All across town there are cafeterias and lunch counters that want to offer their customers good-tasting, made from scratch pizza each day, without having to make it themselves. Enter Joe. Joe is in the wholesale pizza business. He makes a few types of pizzas in bulk and delivers them each day to to these food service establishments. Each day his customers place their orders for the next day – how many pizzas of what sort and what time they want them. They can even place multiple orders for a day – maybe two deliveries during the lunch rush and and another for the mid-afternoon snack crowd.
The key to Joe’s success is to be able to deliver the pizzas they want, when they want them. His customers insist on getting hot pizza on time and are willing to pay a premium for a reliable, high-quality product. To this end Joe is putting his money where his mouth is by offering his customers a discount if he is late or delivers the wrong thing. His Service Level Agreement is more than we need to go into here but basically, if, on average, he is late by more than a few minutes or if, on average, he mis-delivers, his customers get a discount.
This is where things get interesting. How can he a) collect the data to measure against this agreement and b) report back to his customers on his performance? Here are some scenarios:
Low Tech Scenario: Joe’s delivery guys have a delivery receipt on which they record the time of delivery and have it initialed by the customer. At the end of their shift they return their receipts to Joe’s bookkeeper who keys the information into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has details about each customer and each delivery.
At the end of the month the performance metrics are calculated and the results are used as input into billing. A performance report is created out of the spreadsheet and included in each customer’s bill. The bill can be sent via snail mail or email.
Tech-Enabled Scenario: Joe’s delivery guys each carry a mobile device capable of accessing files (probably still spreadsheets) on the Internet. This is easily done with no custom software by using Google Docs, Zoho, Dropbox and the like. When they make a delivery they note the time of delivery and the name of who received it online as they complete the delivery. They still carry paper delivery receipts to get the customer’s initial but they don’t need to go back to the office right away. Joe’s bookkeeper doesn’t have to key in the data – it is already in file the delivery guy accessed via the mobile device. Performance and billing calculations are done as in the previous scenario. Because data is updated on-the-fly on the Internet, it is possible to give Joe’s customers read-only access to the files so they can see Joe’s performance whenever they want, not just at the end of the month.
High-Tech Scenario: Joe’s delivery guys have a specialized application on their mobile device. When pizzas are delivered they hit a button that logs the time of delivery. They then present the device to the customer for signature. After the customer signs on the mobile device, the data is uploaded to Joe’s system at the click of a button. Even if there is no coverage, the delivery guys can capture the delivery information and sync it up at a later time. No paper documents to keep up with, no return trips to the office, no re-keying of information.
Results: A new small business can easily manage their customers in the low-tech scenario, as long as the number of customers and deliveries stays small. Once Joe’s business starts to grow, he can move to the tech-enabled scenario without a huge investment. When he is wildly successful the investment in the high-tech solution will make him much more efficient.
These scenarios really just discuss applying technology to the “collect” portion of Joe’s need to collect, use and report on performance data for his customers. Think about how technology could be applied to the “use” (calculating performance metrics and applying them to billing rules) and “report” parts of the equation!
Would applying technology to your service level agreement process make your small business more efficient?
Patti Bunker is the president and founder of Clearly Simple Solutions, a technology advisory firm located in Atlanta, GA. She is an executive with over 25 years of technology experience in corporate America, as a consultant and in commercial software development. She understands both business and technology. Her broad background and varied experience enables her to see easily see the big picture and apply technology creatively to support business goals. Because it is about the business, not the technology. Now she applies that experience to help smaller businesses to benefit from technology. The result is Clearly Simple Solutions.
