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Manitowoc Foodservice UK have been relying on the service management software supplied by Tesseract for 20 years. Now they have decided to further automate their systems with one of Tesseract’s most useful tools – Diary Assist.

With customers like Debenhams, Wetherspoons and the Ministry of Defence, Manitowoc are the world leaders in manufacturing, supplying and maintaining cutting edge kitchen equipment, as well as designing and refitting kitchens.

From ovens, grills, fryers and steamers, to ice machines, refrigerators and beer coolers, Manitowoc produce equipment for numerous renowned and award-winning catering industry brands. These include Garland, Frymaster, Convotherm and Merrychef – the world’s number one designer and supplier of pioneering accelerated cooking systems.

More than 80,000 Merrychef ovens are in use around the world. Frymaster, another of Manitowoc’s leading brands, is a familiar name in catering establishments worldwide, with sales and service capabilities in over 100 countries. Manitowoc employ a consistent commitment to research and development and innovation-led strategies and boast highly advanced manufacturing facilities.

 

With keen eyes for revolutionary technology and efficiency and smooth operation in even the busiest kitchens, Manitowoc are not only concerned with food facilities, but with food itself. Their global team of development chefs can help venues compile creative, innovative menus to suit their customer base and achieve greater success, drawing on their immeasurable experience of the catering industry.

It’s this desire to make their customers’ establishments better and more efficient that sets Manitowoc apart from other food service companies.

No room for error

Manitowoc’s high status and market-leading position mean they cannot afford to let any of their customers down. This is why, 20 years ago, they turned to Tesseract for help in the revolution and modernisation of their service management.

For all of their kitchen installations, Manitowoc have a committed team of engineers who carry out planned and reactive maintenance. Manitowoc use Tesseract to log calls from customers when a piece of equipment incurs a fault, as well as assigning jobs to the engineers, invoicing, parts ordering and reporting. Service requests are transmitted to engineers’ tablet devices using Tesseract’s Remote Engineer Access technology.

Engineers close down jobs on their tablets, at which point the information is transmitted back to Manitowoc instantaneously. Finally, all of Manitowoc’s service activities can be monitored using Tesseract’s fully customisable Crystal Reports, which allow Manitowoc to design and schedule any report they want at any time of day or night. This makes for much better ownership of data.

 

However, choosing which engineers to deploy for both planned maintenance work and reactive tasks was always done manually. Now, in order to further automate their systems, improve efficiency and save huge amounts of time, Manitowoc have integrated Tesseract’s Diary Assist software for both planned and reactive maintenance tasks.

Before the integration of Diary Assist

Manitowoc used to rely totally on a manual system for scheduling engineers for reactive jobs and diarising them for planned maintenance tasks. They used mapping software such as AA Route Planner and the now discontinued Microsoft MapPoint and would assign particular engineers based on location, skill set and fair division of work.

Manitowoc’s manual process for deployment not only took a lot of time, much more than an automated process would, but it also introduced a human element to the decision-making that wasn’t always consistent.

“Before Diary Assist, the deployment of our engineers relied on human intervention and scheduling typically consumed 3 – 4 hours a day,” says Manitowoc. “We had staff trying to ensure that the division of work was fair according to engineers’ skill set and geographical location. A side effect of this was that sometimes it would be unfair and inconsistent.”

How has Diary Assist changed things for Manitowoc?

Diary Assist is a dynamic, centrally hosted web service for call optimisation. It’s designed to handle both planned appointments and reactive service calls and is capable of scheduling 200 hundred calls in just 20 minutes.

The software allocates jobs to engineers based on their skill sets, availability, travel time, work time and shift patterns, as well as call response time and customer site cover times. Manitowoc used to have staff making evaluative decisions about which engineers were most appropriate to allocate; now an automated program does it for them.

Manitowoc says, “We are already seeing the long-term benefits of using Diary Assist. The service provides consistent logic to our scheduling process and saves us 3 – 4 hours a day of manual manipulation, whilst eliminating the potential for human error.”

 

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Incredible fuel savings and impressive reduction in CO2 emissions for Scottish local authority after implementing telematics solution from TomTom Telematics...

The Organisation:

Connecting the shores of Loch Lomond with Glasgow, West Dunbartonshire provides access to some of Scotland’s most beautiful scenery and a network of towns and villages.

