Yeah, well… welcome to yet another brainstorm session. Fortunately, the latest scientific research did prove that brain exercises lower likelihood of sclerosis and are known to generally improve one’s life quality.

Let’s assume there exists a category of certain objects under the collective name of a “black box".
The black box consists of several dozens of elements (70 of them, to be specific) plus external parts and internal stuffing. The external parts that make the housing as such are normally plastic, while the stuffing is electronic.
Objects falling under “the black box" category are produced by ten or so major manufacturers (as well as by a couple of dozens of barely-there dead-meat-like enterprises).
Black boxes by all Makers are similar in terms of functionality, while they consist of different – and rarely compatible – elements.
Each Maker at any given time produces many models (from just a few and up to several hundred) which, as a rule, also differ considerably when it comes to their blocks and components.

The black boxes are prone to failures.
Your task is to fix them.
Owing to manufacturers’ joint efforts, as a serviceman you may face up to 20,000 totally diverse models brought in for repair (let us remember here that every black box is made of up to 70 elements, any of which could turn out faulty).

Each Box-Maker surely believes that his priority task is to create as many obstacles as possible to interfere with your repairing his junk. Reasons of this class hatred shall be spotlighted further on (though that wouldn’t make them any more reasonable).

Therefore, when challenged with the task of a black box repair, the only option for you to get the vital info on all components’ suites of each of 20,000 models is to take the bleeding thing completely apart.
However, while the external and housing parts are more or less obvious – with any differences between them being purely geometrical, — any electronic elements issues are bound to be much more fun.
Even when you can identify a defective electronic element, it is not always (and in most cases it is not ever!) that you can simply replace it: let’s say because this element or block is currently out of stock (for a variety of reasons, ranging from this element being some particular Box-Vendor’s limited edition and to slovenliness on the part of this element’s manufacturers and distributors). Coincidentally, almost at all times there are numerous counterparts and compatibles ready available. Naturally, nobody will warrant serviceability of the allegedly independent compatible part for any particular black box model, hence you may only check and verify it (serviceability, that is!) by practical trial. As it happens, some compatible elements prove workable, and some other don’t.

Your quest could be facilitated a lot should you have access to the Makers’ electronic circuit diagrams (these ones do exist, you know), but since the Box-Vendors enjoy nothing more than doing mega-dirt on you, you are very unlikely to ever get hold of these diagrams – possibly you may, even if by ways of competitive intelligence only, but then that would be rather irregular and often too late.
In other words, all you have at your disposal when running an industrial-scale black boxes repair service is a rule of thumb.

Lyrical Digression by Ultima Consulting.
Surely a reader asks oneself: and why on earth should the vendors throw spanner into your works, making it hard for you to try and repair their hurry-scurry modelled junk? Common sense kind of suggests that it ought to be the other way around – that is, that the vendors are supposed to go out of their way to ensure the box products are repaired as fast and in as box-user-friendly manner as possible.
Well, dead right!
However, it was a certain parrot Kesha (of the same-name fun toon) who was distinguished “by wit and mental agility", while the Box-Makers’ collective mind clearly denies any common sense values.
The point is that each Box-Vendor has at his disposal a network of authorized service centres which employ highly qualified professionals specializing in repair of this particular Box-Vendor’s junk boxes, the whole structure ensuring fast and efficient repair service aimed at promoting this particular Box-Vendor’s brand image…
At least that’s what an average Box-Vendor believes it to be.
In hard reality, however, the so called “authorized service centres’ networks" are nothing but shady businesses intended for siphoning off maintenance budget (i.e. partitioning the funds allocated by the Box-Vendors for settling the service centres’ warranty repairs expenses). The centres are normally run by artsy-fartsy characters whose basic skills are limited to establishing corruption networks with Box-Vendor’s Head Office (or local Branch Office) Representatives so that to ensure the authorized service dealership franchise goes to the right company and to the mutual benefit of all parties involved.
And since the “authorized service centre" business model  will generate profit not on the basis of commercial contact with end customer, but solely thanks to wining and dining a certain Mr. Chang Lee Ding Bang from Taiwan Headquarters (or a happy-go-lucky Mike Shore fellow from London office) in Moscow signature restaurants and posh strip-clubs… well, you may easily imagine then such “authorized centre" typical service quality when it comes to working with a regular consumer. The personnel qualifications in “the authorized centres" are usually way beyond expectations, too: as long as a chap manages to hold tight on a screwdriver and doesn’t drool all over, he is declared a qualified service engineer. Give away, as they say, and sin no more.
This is a no-brainer (though obviously not for those with no brains, like your average Box-Vendor), that so-called “authorized service centres" are nowhere near promoting the brand credibility in the eye of a customer who had to face the reality of warranty servicing. BTW, my dear readers, I suggest that you’d better stay away from those “authorized service providers", too.
Still, a consumer has no other option when it comes to free warranty repairs.
But as soon as the black box original warranty period is over, then finally proper free market capitalism with normal competition steps in, thus leaving not a tiniest chance to the “authorized service centre" cons. The picture as such is rather similar to that of the automotive services market.

