What challenge(s) do our clients face?
Service providers must be open and agile to serve their customer needs in order to fight off competition in this fast-moving market. Against a backdrop of enabling and disruptive technology, the business strategy must be constantly revised to maintain and grow market share.
Whilst the service provider market is incredibly broad and diverse, technology has acted as disruptive driver that brings more data availability, real time information, direct communication channels between customer and company as well as changes to value chain links. In this scenario, some trends can be observed:
- New competitors: technology has broken physical barriers and brought scale, reducing entry obstacles.
- Customer-centricity and expanded value proposition: the process and the mindset of companies is becoming more consumer-centric with personalized offers and specific service journeys where touchpoints between the internal processes and the customers are more bespoke.
- Necessity to be agile: the service market is dynamic, and changes are happening faster. In order to differentiate from competitors, companies need quick responses to market demands, new solutions, and an agile test-and-adjust methodology within teams and processes.
In this context, some common necessities and business questions must be answered by service companies in order to drive the best strategy:
- The market and my positioning: How do market movements affect my strategy? How is technology impacting services? Where should I employ tailor-made vs scaled solutions? How to bring differentiation to customers? How to ensure client loyalty if entry barriers are low and new competitors appear all the time?
- Value proposition and product strategy: How to bring value to the customers? Which touchpoints in the service journey are vital for me to address? How do I improve user experiences and NPS? How to retain my clients? How to decrease default rate? How to improve customer lifetime value?
- Management and structure: Which structure should be created to respond quickly to market demands? How to work in an agile manner? How to improve speed of reaction to market demands?
- Roadmap and transformation: How to ensure transformation and deliver better results and ways of working? How to drive a cultural transformation in the company?
How do we help?
We help organizations keep up with the rapid pace of change, supporting the delivery of new service offerings or company-wide transformations which ensure proximity and value to the consumer.
Integration has served more than 120 Service Providers, both B2B and B2C; and ranging from mobility services, through recruitment, law, real estate, health insurance and gyms, among others. We support in both strategy definition and implementation.
Our deep experience in Go-to-Market design and omnichannel strategies allows us to build together with our clients, compelling service offerings which can penetrate and reach their target audience effectively and at a profitable margin. Often using the latest technologies and automation we are also able to optimize service level in their delivery. Simultaneously our differential in change management and organizational transformation ensures the changes are embedded and driven by the people of your organization.
Typically, we support our clients in the following areas:
- Strategic planning: Defining clear projects to achieve an established strategy, aligned with stakeholders and with governance and with measurable KPIs.
- Digital transformation: Defining the innovation strategy, investments and how to expand the value proposition considering the market trends and competition. This may involve tackling digitization, automation, customer journey mapping or control tower design for example.
- Omnichannel strategy: Defining how to integrate different channels into one interface between the consumer and the company.
- Governance and routines: Establishing an efficient governance for the different agents and processes taking into consideration the necessity of agile solutions in response to market demands.
- Cultural transformation: Defining and embedding the appropriate culture to support the business strategy through a set of actions which changes behavior through diagnosis, leadership preparation, management systems and change management.
- Structure revision: Determining how many resources are necessary and their organizational structure given the current business volume and the growth foreseen for the future.
Commonly applied services
Clients
We have worked with clients in different categories, geographies and positions along the value chain:
In this video, a range of clients from the Service sector talk about their positive experience working with Integration.
SUCCESS STORIES
CHALLENGE
A security and cleaning services provider with more than 34 thousand employees was facing the need to improve the operational team’s governance and control over their processes. In parallel, the company wanted to do so in an automated manner. Nevertheless, the processes, the company culture and the internal organization was influencing the performance of the operational team and back-office areas, marked by:
- No vision of the process as a whole
- Mismatched SLAs with the client needs
- Unclear roles and responsibilities
- Unstandardized KPI’s and meetings between teams
- A lot of tactical activities performed by the managers and no time for strategic thinking
- Separated departments
- Hierarchy to solve problems.
APPROACH
Integration supported the client by creating and implementing a new governance for the operational area, with controls and KPI’s to be tracked using online tools such as visits, satisfaction level, default rate and costs control per client. We designed a Control Tower to monitor the processes with clear measures to define the area’s role and evaluate their performance.
RESULT
The new governance drove discipline and clarity of the financial and operational results in each account, improving their profitability and management. The use of online tools brought usability in the execution of routines, providing higher controls of client visits, reducing costs with extra resources per client and improving the quality of the service measured through a satisfaction score. A full vision of the process ensuring a client-centric mindset was delivered by the Control Tower.
CHALLENGE
A Brazilian full-service law office faced a change in the market. It was inserted in an ecosystem where technology brought innovation in terms of Artificial Intelligence and document automatization, while competition continued to emerge with new startups entering in the market, offering a new value proposition to the customers. There were also opportunities to improve the client’s internal governance and management, in terms of cost management, results tracking and decision-making rituals.
