Summary CMS is an easy-to-use, UNIX and/or PC based intelligent assistant for multi-site service companies. CMS continuously monitors the business performance, successes, failures, efficiencies and inefficiencies, customers, profitability, service personnel and management decisions, while supporting business processes and recommending improvements and new business opportunities. Overview – Unique Challenges of Service Companies Service-oriented businesses have unique challenges: • A vast majority of the workforce is roaming-by-definition, frequently creating inefficiencies, employee control issues and significant management overhead. • The goal of any service-oriented business is to optimize its inventory while guaranteeing that parts will be available to the right serviceperson when needed.   o Inventory of CMS-targeted customers is split among many locations: each branch has its own inventory, and servicepersons have their own limited in-car inventory. o Optimizing the inventory in such scenarios is very difficult and directly affects the business’s working capital, quality of service and customer satisfaction. o Inventory is one of the major limiting factors of expanding the business to new locations. • The goal of any service-oriented business is efficient management of its service workforce.   o Serviceperson qualifications and capabilities should be kept at the right level vis-à-vis customer requirement level (which is changing over time, leading to the need for, e.g., seasonal adjustments based on dynamic demand learning). o Scheduling and availability: better optimization means lower costs and a higher number of serviced customers, yielding higher business profitability. o Geography issues: the rigid structure of the organization sometimes hinders proper geographic optimization, especially when service resources are scarce. o Management is difficult due to the dispersed nature of the workforce. • Companies that service consumers and small customers collect payments using various methods.   o Frequently the payment collector is the serviceperson him/herself. o Payments are frequently made in cash or by check. o Funds may change hands several times until deposited into the company’s bank account, e.g., serviceperson collects from the customer, hands it to the secretary at the branch, who fills in a deposit slip and sends to the bank with a messenger. o The combination of payment collection by employees, cash and checks, and multiple people handling the payment is highly error-prone. • Customer interaction is performed in ‘uncontrolled’ environments by technicians and other servicepeople:   o Monitoring the quality of service is difficult. o Customer feedback is not usually available through an independent channel • Branch manager:   o Deep know-how of the company’s procedures and legacy is required for setting up and running a new branch. o This narrows the options for new branch management and increases the company’s dependence on specific individuals as well as the cost of these individuals The decreasing costs of communication and the availability of connected handheld devices afford service companies better and tighter control over their business and employees. Value Proposition CMS is an intelligent assistant for service company management. CMS continuously monitors the business performance, successes, failures, efficiencies and inefficiencies, customers, new business opportunities, profitability, service personnel and management decisions, while supporting business processes and recommending improvements. CMS takes advantage of new technologies such as Web services, mobile Internet, OLAP and more in order to provide fully- and semi-automated solutions for the unique challenges faced by small to medium service companies. 1. Inventory The CMS inventory module is a management and part tracking module. Using this module, part types and their respective suppliers may be defined. Specific parts are tracked by location and inventory levels. Any specific part that passed through the system has its individual history log, from purchase to supply. Proactive inventory optimization and leveling is a unique CMS feature, which recommends to technicians, warehouse managers and branch management how to handle inventory. CMS suggests which parts should be moved between locations to supply expected demand and tasks, and indicates parts and amounts to be ordered to minimize working capital while maintaining the proper level of inventory to supply the demand. 2. Serviceperson management Serviceperson management is handled in three dimensions: skill management, performance and task monitoring. 3. Task monitoring Task monitoring is a continuous process carried out by CMS, in which various statistics about serviceperson performance, required skills, suitability to task, customer satisfaction, profitability and other parameters are collected. Task monitoring creates the raw information from which analysis is performed by CMS for the various serviceperson management processes. 4. Skill management A service organization should optimize its serviceperson “skill inventory” to match its customer task requirements. Moreover, in order to properly develop its business and increase its profitability, certain skills may be more lucrative than others. CMS continuously monitors and gathers statistics about customer tasks and their required skills. Over time, the CMS skill management module builds a required vs. available skill graph, which may be used for manpower training and planning. CMS detects new business opportunities. Usually, these are reflected by a shortage of certain skills. Together with skill profitability analysis, CMS is able to recommend certain types of skills whose reinforcement that will lead to higher profitability of the service organization. CMS also alerts when “skill surplus” conditions are detected, in which skill availability is far beyond what customer tasks required, leading to low average productivity and profitability. This parameter is a major factor in manpower reorganization decisions. 5. Statistics and reporting CMS has a rich reporting module, which contains predefined, customizable reports. Reports are either generated on-demand, proactively upon certain events or in a scheduled manner. Serviceperson-related reports fall into the following categories: 1. Performance monitoring: specific and consolidated serviceperson performance. 2. Suitability to task: presented as a consolidated suitability to task matrix, or as a detailed individual serviceperson analysis. 3. Profitability: calculated based on the revenue/cost of each serviceperson. Consolidated views per branch, skill type, and other parameters are available in order to provide organization-wide perspective. 4. Lost productivity: these reports contain information about under-utilized serviceperson resources. This kind of report is strongly related to the skill surplus detection mechanism, but monitors other lost productivity parameters as well. 6. Funds flow Funds may change hands several times until deposited into the company’s bank account, e.g. serviceperson collects from the customer, hands it to the secretary at the branch, who sends the deposit with a deposit slip to the bank via messenger. The CMS funds flow module tracks funds from collection to deposit slip. Along the entire process, funds are associated with specified organizations and/or employees. CMS logs fund transitions for tracking and reporting purposes. CMS provides snapshots of current and historic fund status. 7. Customer management CMS maintains a customer database and provides tools in the following categories: • Business contact management. • Order management from quote to delivery. Specifically, CMS collects information about failed-to-fulfill orders, due to lack of skills or skill shortage, timing issues, inventory issues, manpower issues, etc. • Equipment sold to customers, including warranties in effect. • Customer feedback and satisfaction. CMS provides tools to collect customer comments and to proactively approach customers for feedback. 8. Headquarters, remote offices and roaming users CMS is a multi-site solution. As such, it is aware of geographic locations of all entities: branches, customers, servicepeople, etc. The CMS geographic location module is responsible for globally optimizing serviceperson routes, transfer of inventory, transfer of funds, etc. The geographic location module is used in tandem with various other modules, such as inventory management and service task scheduling. 9. Suppliers The CMS supplier module categorizes suppliers for different inventory parts. The module is responsible for: • Importing price lists issued by suppliers. • Recommending and issuing purchase orders to maintain proper inventory levels. • Managing supplier accounts: orders, payments, debts, etc. • Warranty management for various part types. • Cost statistics and optimization. • Keeping supplier redundancy, to minimize dependency on a single source.