All right, so here you are – a market-oriented company that provides post-warranty repair services.
By the sweat of your brow do earn you every red cent of yours, fighting for each customer in this severe competition business and doing your best to improve your services quality.

Back to our sheep – that is, to twenty thousand box models with dozens of blocks in each and a rule of thumb as the only available method to identify these blocks compatibility.
There’s no way you can keep in stock all potentially demanded parts, as the product range is overwhelmingly
huge and actual demand is totally unpredictable.
Market availability of individual elements changes from day to day, with actual compatibility between them being determined using a rule of thumb only (therefore a service engineer is to take chances when placing spare parts purchase orders – and surely he can’t get lucky every time).
Thus eventually each repair case turns into a work of art, where .AA) the result entirely depends on competence of a particular service engineer plus that of purchase officers and suppliers; and BB) the repair deadlines get considerably extended due to time wasted for underproductive tests and trials as well as repeated spare parts ordering/delivery run-arounds.

A work of fine art may be great when created in single quantities but one can hardly run a day-to-day
industrial-scale business this way.

It is time now to put aside the “black-box" generalization and to define that repair object of ours as a laptop PC, with our narrative continued through the example of a certain post-warranty service provider called "Ruki Iz Plech" ("Handy Men").

Deus ex machina: that is where a good genius represented by Ultimate IEM/in-store comes on stage.
In a while with the help of e-Service creative chaos is finally acquiring features of consistency.

All the possible faults in the system are rigidly standardized: filling in a job ticket is to a large extent reduced to checking boxes.
When the service engineer gets a faulty laptop, the system suggests the most likely problems on the basis of statistics of past repairs, hardware profile and type of alleged failure (a practice similar to computer-aided diagnosis in medicine). After the engineer identifies the faulty unit, e-Service automatically proposes a list of compatible (as determined by analysis of successful replacements in this particular model or line of notebooks) spare parts that are in stock. If the requested spare parts are not in stock, the system automatically generates a request to the supplier.

Thus, there is an automatically updated knowledge base in the background. The value of the proposed solutions continuously increases with time and the accumulation of statistics. The knowledge base does not make mistakes, pull sick, does not require a salary and it is available 24×7×365.
Requirements to guru engineers’ professional intuition are substantially simplified - and in the near future, in the process of the accumulation of statistics in Ultimate e-Service, there would be no need for them at all.

The work of supply agents is reduced to monitoring the execution of orders and to making sales at a fixed price - (instead of long technical brainstorming sessions on the compatibility of the equipment sold) - that is, to what they should normally do.
90% of our customers had to wait for more than two days to get the results of the diagnostics and the repair price. After the implementation of the new solution the waiting time shortened to within four hours. 

That’s how the right application of Ultimate e-Service/in-store downgrades art to an everyday craft.
To everyone’s joy and mutual benefit, we must admit.

CRMA Drop of Bile from Ultima Consulting

Above we took a pot shot at the wits of notebook PC vendors. Here are some more slides.
Take the breadth of e.g. Acer’s model range.
Mamma mia! Dozens of models and hundreds of sub-varieties! That’s imposing!
To a layperson, all this motley diversity might seem to indicate their marketing unit’s powerful work: just see what they’ve invented - to suit all target groups, every niche and taste! Those hundreds of items, a terrible pain in the ass for the industry, logistics, vendors and service centres, were really worth the hassle, weren’t they?
And now look at Apple: three or four models in each diagonal – and, unlike Acer’s, they are clearly different from one another.
Finally, it is a good idea to compare Apple’s and Acer’s performance, e.g. their profit and capitalization.
The true price of this Gypsy mottle will instantly become as clear as noonday.
Generally, Asians are long known for being genetically insensitive to marketing rules (compare Japanese automotive design) or even to the need for such. God deprived them, as the phrase goes. Well, then hire Americans or Europeans to your marketing units, as easy as that! And continue making your deep-fryer-style notebook PCs in the meanwhile, you are so good at this.
But they won’t; till their last breath, they will continue their saturation bombing of the market with innumerable dumped fair-to-middling models (that get even cheaper almost every day), in their naïve belief that one out of a hundred will certainly become a bestseller. In so doing, they work at a threepence margin and squander lots of money on this great-looking monkey business, while confusing consumers and creating lots of trouble for their distribution partners downstream. 


CRMAt a shop:
— Assistant: Which Acer – Model 12345 or 54321?
— Customer: I ‘ll have 12345
— Assistant: Is it Model 12345-A or 12345-B??
— Customer: What’s the difference? The price seems the same.
— Assistant(winging): Well, in the Model 12345-A the Jabberwock is
gimbling in the wabe, and in 12345-B the vorpal blade is snicker-snacking and
mimsy are the borogoves, you know.
— Customer(puzzled): Wow! What is better?
— Assistant (cursing Acer engineers out): well ... they are both very
good. Well, if you ask my personal opinion, I prefer the 12345-A.
— Customer: Ok, I ll have it
— Assistant: there are several modifications of Acer 12345-A: Acer
12345-A-1/1-1,  Acer 12345-A-1/1-2, Acer 12345-A-1/1-3...
— Customer: Dash it all! I’ll have the MacBook Air.


...And you keep talking about their wits.CRM