OPTing In – The OnProcess Technology Blog

We’ve all been reading and thinking about how businesses react when the economy retracts as it has recently. Layoffs, cutbacks and retrenchment are the order of the day.  Why? Because someone says “we have to cut expenses”; so someone else looks at a line list of expenses, and starts thinking about what they can cut without obviously jeopardizing performance. And so, often, people start losing jobs. Or needed upgrades or improvements don’t get done.

Yet, for companies with service inventories, warranty programs and premise-based equipment, there are ways to save a lot more, and not sacrifice jobs. But these savings are not immediately apparent, so they are often overlooked.

In our ongoing work with some of the world’s leading companies in telecom equipment & infrastructure, networking hardware, data storage, Cable TV and medical devices (amongst others), we are often able to increase the speed and completeness with which they are able to reclaim returned equipment; sometimes as much as ten or more percentage points.

You may think, “Oh, ten percent improvement…that’s nice”, and move on.

But wait.

In many of these cases, each single percentage point of improvement can drive well over a million dollars of ongoing savings. And that’s month after month, year after year.

Now, in that context, a ten percent improvement starts to look pretty impressive, doesn’t it?

–sk