As important as your own personal cholesterol score and blood pressure measurements are to your future potential health, a solution’s Serviceability Index is equally as critical to its Service Delivery organization’s future viability.  EMC’s Serviceability Scorecard, and Serviceability Index, are changing the way that EMC Global Services measures, prioritizes, and communicates critical Designed for Serviceability requirements using a Six Sigma approach.  It also provides EMC Global Services a standard measurement system to analyze the effect of specific serviceability requirements on Service Delivery effectiveness, to further influence new product serviceability improvements, and maximize Total Customer Experience (TCE)

Managing to ensure solution delivery success - Total
Customer Experience (TCE)

Consistently exceeding Customer Expectations for product excellence and services delivery is at the core of EMC’s Total Customer Experience (TCE) initiative.  TCE is EMC’s company-wide initiative established by EMC’s Chairman and CEO  Joe Tucci, and led by Executive Vice President Frank Hauck, to consistently exceed customers’ expectations, utilizing Six Sigma methodologies to drive continuous improvement. This global effort is designed to ensure that EMC’s product development, manufacturing, sales, service delivery, and partner organizations continue to keep pace with customer’s information
management requirements.

Using the simple analogy of TCE as a three legged stool comprised of Customer Expectations, Product Excellence, and Services Delivery, it’s easy to illustrate that if any one of the legs falls short of the other, then the ability to maintain equilibrium will be difficult at best.   The task of balancing product elements (such as new features, quality and serviceability), with services delivery effectiveness, and customer expectations, while still meeting time to market objectives and profitability goals, is however a difficult and unending exercise which is necessary to maintain market success. 

For years, corporate management teams and cross-functional corporate product management groups have consistently found themselves confronted with a very common question throughout the technology industry:  “Is it the product, our services delivery organization, or customer expectations that are limiting our success in the marketplace?”The answer ultimately arrived at almost invariably is
“All of the above”.

Using Six Sigma methods to consistently measure and monitor the many variables that make up the three principal solution ingredients, has given EMC a competitive tool to reduce cost, improve CSAT, and
increase revenue.

Translating Serviceability and TCE focus to an
Engineering dialect

As EMC’s product portfolio has exploded in size, application diversity, and target market, due to mergers, acquisitions, and OEM partnerships, EMC’s Global Services organization has been required to maintain its world class reputation in superior service delivery historically achieved within its core storage platform business.   Additionally, as offering diversity and complexity has expanded, so too have the number of product development teams that EMC Global Services has been required to interface with to ensure product serviceability.  Each development team having a disparate set of development priorities and understanding of the impact of product serviceability on service delivery effectiveness, and moreover the success of their product in the marketplace, has created considerable challenges.   Since 2003 though, EMC has embraced Six Sigma to utilize a quantitative approach to drive variability out of its products and processes.  The Serviceability Scorecard provides one quantitative tool being used to measure a consistent set of product attributes critical to effective and profitable service delivery using a common vernacular.   

Quantifying product serviceability- The Serviceability Scorecard

As challenging as it has always been in any service delivery organization to identify and maintain sources for the consistent reporting of Customer Satisfaction, and Service Delivery Operational metrics, the task of applying a quantitative methodology to a qualitative and somewhat subjective product attribute like serviceability is equally demanding.  Measuring serviceability first required that a consistent definition of what constitutes serviceability across multiple product solutions be defined.

Originally a term coined by IBM™ as a component of Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability or (RAS), “serviceability” is defined as the ease with which corrective maintenance or preventative maintenance can be performed on a system. This definition focuses primarily on the areas of product maintainability and supportability. However these two areas narrow the scope of serviceability to preventive or break-fix services, and fail to include other service delivery aspects that contribute to Total Customer Experience (TCE). 

Building on the above definition, EMC’s definition of product serviceability has also come to also include the ease with which all services including pre-sales solution architecture, implementation, post-implementation professional services, and managed services can be performed. Additionally, service avoidance capacity, or the ability to prevent a service action from ever taking place has been integrated by including usability, reliability, vulnerability, and interoperability, as key service impact areas.

EMC’s complete set of 11 quality areas that comprise EMC’s broader definition of solution serviceability are as follows:

• Solution Design
• Deployability
• Upgradeability
• Usability
• Reliability
• Supportability
• Maintainability
• Vulnerability
• Interoperability
• Portability
• Documentation (Availability and Applicability)

Working from this collection of which qualitative areas comprise product serviceability, a listing of serviceability standards have been established within each of the areas.  The standards state the high level serviceability design objective to be achieved. Each of these serviceability standards, are then broken into more granular attributes for assessment.  The final results are captured during Global Services product serviceability testing throughout the product lifecycle, and tabulated utilizing the Serviceability Scorecard.

