Business challenges:

An oilfield services firm was struggling with intractable inefficiencies in its field service ticketing process. After more than six months of failed efforts to address these inefficiencies, over 10% of its monthly revenue was stuck in limbo due to the inability to convert tickets into invoices, creating significant cash flow issues and preventing the company from closing the period-end books. Further, the client’s growth was slowing as its customers were increasingly dissatisfied by the effects these inefficiencies were having on the customers’ own operations. The client engaged Eikon-X to quickly address these challenges and to implement changes to the operating model.

Approach:

1) Triaged and current state business challenges and operating model to stop the bleeding

a. Documented current OTC operating model (people, process, data and tech gaps) from Sales, Customer Service, and Operations, through Operations Finance and Invoicing in both the US and India

b. Conducted reconciliation of tickets across multiple systems and reports, all working off different sources of the truth, to identify all missing tickets

c. Rolled up our sleeves and manually enter every missing ticket and conducted multiple quality checks to ensure all fields were complete for processing

2) Conducted root cause analysis of process breakdowns, discovering:

a. No one single source of the truth

b. Highly manual processes with redundant steps, frequent manual transcription of data across platforms, and no clear ownership or responsibility for process quality

c. Rather than invest in a CRM, MS Teams was being used as an ersatz CRM that was in no way fit for purpose

d. No metrics or comp incentives to get tickets signed

e. Little quantified data for KPIs to truly gauge performance

3. Designed and implemented the future state operating model:

a. Process changes:

i. Developed new customer segmentation strategy to reduce the number of tickets, e.g., negotiating with strategic customers to not require field ticket signatures, and identifying customers that would shift the approval process to electronic approvals

ii. Streamlined CRM workflow and execution tracking, eliminating redundant steps throughout the process and in metrics gathering

iii. Created a new process to send A/R a daily list of all tickets submitted that day for A/R to reconcile and confirm that all invoices have been issued for those tickets

b. People and KPI changes:

i. Added and hired a dedicated ticket runner role to directly interact with customers to get tickets signed, approved, and physically returned to Operations Finance with 24 hours

ii. Implemented financial incentives to drive desired behavior and focus on accelerating end-to-end cycle time

iii. Reorganized roles and responsibilities across the process to establish ownership for ticket completion, in Operations Finance to split ticket processing and CRM management, for better separation of duties and to balance workloads, and in Operations to eliminate redundant and non-value-added steps, and removed Sales from the process of getting ticket signatures, allowing them to focus on generating more revenue

c. Data and Technology changes

i. Created a single source of the truth in the CRM, eliminating redundant Excel-based reports

ii. Updated CRM with AI-driven character reader to auto-populate ticket data to CRM, timestamp of ticket delivery and return, new reason codes for disputed tickets to accelerate processing and to identify future process breakdowns, and notifications function in CRM of new sales to Operations

iii. Introduced PowerBI for KPI reporting and redeployed 50% of one FTE

iv. Proposed technology packages to replace Teams as the CRM

v. Updated payment terms in the customer master to ensure A/R aging is accurate

Results: over a ten-week project, the team:

• Created level 5 process maps and screen/keystroke instructions for each step in the end-to-end process, breaking down Level 4 activities into specific, individual tasks, showing exact steps, systems, timing, and responsibilities, crucial for training, execution, and automation, acting as the "how-to" guide (90+ pages of documentation)
• Removed 17 days from the order-to-invoice cycle time
• Eliminated nearly all the 10% revenue backlog
• Reversed the negative cash flow situation in two months
• Increased overall customer satisfaction by making it easier to work with