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Contract Management

Playing by the Law: 1099s vs. Employees

by Chris Arlen

The beginning of 2011 finds me a little more ornery than normal. May be old age, or an unusually cold winter. Either way here’s a touchy topic and an ornery response. Suppliers [...]

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5 Hard Knock Customer-Supplier Realities

by Chris Arlen

Try this brief exercise. Think about the most important lessons you’ve learned in life, the truly important ones. –> Now pick the most important one. Your most valuable lesson learned. Got it? [...]

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The Value Picture: Surveying Both Sides

by Chris Arlen

Our Facility Service Value  survey went live on 4/1. This is an opportunity to better understand value in the minds of those who buy facility services, and compare that with those who [...]

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United reworking Customer Experience

by Chris Arlen

The airline industry is a great model for looking at big pain compressed into a short history. It provides insights into cost cutting strategies, and how they play out over time. Using [...]

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Footnotes #1 & #2

by Chris Arlen

Footnote #1: Received interesting feedback from the recent Revenue-IQ article, Zero-Based Servicing, here’s one that got me thinking: A contractor brought up the issue of how well customers understand the relationship between [...]

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A New First Consideration: An Industry’s Health

by Chris Arlen

It used to be more important to select a company to work for, rather than choosing the industry it was in. The belief was that a great company could outperform the industry [...]

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ROI: Facility Services’ Holy Grail

by Chris Arlen

Return on Investment (ROI) is the holy grail for facility services. For managers of in-house departments or contract facility services, showing an ROI would help justify your spend upstairs. Getting budget approval [...]

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Self-respect in the Service Role

by Chris Arlen

Rodney Dangerfield‘s “I don’t get no respect” setup his punchlines. The service role can say the same thing that it doesn’t get respect either, but it’s not funny. Janitors, security guards, landscapers, [...]

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Interconnected

by Chris Arlen

The world, our world, evolved a while ago into one world. It’d been happening for decades, helped by technology that enabled information to pass instantly from one side of the planet to [...]

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What’s the Right Price for Service?

by Chris Arlen

If you’re buying, or managing, a contract service, this is the big question. Yet it feels more like a riddle than a question. And like a riddle, the answer is simple and [...]

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