There are three town centres; Clydebank, Dumbarton and Alexandria. The council has a fleet of 380 vehicles that are used in delivering services for the residents of West Dunbartonshire. This fleet is made up of cars, vans and minibuses as well as specialist vehicles such as refuse collection trucks and road sweepers. The fleet has a capital value of approximately £8 million and annual running and operating costs of over £2M.

The Challenge:

Running vehicle fleets does not only incur costs – as a signatory to Scotland’s Climate Change Declaration, the council has a carbon reduction commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by one third by 2015. The cost of fuel to the council has increased significantly over recent years and it is clear that the council needs controlling mechanisms to regulate and influence the sustainable use of fuel.

Added to this, there was concern over the usage of council vehicles and the need to know where and how council property was being used. With a highly recognisable fully branded fleet, West Dunbartonshire are aware that they are continuously visible and that tax payers note any inappropriate use. Coupled with this comes the incidence of public challenges and spurious insurance claims against the council.

 

Tracking of the vehicles was becoming necessary to cut rising costs, raise efficiency and save time on administration.

The Solution:

In March 2010 the council installed TomTom LINK 300 GPS tracking boxes into 260 of their fleet of vehicles. This was a significant investment for the council, particularly at a time when budgets were being trimmed in every area. Nevertheless the Fleet and Waste Services Division led by Rodney Thornton, was confident that its introduction would reduce fuel costs.

Following research and a competitive tendering exercise, the council selected TomTom Business Solutions to provide the solution.

Driving more economically, efficiently, and safely, will reduce the council’s carbon footprint and longer term costs for the council. It was clear that many drivers, however unwittingly, were wasting valuable resources because of the way they drive.

Reducing average speed and instances of harsh braking and cornering delivers direct, measurable reductions in fuel consumption, servicing and maintenance costs and is proven to reduce accidents.

As a result of improved control of the vehicle fleet, the council is projecting that fuel usage will be down by around 70,000 litres in the period April 2010 – March 2011 when compared to the previous year.

 

Ultimately, the council has not only saved huge costs, they have succeeded in reducing their annual climate impact.

“Improvements to the way council vehicle operators carry out their duties has reduced our annual fuel costs by over £100,000 per annum, reduced servicing and maintenance costs in the longer term, will extend the working life of a number of vehicles and decrease the production of CO2,” said Rodney Thornton.

West Dunbartonshire council are so impressed with the results of the TomTom solution, they are incorporating the TomTom ecoPLUS into a selection of the vehicles across the fleet.

The ecoPLUS provides businesses with live data such as fuel consumption and live carbon footprint so vehicles can be accurately benchmarked and best practice developed to help achieve wider objectives such as fuel saving and carbon footprint reduction. TomTom ecoPLUS will enable the council to further reduce fuel consumption, by gaining a real time view of the fuel efficiency of each vehicle, showing when and where fuel is wasted.

Idling time in particular has been highlighted as a major contributor to fuel wastage in this sector.

 

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As field service tools become increasingly Internet based connectivity becomes an ever more significant challenge. We look at how Volvo Construction overcame their connectivity woes...

About Volvo                                                  

Volvo Construction Equipment was established in Great Britain in 1967. A division of the Volvo Group, it has established a reputation for market leading quality equipment and customer support.

A supplier to the mining and construction industries, Volvo provides an extensive range of equipment including wheeled loaders, articulated haulers, excavators, utility equipment and pavers.

The business operates eight customer support centres throughout Great Britain, supplemented by strategically located home-based engineers. Its headquarters are located in Duxford, Cambridgeshire.

The challenge

Volvo Construction Equipment’s team of field engineers travel across the UK each day responding to customer queries – from initial fault diagnosis to servicing and updating equipment. These engineers are largely dependent upon access to internet-based tools, hosted on the company’s network, for diagnosis and configuration purposes. Yet visits can often take place in remote or inaccessible areas of the country with poor mobile signal.

Previously, engineers were provided with a single-network USB dongle that could be plugged into laptops for network access. The limited geographical coverage meant that this had proved hugely unreliable, with engineers often unable to find a strong signal from the network provider.

 

Without access to the internet, engineers were often forced to return to the nearest depot – which could be up to 60 miles away – or in some cases, seek out a local café or restaurant offering free Wi-Fi.

