With less than 100 days to go to the opening of London 2012, many of our customers have been asking whether it’s going to pose us (and by association them) with any problems?

As you might have expected we were already on the case and had taken a detailed look at how we maintain service levels not only during London 2012 itself, but also during the Paralympic Games, the Torch Relay, the Training Camps and of course the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations at the beginning of next month.

There are of course two distinct aspects to maintaining our high standards of customer service – first, maintaining the integrity of our parts supply chain and secondly the physical arrival of our engineers on site.

Taking these in order:

• all our parts are delivered to the outskirts of London to designated ‘engineer depots’ so we do not anticipate any material difficulties. Even so, our technical courier service will be prioritising London deliveries during this summer of celebration and athletic achievement;
• and as regards getting to you or your customers’ site we have a full listing of all affected areas, routes and the timings of Olympic events so that we can readily communicate any transport challenges we may face and inform customers of any operational changes including the use of alternative routes as appropriate. In addition and in response to heightened security all Qcom engineers will be carrying ID at all times.

If the Olympics is all about ‘higher, faster, stronger’ we certainly don’t plan for our service levels to go in the opposite direction!

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom

It has been a busy year at Qcom. As the latest edition of The Source makes clear we have just completed a major overhaul of our processes, procedures and people. This work has included the completion of a £100,000 system upgrade and the consequent roll out of some great new customer features – new alerts, portal and so forth. All this allied with efficiency improvements and the resulting enhanced operational workflow has facilitated a vastly improved Outsourcing operation to the benefit of all parties.

However, there’s no room for resting on any laurels and if anything our thirst for continuous improvement has grown. To this end we are very keen to hear your views on how we are doing and more importantly how you feel we can improve further. We know that our ability to operate efficiently and continually improve our business processes is critical to maintaining our competitive edge and key to ensuring that outsourcing your after-sales support enhances your own business.

As Managing Director, I also have a real passion for innovation – both in the services we offer and in the way we do business as a group of people. Above all though we welcome your feedback, as what the customer thinks is really the only benchmark of what we do. Please do take 15 minutes of your time to complete our latest customer survey or pick up the phone and tell me your thoughts and suggestions directly.

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom

Not a day goes by at the moment it seems without commentary and conjection about the benefits or otherwise of outsourcing as a business tool in the next decade.  The latest being a response from the chair of the NOA to governments pondering on the matter. http://tinyurl.com/622gadd

For our part, our specific technical support and services outsourcing for manufacturers continues to offer value and opportunity for business improvement for many companies. Our recently published white paper helps companies at different stages of their product life cycle understand how outsourcing can help them, whether they are launching new products or aiming to protect market share, with an enhancement to service delivery in maturing or consolidating markets.

At Qcom we have always tried to listen to the needs of our customers, and our consultancy led approach, has meant continued development of our range of services to meet changing customer expectations. In particular we have expanded our telephone technical support service dealing with not only warranty repairs administration but also, increasingly across the European market, support desk calls for users.

We have also made improvements to our customer communication strategy. Outsoucing in the ‘teens’ requires ever closer links between outsourcer and outsourcee and Qcom’s latest process enhancements aim to build a closer collaboration with our partners.

For me closer links with both our customers and suppliers is a key aspect of modern business as we develop to meet the fresh challenges of what continues to be a difficult start to the decade.

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom

A recent report in the FT states that smartphone sales are up 48%.

The sharp rise in smartphone sales surely reflects the fact that we are becoming increasingly dependent on servicing our ‘life on the move’.  The Economist earlier this year highlighted that “mobile-broadband services [will] overtake fixed-line ones in a few years’ time.” (Economist, January 30th-February 5th 2010).

We’re very pleased to be support channel partners within this fast-moving market segment for a number of clients. 

For example, this week saw the addition of MobileDemand warranty support across the UK and Ireland for the MobileDemand xTablet T7000 and xTablet T8700 Rugged Mini Tablet PCs, to our portfolio of mobile devices from Motorola, Bluebird, Janam, and Trimble/TDS, and various mobile printers such as Zebra and Datamax-O’Neil, among others.

Mobile Demand’s President, Matt Miller, explains: “We were looking for a partner that could provide reliable services and support to our growing number of multi-national customers deploying MobileDemand xTablets throughout Europe.

“We selected QCom because they have the same high standards for customer service and support as MobileDemand. They also have the resources to scale to meet our needs as we continue to expand sales in the European arena.”

Elsewhere, we are also seeing high levels of uptake for our recently re-launched commissioning service for partners. By using our engineers to configure and deploy units, resellers are not tying up expensive developers on repetitive and mundane roll-out tasks, nor do they have to invest substantially in their own pool of installers to cater for (what are clearly) the irregular peak of such projects.  We can be brought on board to provide flexible resource as required, often accelerating the speed of both configuration and roll-out. Commissioning services is another example of how the benefits of our utility-based pricing model can be realised by resellers.

We continue to seek fresh vendors to add to our portfolio and would welcome hearing from our clients concerning other devices they would like supported.

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom

One measure of increased business confidence came recently when the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) released its quarterly Outsourcing Confidence Index.

The results showed that more than half of end-users are more confident with using outsourcing to support their businesses than they were in 2009.

Thanks to increasing confidence, 60% of respondents said they planned to outsource services that had not been previously outsourced during 2010, with 56% of planning to increase the scope of pre-existing contracts.

The Index also showed an increasing focus by end-users on costs, which is hardly a big surprise but the concern is clearly that this should not lead to higher-volume, low cost contracts over shorter timeframes.

Our view is that the decision to outsource is a strategic one for our clients.  We work with them from the outset to ensure that the partnership delivers the outcomes that they are looking for. Typically, this focuses on helping manufacturers, resellers and distributors improve their service delivery, enhance their profitability, and if required, it can support business development and expansion.

Our relationship as an outsourcer goes way beyond being placed in a ‘supplier box’ with clients, or indeed just white labelling our services.  We often collaborate with clients when they are pitching for new business, helping to formulate strategy around areas such as customer service.

Achieving this requires the relationship to go far beyond that of supplier-client, but instead brings best of both companies as an outsourcing partnership to bear in order to deliver a superior outcome.  And that, surely, will be a partnership that ultimately serves the customer better. 

Neil Anderson
MD, Qcom