Experience Exchange

Experience Exchanges are the core service offering of the SLN and are key for members to make the most out of each others’ expertise, experience, and insights. Members select a challenge or problem of significant interest to them and their businesses and meet to discuss it in workshops of 12-15 people -facilitated by Si2 and accompanied by Si2’s own or outside experts. Every SLN member has the opportunity to participate in 4 such Experience Exchanges per year. The sessions include presentations and Q&As, vigorous debates, and smaller group workshops where members collaborate to define a solution to a challenge or frame a best practice. Often they result in “Deep Dive Sessions” where some participants with a particular interest or a pressing problem come together separately to delve deeper and come up with actionable insights or solutions. Experience Exchanges  help members directly address both their own and their businesses’ performance and reap significant returns on their SLN investment.

Collaborative Projects

Members with a common problem or challenge work together to define or implement a solution. Collaborative Projects go significantly beyond discussions or workshops and may involve collaboration over a longer time period -facilitated, co-ordinated and managed by Si2. They may involve regular meetings and workshops (including with other members of participants’ respective companies), co-development or application of tools and methods and sharing of results. Companies collaborating on such projects are non-competing and sign confidentiality agreements. Examples of recent projects include improving performance of field and sales forces, ways to cover underserved markets, maximizing service contract penetration, monetizing and pricing remote services and enabling technology implementation. Collaborative projects are a way to achieve excellent business outcomes at a fraction of the cost of a conventional consulting project and/or at the fraction of the time and effort required to undergo it on one’s own.

Benchmarking

As service becomes more of a competitive focal point managements face pressure to up their game and benchmarking is gaining in importance. Si2 has developed a Service Excellence Framework as a tool to facilitate benchmarking processes among interested SLN members. SLN members gain access to the framework for internal benchmarking projects and can also participate in benchmarking processes organized by Si2 involving both members as well as other companies. Differences in performance and gaps to close can be identified at a sufficiently granular level. Improvement actions can be defined, quantified, costed, and prioritized.  This process is repeated at regular time intervals and is flanked by analysis and deep dives (in workshops) to explain, understand and challenge results and to update or upgrade the framework as required.

Bespoke Research

SLN Members can keep their finger on the pulse of their industry, market or customer base -whether individually or together with others- by commissioning bespoke research reports on important topics of interest, including market, customer and competitive surveys as well as industry-specific service and technology reports. In addition SLN provides free access to regular briefings, white papers and thinksheets to help guide decision making, strategy and operational readiness.

Methods and Tools

SLN Members can improve their business, operations, and project implementation through access to a growing methodological library, the outcome of many years of experience and research, including management tools, methods and guidelines specifically adapted to and tailored for service business. They include strategy, operational and sales frameworks, how-to guides, blueprints and more.

On-Demand Support and Advisory

On-Demand Advisory is a rapid support and advisory service for members of the Service Leaders Network. Based on SLN’s evolving platform it brings together those with a problem, question or challenge with those who can help answer or solve it, both Si2 experts and other members. On-Demand may also be used to help generate new ideas, validate thinking or simply resolve own capacity constraints -as an extended workbench. Virtually, rapidly and cost-effectively, wherever you are in the world, On-Demand Advisory helps ensure that you are never alone with a difficult challenge.

Insight Events

Insight Events for Members of the Service Leaders Network take place once or twice a year. They focus on important long term trends in markets, technology, and management thinking relevant to the service business. They feature presentations by recognized international experts.