This inability to complete the job on the first visit was also frustrating for customers unable to progress a project due to a broken down machine.

Richard Shelford, IT Operations Manager at Volvo Construction Equipment, said: ‘‘Engineers would often arrive at a job and carry out the initial diagnosis only to find that the network signal was too weak. From a customer-service perspective this was really tricky, as they would be forced to abandon a job and drive off to seek Wi-Fi access somewhere else.”

He added: “This process was proving hugely costly for us in both time and mileage but also for our customer whose downtime costs can run into tens of thousands of pounds.”

The solution

Volvo Construction Equipment was recommended to contact M2M Intelligence to see if they could suggest a more efficient way to operate.

M2M was able to supply a Multinet roaming 3G SIM which enabled field engineers to create a local hotspot with a Wi-Fi router in their van. The M2M-i Multinet SIM enables the router to connect with any available UK network so Volvo engineers are no longer reliant on a single provider’s ability to supply a constant signal in all areas of the country.

These hotspots allow staff to connect and use the online diagnostics virtually wherever they are working.

 

A trial across eight vehicles was tested by senior engineers, with extensive experience of the industry - including first-hand knowledge of some of the challenges that the business was facing. Following a successful trial, the solution was quickly rolled out across the Volvo Field Service team.

The results

Volvo was able to vastly improve its customer service by eliminating wasted site visits and reducing equipment down-time. This has also had a number of additional benefits in regards to productivity, cost savings, employee satisfaction and internal communications.

Productivity increased

M2M’s Multinet roaming SIMs have ensured field engineers are connected virtually anywhere. This has had a major impact on productivity as engineers are now able to increase the average number of campaign updates, including diagnosis or configuration, each day.

Cost savings

The solution has also driven significant cost-savings for the business – both in terms of vehicle expense and staff time. Field engineers no longer have to drive back to the depot or a local restaurant to gain Wi-Fi access – and are operating more efficiently as a result.

Employee satisfaction rose

Increased productivity has removed many of the frustrations experienced by field engineers. Rather than facing obstacles around limited network signal or the associated stresses of having to find a nearby location with access, they can focus on the task in hand. This means delivering a speedier service to customers and getting equipment and projects back up and running as soon as possible.

Better internal communications

The business has also seen an improvement in internal communications. Staff can use internet-enabled video conferencing more frequently to communicate with product specialists and between different depots. This is allowing field engineers to tap into company resources – and quickly.

The company now has plans to continue a phased roll-out across the wider business, including product specialists and sales teams.

‘‘Almost immediately after trialling M2M’s solution, we knew we had to have it!’’ said Richard. ‘‘Our engineers were previously carrying out approximately two campaign updates per day. Using M2M’s solution, they can double that - so to say it’s had a big impact on productivity would be an understatement! To quote one of our own engineers, ‘it’s simply brilliant’.’’

 

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Severn Trent Services has been using service management software supplied by Tesseract for nearly four years. In the latter months of 2014, they saw the wisdom of upgrading to the latest version of the software, Service Centre 5.1 (SC5.1).

Already they are enjoying huge time savings and greater efficiency as a result of the new components available to them. UK-based Severn Trent Services is part of a major international conglomerate that in total serves 4.2 million households and businesses throughout the world. It is the leading national supplier of water and wastewater services to businesses in the UK, currently providing services to more than 1,500 sites nationwide.

Their work includes water hygiene services; controlling and maintaining assets such as sewage and water treatment works and sewage pump stations; and connecting water supplies to housing developments. Their national status means they have the capability to give businesses with multiple sites the ease, simplicity and efficiency of dealing with one supplier for all their locations.

Severn Trent use Tesseract to run their water hygiene service, which is a hugely important part of their work. Essentially they make sure businesses comply with water hygiene legislation by carrying out inspections, cleaning tanks and pumps, performing disinfections and conducting remedial works to bring water systems to the necessary standard.

Moving away from labour-intensive processes

Before the upgrade, Severn Trent only relied on Tesseract’s software to manage their customer contracts and invoicing. Their field service management depended on a variety of manual and labour-intensive processes. Several different software systems were used to manage the engineers – one for allocating the jobs, one for travel planning and one for collecting feedback, time capture and other data.

