Improving Customer Change Order Management – Creating More Value Through Customer Centricity and Professional Change Order Management : Case: ABB Oy Induction machines

Abstract

This thesis’ subject is customer change order management. The main goal of the thesis is to find points of concerns in ABB Oy Induction Machines’ customer change order management and briefly provide solution proposals for those. ABB has researched their customer change order management numerous times, but usually they have done it by reviewing internal operations. In this thesis the aim is to provide improvement proposals from customers point of view. This thesis aims to provide better insight of customer centric way of managing change requests and change orders. First the thesis provides the basis for the research by means of literature review.

The first chapter of this thesis introduces the problem at hand for the reader and states the research question of the thesis. The research question of this thesis was “What measures can be taken at ABB Oy Induction Machines to improve their customer change order management to support their customers better and to create more value for them?”. The second main chapter handles project management and change orders as part of project management. The third main chapter handles the theory and provides background from earlier research done in the field of customer centricity and customer relationship management. The research methodology of this thesis is mixed method approach.

After the literature review part is handled, the next chapter evaluates the case company’s current state. This evaluation is done by quantitative data mining and assessment of change orders and change order management processes. Personnel from three different customer companies were interviewed for this master’s thesis. The interviews were done in thematic open discussion. The fifth chapter describes the current state of the case company. In the chapter six solution results of the study are presented. Three main improvement categories were found during the thesis. Those were strengthening the commercial aspects of change orders, focusing on securing the scope of delivery, and transparency in communication. Finally, the last chapter of this thesis concludes the whole thesis and gives proposals for further research.