Servest’s Peter Walsh on Managed Services
On the 16th of October 2017, Peter Walsh, Chief Financial Officer of Servest, discussed managed services as a value proposition at the UBS Transport, Logistics and Support Services Conference 2017.
“The conference consisted of a gathering of capital providers, different to the normal providers Servest are exposed to, inciting an interesting discussion around the topic” says Peter. He further comments that the strongly held view was that Servest is moving in the right direction, particularly in the area of transformation and technology and that the brand has grown and strengthened significantly.
Next is a summary of the discussion that Peter presented at the conference.
Managed services are all about logistics
The logistics of providing the right quantity of appropriately skilled and experienced people at the right place and time they are needed and billed accordingly.
The gig economy is re-enforcing this statement, where “freelancing” provides access to the exact skills you need at the exact time you need them and at the price and quality of your choosing.
However, managed services brings a lot more to the table. It creates standards that lead to accountability. It cares about the product and service that is being delivered and doesn’t merely function as a means to connect people and services. It trains, monitors and controls the quality of service that it provides. And most importantly, it deals with problems. Nobody cares when things are going right. It is when things go wrong that you need the experts to handle a situation as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Supply chains, whether moving products or services, will become glass pipelines providing the end user with much more transparency as to the cost of services, but it will be made up of highly specialised people that monitor a basic automated standardised process to intervene and resolve problems in the process, quickly and efficiently to avoid bottle necks and or excessive surcharges.
Servest has identified the main factors that determine the success of delivering a client centric managed services solution. These include human capital; the business operating model; technology and innovation; and effective partnerships.
Managing human capital
The human capital needs of non-core business activities and specific pain points that affect our customers is a time consuming practice. This results in a lack of focus on core business which can be very costly.
A business operating model consists of a combination of the following:
Freelancing
Exact sales, exactly when you choose.
Managed Services
Sustainability, connected people and services, and quality relationships.
Technology and Innovation:
Investing in innovation because we are an extension of our customers business. The acquisition of Getronics plays a major role in this.
Servest is able to capitalise on digitisation and further improve on our service offering to our customers by:
- Improving labour force productivity.
- Developing a data driven strategy through applied technology and the IOT.
- Improving reporting data gathering and analysis.
- Improving communication.
- Increasing automation.
- Developing new and innovative solutions.
Effective partnerships
- Driving the delivery of business solutions through effective partnerships.
- Sustainable solutions.
- Our success is dependent on your success.
What does success look like?
Highly skilled, experienced and motivated people that are passionate about what they do coupled with highly effective and efficient automated systems for implementation, monitoring and control.
Cost must be equal to output with no idle units and incorporating an integrated set of solutions.
When it is core it means that nobody else can do it better than you. Just because it’s not core does not mean that it’s not critical to your business.
