The ball’s in the back of the net, but let’s keep scoring ANYWAY!

How Fujitsu found new ways to deliver better value and service

Excerpt from Strategy for Business, issue 16. - Autumn 2004

Fujitsu try harder

Relationships were good between Fujitsu and the Dixon Group (PC World, The Link, Dixons, Currys) and the break/fix contract had worked well for years.

Then they received an unusual request regarding their legacy EPOS systems. “Could we show you a way to cut your support costs while also increasing value?” asked Fujitsu. And Dixons said “Show us what you mean and we’ll think about it”.

So Fujitsu deployed their secret weapon – ‘Sense and Respond®’ – a unique approach to IT services that eliminates unproductive work and cuts costs by fixing problems permanently.

Intervention Fujitsu’s Sense

Fujitsu’s Sense and Respond Intervention team moved in with permission to investigate anything, anywhere, so long as it was connected with the EPOS estate.

They started by analysing help desk calls for the last eight months, while also asking Dixons managers what they would like to change about the IT side of their stores.

They also spoke to store staff and help desk operators, to get a feel for the sharp end and find out where the niggles were.

The revelation was this: happy customers are the most important issue for Dixons store staff and being able to give good customer service is rated two and a half times higher than having more money!

“What’s the biggest barrier to doing your job and creating happy customers?” asked the Fujitsu team. The reply was “IT failure”.

Insights

Clearly, although targets were being met, they were the wrong ones, and a lot more could be done to help staff give the service they believed in. As it happened, there was a lot of new information to work with.

For example: “Where’s the engineer I asked for?” accounted for a large number of help desk calls, from people who had already reported a fault. Solution: give engineers mobile PDAs so that they can be contacted direct and change the culture so that stores are given a firm ETA.

For example: If an engineer is already on site and another fault is reported to him, he no longer says “I’m sorry, it will have to go through the channels and join the queue to become a separate callout”. Instead, he says “And is there anything else you’d like me to fix while I’m here?”

Improvement

Sense and Respond® is Fujitsu's unique approach to IT Services that finds the causes of cost within a business and then minimises, or even eliminates them. Problems are fixed permanently, value-adding activity is increased and your people become more productive. The price? Less that doing IT the old way.

That’s Sense and Respond all over

The effect of Sense and Respond at Dixons, though exciting, is not unusual. Nor is it rocket-science. Whenever this unique process and mindset are employed, benefits are felt.

It’s been used on the DTI IT support contract for about five years now, and the happy endings would fill a book.

For example: Prior to Fujitsu’s involvement, it used to take up to three days to reset a user password. This shocking waste of productive time came about because password resets were escalated from the help desk to a technical department with system access privileges, and they were always busy. The Sense and Respond answer was to train front line help desk operators to reset passwords (giving them the software and access they needed). Now, forgetting your password costs you 45 seconds, not 72 hours.

bmi are another enthusiastic Sense and Respond user.

For example: Since Fujitsu took over the bmi IT help desk, we have reduced call volume by 40% and slashed the time to fix by 70%. More important, though, we have cut check-in delays, increased passenger satisfaction and minimised the chance of missed connections. Those last three came free.

Would Sense and Respond make sense for you?

If you have a real need to cut IT support costs, Sense and Respond will do that for you – though in ways you probably wouldn’t expect.

Or if you want your people to make better use of IT, Sense and Respond will also achieve this.

Whatever your focus – on IT costs or business efficiency, Sense and Respond will be a revelation.

For more, call Ask Fujitsu on +44 (0) 870 242 7998.