One of the largest suppliers of equipment and consumables for the dental industry is all pearly white smiles after deciding to swap its predominantly manual service operation for an automated one: Tesseract.

Wrights Dental supplies both NHS and private dentists with everything from syringe tips and toothbrushes to dentists’ chairs, digital imaging scanners and suction systems. Much of its business revolves around the sale and installation of equipment, but in the last five years, a shift has occurred. Mark Pitts, Technical Services Manager for Wrights, explains,

“Now, the ongoing service and maintenance side of things is just as important as sales. This is because the industry has changed. Dentists are open longer hours, which means more service and support is required. As a result, we’ve had to expand our service teams and increase their skill sets, flexibility and working hours.”

Till now, Wrights has got by with SAP for billing and invoicing, and Microsoft Outlook for diary management. “This was fine for a small service team,” says Mark. “But as soon as we began growing our teams to meet the increased demand, we realised we needed something more substantial.”

One of the big things for us was spare parts management. Tesseract gives everyone in the company full visibility on what we have and whereThe biggest problem with Wrights’ existing service management system has been its manual nature. A particular issue for Wrights was the movement of spare parts. As demand and the level of customer expectation grew, Wrights’ commitment to delivering the first-time fix became ever more important. There were instances when engineers would turn up on site without the parts they needed to complete the job, largely because tracking stock manually is arduous and prone to error.

This led Wrights to Tesseract, a comprehensive service management system from leading solutions provider Asolvi. Mark Pitts says, “We came across Tesseract on LinkedIn and it was obvious pretty quick that there were a lot of things it could do straight away. One of the big things for us was spare parts management. Tesseract gives everyone in the company full visibility on what we have and where. Everything is live on the system, including the full-service history of the site. It’ll help make sure all our engineers have the parts and information they need when they arrive, improving the likelihood of a first-time fix.”

Another big benefit for Wrights is Tesseract’s Remote Customer Access (RCA) tool. Instead of phoning a helpdesk, Wrights’ customers can report issues directly through the system.

“This saves our customers time,” says Mark. “It also stops the information from getting diluted before it gets to us. A customer can report the issue directly rather than passing it to a receptionist to make a phone call, which can lead to misinterpretation. Also, the improved accuracy of the information helps us work out which jobs are emergencies and which aren’t.”

In general, Wrights expects to offer a higher standard of customer service via the Tesseract system. The automation and optimisation of scheduling and stock management will ensure four things: right engineer, right area, right tools, right time. In addition, Tesseract will reduce the number of customer queries Wrights receives because RCA lets customers see live information about billing, outstanding jobs and the terms of their contracts.

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