“Extensive manual intervention was required to make these systems work together properly,” says Jack Fleet, Water Compliance Scheduling Technician for Severn Trent Services. “This eventually became clunky and we saw that there was too much room for human error. It also took up a lot of office time.”

In July 2014, Severn Trent reviewed their business, looking at how timely and how efficient their processes were, and how they could serve their customers better. Having been using some components of Tesseract’s service management software for several years, they decided to extend that usage to field service management. They wanted one whole, cohesive software system managing their engineers instead of several. A field service management overhaul By upgrading to SC5.1, Severn

Trent are now benefiting from Tesseract’s Remote Engineer Access software (REA). This allows engineers to log in remotely from their i-Pads, view allocated calls for dispatch, look at the call history for a site, product or customer, raise parts requests, add service reports and close completed jobs - amongst many other functions. REA completely streamlines field service management and removes the bulk of manual interventions that were previously necessary to perform these functions.

 

Severn Trent also have the benefit of Tesseract’s flexible Email Service, which automates the sending and receiving of emails from Tesseract Service Centre. Severn Trent are using the Email Service to handle customer appointments and reports, but automated emails can be triggered by all kinds of activities, such as when calls are logged and closed, and parts have been shipped.

Finally Severn Trent are using Tesseract’s fully customisable Reporting Service, which enables customers to schedule and run reports at any time during the day or night.

A bespoke feature

Currently in development is a bespoke feature of the software, which Tesseract are producing especially for Severn Trent. This feature will help to assess whether certain site restrictions mean that specific engineers are required to attend them. For instance, the engineer might need to have a DBS check, a certain qualification or skill set, or a certain level of training to be able to work at the site.

Tesseract are looking at inserting some additional fields to the allocation software to help Severn Trent assign the right staff. “The good thing about Tesseract is their enthusiasm for customisation,” says Jack Fleet.

“They are developing this feature specifically for us because they are persistent in wanting to improve and expand what they offer. If this feature ends up working for us, it’s something Tesseract will make available to other customers.

In the same way, if Tesseract develop something for another customer and think it will work for Severn Trent, they will make it available to us.”

What does the future hold?

Tesseract’s SC5.1 went live at Severn Trent Services on December 1st 2014 and already Severn Trent have seen a massive saving in office time. Efficiency has improved enormously thanks to REA and the upgrade has made customer contracts and invoicing more effective and timely as well. Severn Trent have plans to install Tesseract’s Prospect Centre. This is a sales enquiry and action follow up module allowing for the registration of both existing customers and new sales leads so that sales activity can be monitored. It contains data such as the sales source, sales value, product required and next action date, and has a helpful ‘Salesman’s To Do List’ feature. Severn Trent also want to implement Tesseract’s Quote Centre, which enables sales teams to generate quotes and easily convert them into customer contracts once the quote is accepted.

 

However, Severn Trent’s more immediate priority is Tesseract’s Diary Assist, which they will incorporate in July 2015 in order to further streamline their field service management processes. Diary Assist is a centrally hosted web service for call optimisation which handles both planned and reactive maintenance calls. It allocates jobs to engineers based on skill sets, availability, travel time, customer site cover times and various other factors, and effectively automates the deployment process even further.

 

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Find out more about Tesseract in our directory section by clicking here

 

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In the penultimate part of his series Service Management specialist Nick Frank takes a look for that secret magic formula that creates winning companies in field service.... 

It sounds too obvious, but companies who ‘plan’ for success, are more likely to get results from their service transformation programmes. So found Dr Wolfgang Ulaga, Professor at the IMD Business School when researching how companies transform their service business profitably.  He identified that companies who release their service potential have done so not only because they were well positioned to deliver value, but because they had an explicit and supported plan. (an interesting guy and would well recommend reading his Harvard Business Review Article on service transformation)

But why do we need a professor to tell us this!  Most well run companies have a planning cycle that lays out the financial numbers and the high level strategies to achieve their objectives. It always surprises me how many leaders of transformation believe that this is enough. It’s not!

Yes, experience says that the plan has to be clear and ‘light’ enough to inspire the team and colleagues. Yet it has to be backed by the detailed analysis which gives it credibility not only to business leaders, but also your agents of change themselves. This means the plan has to be explicit. It has to describe the detail of how strategies are achieved and most importantly it must be written down!