APPROACH
Integration interviewed more than 80 partners of the company and coordinated a workshop with all of them in order to define the strategy for the next years, taking decisions about the company positioning in issues such as Technology, Results Management, Expansion (focusing on the country and/or expanding abroad) and other opportunities.
The project designed a Strategic Roadmap taking leadership’s view consideration and defining the pillars to achieve the strategy, projects to ensure success in each pillar and KPI’s to evaluate each project.
RESULT
The project established a 3-year strategy, fully aligned between the partners as well as clear projects complete with indicators, deadlines and project leads.
CHALLENGE
One of the largest tourism operators in Latin America had a strong brick-and-mortar retail arm but a weaker digital presence. Hard-pressed by born-digital competitors, margins were dropping year after year and there was a lack of consensus on the strategic north for the company.
APPROACH
Working with the leadership we outlined how to move towards a customer centric agenda, identifying its core customers and defining the value proposition for each customer segment. By segmenting the tourism market, we were able to identify customers that had good fit with their value proposition and that represented a relevant portion of the market.
We then evaluated the key aspects that had to be redesigned inside the company´s channels, products and touchpoints to enhance customer experience and transform the company´s culture.
RESULT
As a result, we designed a complete roadmap for the company’s digital transformation encompassing 4 main streams:
- Protection of the core business – we looked for synergies in the operational model that would protect commercial margins and adjusted the business model/GTM accordingly.
- Value proposition reset – we reformulated the entire value proposition for the selected customer segments along their journey, placing the customer’s experience at the forefront;
- Enablers – we redesigned the organizational structure and branding according to the necessary change and new capabilities required;
- Digital disruption – here we explored with the client levers to instill digital innovation, investigating startup ecosystems, investment in venture capital, among other alternatives.
TALK TO US
André Valente
André is a director at Integration and leader within the Marketing & Sales practice. Working across sectors, he is a senior specialist advising especially on the revision of Go-to-Market Models, Market Entry Strategy to new markets, Strategy and Innovation Processes and Marketing and Trade Processes. Before Integration, André worked as a Business Developer at Sandvik, [...]
Augusto Ribeiro
Augusto Ribeiro is a Managing Partner at Integration and has been working since 2003 in the Marketing & Sales practice. Augusto built a solid international experience, leading and implementing strategic Marketing & Sales projects in industries ranging from Consumer Goods through Construction & Property Development to the Financial Industry, especially in the Private Equity sector.
Carlos Lima
Carlos is the President of Integration and a Founding Partner. Carlos has worked with leading international companies across the globe as a consultant for the last 30 years and has developed a particular specialization in Marketing and Sales. He is considered an expert in the Consumer Goods sector and on the topics of Commercial and [...]
Daniel Rodrigues
Daniel is a Director within our Marketing & Sales practice and leader of Integration’s TechLab. Over the course of over 10 years with Integration, Daniel has helped clients from diverse industries and countries with digital and commercial challenges ranging from Go-to-Market Strategy to Commercial Due Diligence. Through his extensive business experience Daniel ensures that our [...]
Gilberto Sarian
Gilberto is a founding Partner at Integration. Over the course of more than 25 years he has led the development of Integration`s award-winning Supply Chain practice, advising international clients across Latin America, Europe and USA. With a background in Engineering, he frequently participates in events and lectures across the world, to discuss latest trends and [...]
João Vilela
Since 2009 João Paulo has been working in our Supply Chain practice. During this extensive period, João Paulo has led projects across numerous continents and in several sectors and areas of Supply Chain. He has worked on challenges such as Logistics Network Design, Transport Efficiency, S&OP, Order-to-cash, Stock Management and Supply Modelling.
Lucas Tavolaro
Lucas joined Integration in 2011 and found his home in our Finance & Management practice. He has supported our clients in the creation Strategic Roadmaps, M&A synergy evaluations, Go-to-Market strategies, Cost Efficiency and Strategic Sourcing projects. His experience includes sectors such as Consumer Goods, Construction & Property Development, Education, Private Equity, Oil & Gas, and [...]
Luis C Vidal
Luis is a Managing Partner at Integration where, since 1999, he has been working in the Supply Chain practice. During this period, he has led projects in the most diverse sectors and in themes such as Logistic Optimizations, Process Efficiency, Planning (S&OP), Industrial Strategy, Go-to-Market Strategy and Distribution Structure. His international experience encompasses the opening [...]
Rodrigo Weiler
Rodrigo is a Director at Integration and has been working for over 20 years in our Implementation practice. He is an authority in the implementation of transformational projects with great complexity and need for Change Management. His experience is diverse across industries, ranging from implementation in retail (e.g. of Go-to-Market Models, Category Management or Commercial [...]
Roger Saltiel
Roger is a partner at Integration and has been working since 2002 in the Marketing & Sales practice. Considered an authority in the Indirect Channel and Partner Relationship Management (PRM), he is a member of the Associação Brasileira de Atacadistas e Distribuidores (ABAD) [Brazilian Association of Wholesalers and Distributors], working in the leadership of the [...]
