Integrators regularly ask Navigate for advice about how to grow their services revenue.
It often goes something like this, “How do we start this, because right now we have a break fix business? We get calls from our clients and we are very reactive and we take care of them, but we really want to build that business to be a higher percentage of our overall revenue. How do we do that?”
Steve Riley, Senior Consultant at Navigate Management Consulting, outlines the three steps integrators should take for building a service department from the ground up.
“Really, there are three steps, and there is not one correct answer,” says Riley. “It depends on how much of an investment you want to make and how quickly you want your efforts to come to fruition.”
First, you need to determine your SLAs. An SLA is a Service Level Agreement, it’s essentially your performance criteria. This is where you outline your response time, your resolution time, your onsite time, et cetera, from whenever you get the initial call or ticket, and you can guarantee that you’ll be able to perform in a given timeframe.
Second, you need to productize the offering. You need to create something that is understood by the entire team, the sales team, so that they can properly sell it, and properly describe what it is. A big part of this is pricing. You need to figure out how to price your service offering in a way that is easy to quote and include on proposals.
Third, you need to perform, you need to deliver, and you need to have the horses in place to do it.
Watch the video for the full discussion:
3 Steps for Building a Service Department from the Ground Up
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