So managers wanting successfully drive transformation programmes should prioritise their resources, whether that be their own time or a programme manager into developing the plan. The more the stakeholders are involved, the more credible and supported it will be. The more senior management support managers have, the more likely that the resources required will be committed. But what are we talking about:

 

• Put in place strong project management resources with a governance structure and steering team that has the muscle to move many of the obstacles you might face
• Clearly define the objectives for the projects that will get you to your goal.  Each should have a kind of charter that defines the project in detail and most importantly who is responsible for what. The charter should show the expected outcomes and the impact on the business
•  Clearly define the objectives for the projects that will get you to your goal.  Each should have a kind of charter that defines the project in detail and most importantly who is responsible for what. The charter should show the expected outcomes and the impact on the business
• Plan out the investments you require and the potential timing. More and more we see companies looking to rationalise their business systems and will cost time as well as money. This is especially true in the implementation phase. So the motto is ‘Be Prepared’.
• Ensure your plan clearly identifies early wins to demonstrate success to your management and help them keep faith with the vision
• Make sure that your communication strategy is built into your plan. Often great ideas fail because the troops are not sure what is expected of them.

The last remaining piece of the puzzle is that your plan needs to be back by the decision makers of your business. It’s not just a question of a polite yes in the annual business plan review. It needs real commitment such as being part of your governance structure or taking a very active and vocal interest. If you don’t see this, be very aware!

The list could go on and on, but these are the main factors. If you are faced with planning change then at Noventum you can see what a Transformation Road map looks like, or experience developing your own by attending a Service Leadership Course .

 

City West Works was established as a subsidiary of City West Housing Trust in April 2013 and carries out maintenance works on the housing association’s 14,600 homes across West Salford.

In its first year, the City West Works carried out almost 50,000 repairs jobs and answered more than 150,000 calls in its service centre.

The challenge

City West Works has a range of tradesman from roofers to electricians working in their team, all playing key roles in maintaining strong customer relations and working to improve customer homes. With many tradesmen on the road daily, City West Works needed a solution that could not only track their location but help reduce CO2 emissions and rising fuel costs.

The solution

Masternaut offered City West Works a solution that could provide benefits above and beyond simple vehicle tracking. Masternaut’s solution can monitor for poor driving habits through a points system where drivers are scored against vehicle economy and driving behaviour, alerting them to any bad manoeuvres they make.

Co-ordination challenges were also minimised with at-a-glance visibility of vehicle whereabouts at any given time.

The outcome

Since implementing Masternaut’s solution, City West Works has seen economical improvements in employee driving habits.  The solution has been installed across 105 of City West Works’ vehicles, with a plan to extend the contract for another two years.

Managers receive weekly email reports that accurately monitor and record the behaviour of their drivers and determine those who are exhibiting the best driving performance. Poor driving habits such as harsh; cornering, breaking, acceleration and speeding are all measured and put forward in these reports. Managers can then approach drivers performing poorly and discuss ways of improving their driving with guidance from Masternaut. These reports not only helped the managers gain a good overview of their team’s driver behaviour but also aided with their KPIs.

The Masternaut solution also provides an additional HR benefit with managers being able to remotely monitor their employees’ location in real time therefore providing added security. The solution can also help provide evidence against claims where customers state a tradesman has not turned up to a job.

Commenting on the results John Ashworth, Facilities Officer at City West Works said:

“Cutting down CO2 emissions and reducing fuel costs have been high priorities for us. We’ve saved just short of £17,000 in fuel alone and reduced CO2 emissions by 40.6 tonnes thanks to Masternaut’s solution. The reports Masternaut provide us with allows managers to see how drivers are wasting fuel and put a stop to this. Since April last year we have also started receiving a second report from Masternaut on a month to month basis showing how much fuel and Co2 savings we have made.

We chose Masternaut following a full process and when compared against competitors, Masternaut was the overall better choice against other tenders.” 

 

TCSJOHNHUXLEY is the world’s leading manufacturer and supplier of end-to-end live gaming solutions and services. The company offers the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of live gaming and electronic gaming products, from quality, handcrafted furniture through to cutting-edge technical equipment that enhances the overall gaming experience, profits and security.

