecasting), Spares Management because this gives the overall picture of the complete Supply Chain to achieve/meet Target Service Levels.

As businesses began offering solutions instead of products, it became evident that selling spare parts and after sales services – conducting repairs, installing upgrades, reconditioning equipment, carrying out inspections and day-to-day maintenance, offering technical support – could be a bountiful source of revenues and profits as well.

Also, during market slow-down or recessions, industry has witnessed optimum revenue generation from After Market Service Supply Chain relative to normal product sale. Industries such as white goods, automobiles, industrial machinery or information technology, companies have sold so many units over the years that their aftermarkets have become exponentially larger than the original equipment businesses. Customers never expect any product to be perfect or will work perfectly for the whole life, but they do expect manufacturers to fix things quickly whenever they break down.

Why Trinamix?

Finally, when businesses provide aftermarket support, they gain a deep understanding of customers’ choice, expectation from a product and plans – knowledge that rivals can’t easily acquire. That provides companies with an unlikely, but sustainable, competitive advantage. It isn’t surprising, though, that companies find it tough to compete in the aftermarket. Delivering after-sales services is much more complex than manufacturing products. While delivering services, business have to deploy parts, people, and equipment at more locations than they do to make products. An after-sales network has to support all the goods that a company has sold in the past along with those it currently makes.

Delivering Business Impact:

Trinamix has talented consultants who are well-versed with the After-Market Service Supply Chain and who have expertise to implement Oracle Service Parts Planning (SPP), Oracle Spares Management and Oracle Complex Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (CMRO) which can help enhance any business by increasing the bottom-line (profitability) of organization and at the same time, increase customer Service Level. With ‘Trinamix Service Lifecycle 360’, supply chain managers, commodity managers and procurement teams can make sure spare parts availability based on customer SLAs across the global supply chain. Trinamix helps optimize the global service parts supply chain for entire product lifecycle (NPI, Sustaining and End of Life stage). With master data management expertise, it connects data across enterprise. System-agnostic data modeling framework enables enterprises to seamlessly connect data across service parts, contracts, install base, field engineer and diagnostic procedures. We unlock data across functional and regional silos to enable powerful analytics that deliver actionable business insights.