EMC’s Serviceability Scorecard measures product serviceability in 11 serviceability areas, across 85 serviceability standards, and over 300 attributes. It provides a consistent model to measure solution serviceability by scoring product serviceability standards compliance by serviceability area, and then aggregating each area score into an aggregate serviceability index score. Scorecard standards and attributes are regularly reviewed for applicability, and then modified, augmented, or deleted under strict revision control. This process facilitates a consistent measurement baseline using a standard index across products and releases, while also providing the flexibility to incorporate services and development recognized best practices.

Assessing Customer Satisfaction – Capturing the “Voice
of the Customer”

EMC’s Six Sigma program also relies heavily on it’s utilization of  “Voice of the Customer” data to achieve its high degree of effectiveness.  Product specific surveys, and incident transactional surveys are used along with anecdotal data, customer forums, and customer facing field resource input to capture this information. 

EMC utilizes both product specific and services transactional surveys conducted by an independent firm to capture customer feedback. For a subset of all service transactions performed, EMC collects customer feedback through web-based or telephone surveys.  During these surveys customers are asked to report satisfaction for services delivery, product usability, documentation, and performance to expectations.  Customer’s perception of the solution’s value relative to total cost of ownership, and effectiveness within core use-cases is also measured. This data is compiled monthly and cross-referenced with other products for trend analysis.  In addition to the survey data; feedback from critical account escalations, customer councils, input from field sales and support resources, product enhancement requests, and information collected during management site visits are also used to measure customer expectations, and solution delivery satisfaction.

Measuring service operational effectiveness- Services Operational Metrics

In addition to measuring customer satisfaction with product and service delivery, and product serviceability, the measurement of services operational effectiveness is also essential.  CRM, case management, defect tracking systems, e-service activity reporting, field resource time tracking, training consumption data, and maintenance revenue reporting are all useful sources for harvesting these service operational metrics. Service performance indicators like the ones below are compiled monthly for key EMC product offerings using a consistent format, and then cross-functionally reviewed monthly by product development and services management in a Global Services Operational Metrics
product dashboard.

• Incoming case volumes
• Response Times
• Product install-base and new version adoption rates
• Service Activity Rate (SAR - case volume normalized over time and install base)
• Service activity time logged per case
• Case time to closure
• Case closure rates
• Open case backlog status and open case aging
• Case Severity and Escalation %
• Maintenance penetration rate and services revenue totals
• Product Total Lifecycle Cost (TLC)

Analyzing the Results

Once collected, analysis of the monthly operational metrics and CSAT data for current performance versus previous trend, and isolation of any variances is then performed.  Global Services Operational Metrics data serves two purposes within EMC’s Six Sigma approach to optimizing service delivery, first it provides a measurement of the impact of current product serviceability to facilitate the identification of future improvement opportunities and potential cost savings, and second it provides a regular assessment of service delivery effectiveness to allow for rapid process, resource, or skills adjustment.

Once a variation or improvement opportunity is identified, more extensive Root Cause Analysis (RCA – a.k.a.“product deep dives”) is performed to identify  specific variations in the underlying data.  During this RCA activity, gaps identified during prior completion of the Serviceability Scorecard are correlated with service delivery operational data to determine their impact on service effectiveness.  Additionally, activity time logged, escalation percentages, spares expense, and sales opportunity cost metrics are used to measure the impact of product serviceability or support processes in financial terms.  Finally, using Six Sigma statistical analysis tools, these service delivery variances are then prioritized by impact for short term remediation or longer term product or process improvements.

The benefits of maintaining a healthy serviceability index

As EMC has expanded its use of the Serviceability Scorecard, it has not only been able to measure the Serviceability of its own product lines, but it has also been able to measure the Serviceability of potential OEM partner solutions and acquisition targets prior to making investment decisions.  Additionally, Designed for Serviceability improvements are now making their way into EMC’s product releases reducing service costs, and improving customer satisfaction.

Increasing EMC’s focus on Designed for Serviceability requirements through the use of the Serviceability Scorecard and Six Sigma has not only improved EMC Global Services profitability, but it has also reduced EMC customer expenses through reductions in service incidents and their impact, thus lowering Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and improving CSAT, which  maximizes the Total Customer Experience (TCE).

About  the Author…

John Dodd has had over 15 years of experience in Service delivery management in Information Technology. He currently manages the Service Readiness and Global Services Product Management organizations for EMC Global Services, for  Resource Management and Storage Platform Software and has been with EMC for over 5 years.  John has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration from Florida State University, and is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE).  He also recently participated in the initial offering of the Wharton /SSPA Technology Support Services Management Program, and was a recent speaker at the SSPA Best Practices Conference in San Diego.