Responding to shrinking product-based profit margins and pressure to deliver better customer service, companies are increasingly looking for ways to automate and control the flow of service parts to and from asset operators.

While companies have traditionally put more emphasis on the planning of production parts, service-oriented companies are beginning to focus on the intelligent planning and management of spares to reduce excess costs, improve service contract compliance, increase customer loyalty, and offer a differentiated value proposition.

Best-in-class companies, on average, report first time service part fill rates of 90%, serviceable asset uptimes of 93.1%, and count 45.4% of overall profits from post-sales service. Large firms outperformed their small and mid-size counterparts in fill rates, asset uptime, and service profitability.

The top three benefits of service parts management automation realized by best-in-class firms are improved customer satisfaction/retention, reduced inventory carrying costs, and improved product uptime. Companies with a systematic approach to service parts planning and execution reported significantly differentiated performance in both average first time service part fill rates and average serviceable asset uptime than their peers.

At 96% of best-in-class companies, a director or higher level executive oversees cost-cutting and productivity targets for service parts operations. And at 37% of best-in-class companies a vice president or chief service officer is in place to oversee profit-and-loss for service parts management and labor operations. Using service parts execution/distribution technology is the biggest differentiator of best-in-class companies.