Customer Support Automation Spares Inventory Management

Case Study Snapshot

Company profile

The customer is one of the leading players in the power back-up industry in India and offers top-of-the-line products based on quality, reliability and safety. They have created new benchmarks for the industry and upgraded standards for the entire sector. It is the only power back-up company in the country whose R&D department is recognized by the Government of India. Through its consistent focus on technological innovation, this ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified Company is today accepted as the market leader in its industry

Business situation

The client's current after-sales service operation in India is spread across 30 Service Centers over the country serviced by close to 450 Service Engineers. The Service operations are broadly classified into the retail service catering to individual customers and institutional service catering to the corporate customers. These Service Centers are distributed across small and large towns.

The company faced a number of challenges in managing and monitoring of the effectiveness of the Service and Support operations as a whole. Specific pain points for the client included:

• Performance management and tracking of Service quality and timeliness of service at Service Center and Service Engineer levels.
• Inefficient stock and inventory management at Service Centers and lack of accurate information on current stock levels at a centralized levels.
• Improper approval processes for warranty and non-warranty replacement of spares leading to loss of revenue from spares sales.
• Lack of information and controls leading to leakages in revenue.
• Ineffective management of scrap / repair /defective spares and sale of scrap.

The objectives of the company that were to be achieved through implementing Salesforce Customer support product included the following:

• Service Delivery management for customer support operations including call center automation.
• Stock and Inventory tracking for spares at all Service Centers which effected efficient inventory management
• Warranty and AMC management system for spares and product replacement tracking and loss prevention.
• Performance monitoring of all Service Centers and Service Engineers
• Detailed level tracking of Enterprise customers
• Tracking information of frequently failing spares and feeding back information to product teams.
• Implementing approval processes to improve controls on material movement and spares replacement.
• Revenue management of the customer servicing operations

Technical Overview

The customer used Oracle Apps ERP to track and manage its internal operations in manufacturing, order to cash cycles and financial areas. Though they were well supported by their ERP in few areas, there was a strong need to automate the Customer Support process along with the management of Revenue and Servicing Spares Inventory. Lister team stepped in to provide its expertise and consulting experience on Salesforce.com to develop a platform which could best utilize customer's existing investment in IT and ensure that the new environment is seamlessly integrated while meeting the requirements.

Solution

• Provided a seamlessly integrated IT environment to enhance their Customer Serving and Spares & Revenue Management.
• Increased efficiency by streamlining and automating their Customer Support operations through CTI Integration
• Reduced Spares Inventory costs by providing ready information and better tracking of data
• Improved employee productivity by automating the capture and reporting of information related to customer interactions, through telephone / emails / internet / in-person interactions
• Highly informed and accurate decision making through reports and dashboards

Benefits

IT Benefits:

Salesforce.com and Oracle ERP was integrated to provide valuable real-time operating information on.

• Transfer of spares inventory from ERP to Service Centers and Service Engineers existing in Salesforce.com.
• Tracking all Revenue generated from Support activities including AMC and Sales of Scrap.
• Similarly all Expenses on Support activities were also captured in CRM and shared with ERP, through the integration process.
• CTI Integration of their existing telephony System - Panasonic TD 200 with the Salesforce.com helped the client achieve complete automation of Customer Support.
• Capturing web based support queries and email based customer requests helped the client improve service to customers.

Business Benefits:

• The new system completed the automation of the Services and Support operations and also facilitated all stake holders with accurate and relevant information.
• The Service Centers were able to better manage their Service Engineers and provide them timely inventory which improved customer service.
• Service Engineers were provided more relevant and timely data with regards to Support Requests and past customer information along with AMC status, which helped them, improve their productivity and response time.
• The system has helped the management with improved operational efficiency and cost control, End-to-end visibility of Service Center and Service Engineer performance and saving costs while improving service levels.

About Lister Technologies

Lister Technologies is a business and technology solutions provider offering a complete range of software solutions to varied industry verticals in the USA, Europe and Australia. Its development capabilities include custom application programming, database design, client server, and internet software application development.

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