The company prides itself on delivering the highest standards of service and support, with a comprehensive European Technical Support Centre based at Stoke-on-Trent, and a dedicated pan-European network of staff offering 24/7 technical support. Given the company’s continued growth, TCSJOHNHUXLEY was keen to update its service management technology infrastructure so that they had greater visibility across its Europe-wide service and support activities.

According to Rob Burgess, European Service Manager for TCSJOHNHUXLEY: “while we had evolved a fully functional scheduling system for our planned engineering activities - we knew we needed a more integrated solution, to give us visibility and the management information we needed to optimise our processes and really excel in customer service.

“It had become clear that adopting an end-to-end field service management encompassing customer contact, scheduling and mobile field service would give us the meaningful data that we needed to optimise performance. We were also keen to find a solution which would give us reports exactly as we required to allow us to optimise our business, rather than the standard reports that an off the shelf tool would provide”

After looking at a range of different solutions, TCSJOHNHUXLEY selected a cloud-based field service management solution from mplsystems that integrated all its customer contact, service management, parts management and engineer scheduling activities.

 

Available on a pay-per-use basis, mplsystems’ field service management solution directly addresses the three main barriers to field service efficiency: the need to combine disparate IT systems; the ability to schedule reactive engineering tasks alongside planned maintenance schedules; and efficiently highlighting ongoing issues in the field.

 

Combining off-the-shelf functionality with bespoke flexibility

“We selected an mplsystems field service management solution because it provided us with all the benefits and cost-effective performance of an off-the-shelf application, while also providing the ability for us to customise our new solution to match the specific requirements of the TCSJOHNHUXLEY business – particularly in the important area of reporting,” added Rob Burgess. “Combining the dynamic planning and scheduling of service activities with a dedicated application on our engineers’ tablet devices has allowed us to create our mplsystems-powered GEMS Global Engineers Management System that now gives us a true, real-time view of all maintenance activities and reactive calls across the business.”

According to Rob: “working with mplsystems is enabling us to bring our different customer contact, workflow, service management and field service operations together, providing TCSJOHNHUXLEY with the potential for driving efficiency and freeing us to deliver an even higher overall standard of service.”

Working with the mplsystems’ field service management allows the TCSJOHNHUXLEY service team to close the loop, improving efficiency all the way from the initial point of customer interaction through to fault resolution “With our previous more manual process, we wouldn’t necessarily have visibility of a repeat failure with a particular product or component. Now with our mplsystems field service solution we’re able to generate automatic alerts or analyse data to proactively replace components prior to failure or determine a manufacturing fix.”

For Rob Burgess and the TCSJOHNHUXLEY service team, the real benefits come through close analysis of the data unlocked through the mplsystems solution. “It’s all about the data, understanding what’s actually going on in the business and then sharing best practice behaviours and outcomes – both across our UK service team and also with our international operations.”

Business benefits:

• Achieving the best of both worlds – cost-effectiveness of an off-the-shelf field service management solution with the focused benefits of bespoke reporting
• Successful blending or both planned and reactive maintenance tasks – ability to optimise scheduling in real time
• Increased visibility of parts issues, enabling optimisation of overall stock levels and the ability to identify and routinely replace parts or components that fail more often – reducing overall callback rate
• Greater visibility and analysis of engineer schedules – more awareness of time required for fixes, travel time to customer sites,
• Escalation processes now in place, assigning technical specialists for repeat issues
• Better integration of field operations, with immediate service incident reporting via tablets

 

 

Background: Exel Computer Systems

The developing service industry requires improved quality through constant adaption.

Exel Computer Systems has brought increasingly sophisticated technology into the Service Management arena providing Software and expertise. There is no doubt that with skilled support, this technology will drive significant innovation into thought-leading organisations such as Triton Showers, who are prepared to open their minds to new ways of working and effectively use technological innovation. More than ten years ago Triton Showers realised that to be successful as a service-led business they had to be more agile and ready to adapt to the rapidly changing industry environment they faced.

To derive significant success from technological developments requires more than good luck, and unless companies are prepared to invest sufficient money, time and energy into getting it right, success will not follow. Most importantly the need to invest in the right staff, with the right training, equipment and business tools. But just as important is the need to join forces with a supplier who has made significant investment in developing leading-edge Service Software and can show innovation in the solution. Providing such an excellent product to a skilled workforce can bring to the industry leading edge skills, cost effective and excellent delivery, and set standards in the Industry.

