Price determination and controls
Investigation and analysis of service needs from customers from a world-wide leading automobile and system subcontractor.
The customer
Our customer, Hella KgaA Hueck & Co., is one of the world-wide leading automobile and system subcontractors and in international competition it ranks under the top 3. With the corporate headquarters in Germany, it is among the 100 largest industry corporations in Germany. More than 24,000 employees work worldwide with annual sales of nearly 3.5 billion Euros. Among their customers are all leading automobile and system producers in the original equipment business and the automobile pat trade in the aftermarket.
The project: Service controlling sharpening of the service portfolio for higher customer benefits and more efficiency
Hella KGaA Hueck & Co. is currently expanding their services for their customers. For this, a corporate-wide policy program was started – with the goal of leadership in the areas of service, quality and costs. Hella belongs to the pioneers for product accompanying services in the market of automobile and system suppliers. Together with Hella, we have recognized the importance of service provision for the downstream stages of commerce, been able t document it and have realised international service optimization and the construction of a service controlling. The objective here was to improve the operative excellence in regards to effectiveness and efficiency of all service measures for market processing.
“We already do a lot of things in the service segment and we also do a lot of things very well. However, we want fact-oriented recommendations about what our customers really want in order to reduce costs on the one hand, and on the other, also to be able to more efficiently use investments.”
(original statement from a manager at the beginning of the project)
The task
At Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., throughout the years a service portfolio has grown historically worldwide, which has bundled a lot of budgets and resources. This makes a worldwide analysis of the service needs of the customer necessary as the basis for the optimization of the service portfolio. The conduction of a service strategy and the development of a manageable service management conception through the organization of the customer were based on this for sustainable control of the service portfolio.
2hm & Associates has illustrated the process of analysis, optimization and implementation in one uniform concept:
- inspection of the benefits and the necessity of all historically grown service measures from the view of the customer and company
- definition of a service vision and conduction of the service strategy
- prioritization of individual services on the basis of the current usage and the service costs
- optimization of the service portfolio while guaranteeing customer proximity and effectiveness and efficiency of the service measures
- preparation of a uniform service management conception with integrative regulation and controlling functions on the basis of indicators developed based on facts
- development of a roll out conception to support the implementation of the newly created service measures.
The realization
Initially, we surveyed the usage expectations of the customers through an internationally applied conjoint measurement study. With this basis, a new service vision could be defined and a new service strategy conducted. Through this, central concentrations for concrete service measures were already made apparent, which were then considered in the new service strategy process.
In the next step, we evaluated current and modified service measures from international employee teams. This occurred with the help of a scoring model developed by 2hm & Associates, along with the consideration of the customer preferences surveyed through the conjoint measurement. Additionally, the current service usage and the current service cost levels were included in the analysis. In the end, for the realization of the prioritized and strategy conforming service measures, multiple partial projects were defined and implemented for market cultivation. For a long lasting management of the new service portfolio under the premises of effectiveness and efficiency, a controlling conception based on an indicator system was built parallel. This guarantees the constant monitoring of the market success of the service measures, along with their optimization in time for our clients.
Since a reconstruction and contextual change of service activities created different requirements for the organization – particularly in regards to resources, investments and interactions – all measures in the redefined partial projects were illustrated in a strategy roadmap. The strategy roadmap groups all service measures in an optimized and clear structure and integrates important milestones as interim goals until the year 2012. On this basis, the strategy roadmap guarantees a smooth roll out period. Additionally, the implementation and interaction guidelines for all those involved in the project has priceless benefits:
“The value of the Strategy-Roadmap for me was the final assignment of the milestones up to 2012. Before the Startegy-Roadmap I had only a vague idea of an implementation process in my mind.”
(Original statement from a partial project leader in the strategy roadmap process)
The result
The implementation of the optimized measures led to considerable financial quick wins. Through the optimization of service portfolios, an important market success was achieved for Hella, whereby the implemented measures formed the basis for a service leadership in the automobile and system subcontractor industry. Furthermore, the implementation of a regulation instrument for the long-term control of the service measures led to stronger, planning-oriented work in the company.
“The project results you delivered has put us in the position to set up our measures in a customer-oriented manner for market cultivation, where we realize savings, but also invest more efficiently altogether.”
(Original statement from the project sponsor in terms of the final presentation)
Your contact:
Leif Steinbrinker
leif.steinbrinker@2hm.com