We all know that logistics isn’t a piece of cake, but at the Field Service Europe conference this week in Amsterdam, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

TNT Express, one of the world’s largest express delivery companies, caused quite a stir when they unveiled a three tier wedding cake, during their presentation in the general session hall yesterday. In a presentation this afternoon, entitled “A Partnered Approach to Defining and Delivering Value in the Service Supply Chain,” the room stared in rapture of the gorgeous buttery goodness that stood before them. Using the metaphor to describe the challenges service execs face day after day in the space, he looked at the logistics space as a baking endeavor that he had to get right.

“The field service experience cake, it’s the one cake we want to get right,” said Hugo Koppelaars, Sales Director of TNT Germany. “Like a wedding cake, we want to make sure that everyone in attendance is happy with the final result. We need to think about who’s eating this cake, how good it tastes, the overall end experience after the cake is finished.”

The same can be true, Koppelaars said, for the end experience that your customer has in field service.

The bottom tier, the customer experience, which is measured through new parts planning, purchasing, centralized inventory holding, oem warranties, and the like.

The middle tier is the logistics piece, which is shown through lots of movement, replenishment, inventory mobility, returns management. Our kpis is the delivery performance.

“Most of us,”  Koppelaars said to the sea of executives in the audience, “Are in the front end piece, the customer preventative piece. This has to taste the best, if this part is performing well, the rest will follow suit.”

Reposted with permission from The Field Service Blog. Read more here.

ABOUT Deanna Gillen

Deanna is a seasoned media strategist, brand-builder and content leader. She currently leads content development for Worldwide Business Research (WBR), a large-scale conference company and one of the world's leading providers of strategic business intelligence. She is responsible for relationships with Fortune 500 companies and C-level executives.