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2007 Annual Conference
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Strategic Planning: Lessons from Practice Session Abstract
Lessons Learned in Driving Effective Cross-Organizational Operational Planning Gaye I. Clemson Ravi Ravishankar For many high-tech organizations customer technical support historically has been a back-office cost center, composed of loosely coupled functions - including telephone call centers, web sites, parts replacement hubs and occasional on-site visits by systems engineers or analysts. Most hum along until a moment of crisis triggers an escalation to senior management, or annual customer and partner satisfaction surveys surface the need and urgency for change. Today, customers are much more demanding. Not only do they expect standards for service-level performance such as speed, accuracy and call handling consistency, but they also are interested in remote monitoring, diagnostics, and self-healing systems. On the web, it is no longer just a matter of presenting a list of bug fixes and a process to obtain spare parts or handle returns. Customers want to participate in collaborative communities - to share experiences or delve deeply into root causes with the help of vendor experts online. In addition, as technologies change and get more complex, customers expect more flexible support offerings, tailored to meet the needs of their market, size, geography and/or industry segment. So how does a vendor respond to these challenges to ensure a high-level of customer satisfaction, while at the same time managing costs effectively? Early in the decade, Cisco Systems began a process of evolving its Technical Services towards more of a profit-and-loss center. This process began with a series of operational assessments designed to measure service profitability and demand at four levels - customer, contract, product and geography. Through this effort, Cisco came to realize that the Technical Services organization needed a strategic planning process that would not only define a vision for itself, but also specific 3-5 year goals that could be used to drive the business and ensure its contribution to the corporate bottom-line. The high-level direction setting turned out to be the easy part. The real challenge ongoing within Cisco's highly matrixed environment has been ensuring that specific operational plans contribute effectively and efficiently to the achievement of functional goals that align with and contribute to the achievement of broader organizational goals and strategies - both at the departmental and corporate levels! The purpose of this presentation is to share some of the lessons learned by Cisco Systems Technical Services organization over the last 3 years in building processes and management practices that enable the effective alignment of operational plans with both functional and corporate strategies in a complex, highly matrixed and fast changing environment. Highlights include:
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