Background: Triton Showers

Triton Showers has been producing high quality products since its inception in 1975, and is now one of the largest and best known in the field in the UK. In that time the company has invested in technological solutions and unwaveringly on recruiting high calibre staff to provide their customers with the best customer service possible. In addition to their success in future-proofing the technological aspects of their software solution by working closely with their software supplier and partner, they have been able to take advantage of the growing familiarity and acceptance of the technology by all their staff across  the business, to help their staff understand the needs and skills required of their new roles.

Like many other businesses over this time, Triton Showers has had to cope with a number of key changes including a shift from client-based solutions to browser-based, and from hardware-specific solutions into platform and product-independent solutions. Exel Computer Systems has incorporated all of these into their Eagle Field Service solution, taking in their stride the acceleration of technological development, the rapid and significant convergence of 'Mobile Communications', 'Browser-based software' and 'The Cloud' to keep abreast of technology, devices and software solutions across their customer's business. Triton Showers has grasped the opportunity to work with a very modern leading-edge supplier, critical in this complex environment to ensure the quality of the solution and the speed of implementation.

Preparing for the Journey

The service industry has developed markedly over the last 10 years, and Triton Showers has been at the forefront of this development; introducing a sophisticated call-centre supported by the latest scheduling and despatching software, as well as a comprehensive financial package. In the last three years, investing in developing and securing a powerful solution provided and supported by their highly skilled partner Exel, they have significantly updated their software solution onto one of the most modern platforms.

Most recently, Triton Showers have invested in mobile CRM and customer self-help mechanisms, as it has become obvious that the customer wants to use this form of communication. The key customer requirements across the industry are:

• immediate response time
• 24x7 access to self help to resolve issues themselves
• access to an engineer on line or in a forum or chat room

What has been Key to Triton Shower's success?

Working closely with Exel has provided them with a partner that has not only supplied the required Software to take the business into the future, but helped them to identify the most important profit levers within their business:

• Move from  cost-cutting to technology-driven process improvement and focus on customers
• Recognise that culture change within the organisation and across society is having more impact than specific technology devices, as the devices become more readily assimilated into the day-to-day environment
• Staff understanding the changes they have to make in their role as a result of the latest software and hardware solution
• Helping their staff at all levels to work differently, to deal with the local environment within the changing big picture.

The Challenge

Introducing a new software solution and associated hardware requires process change, so from the start there was a requirement that support staff understand the changes necessary in their role. The staff needed to accept that processes would be different and it was beneficial to get the processes stable and tested as soon as possible within the new solution:  They would have to see the big picture of the business process as well as demonstrate a local understanding.

Triton Showers has also recognised that the consumer market in which they work has changed its attitude towards the sovereignty of the customer, and that a significant shift of mind-set within the customer requires Triton Showers to work very differently, at all levels, to maintain control.

Historically, the quality of service was delivered contractually through service level agreements, ensuring the supplier would deliver within certain parameters. The agreement would be with the individual customer and not normally visible to anyone else, with the advent of Facebook, Linked-in and Twitter this situation has changed completely, and producing a very confused picture engendering significant potential for mis-communication, putting considerable pressure onto the supplier.  Included with this is the ability for the customer to broadcast their opinion of the service they have received.

The supplier has to have much better access to the customer experience through varied and reliable sources of information, including mobile CRM, so that data can be automatically collected by the hardware and software carried by the engineer, freeing the engineer to focus on fixing the customer, confident that all the data is captured correctly.  The engineer has to be trained and given the responsibility to gather customer information, through effective listening and good questioning. The engineer cannot allocate any more time to the customer, so information gathering has to be done during the fix (including up-grading customer value, providing new value and understanding issues facing the customer, their changing needs and if possible consulting on the customer’s processes to better serve them next time).

Supplier support and added value

Working closely and confidently with their software supplier, Triton Showers were able to significantly develop their customer interaction process to facilitate the capture of required information, to build up a picture of the customer in order to better respond to their needs and reduce the cost of provision while improving the quality.  In addition Eagle Field Service provided effective future-proofing to:

• Accommodate changes in technology, particularly the impact of mobile connectivity
• Deal with the growing impact of Social Media in the Business to Consumer (B2C) environment
• Ensure that Triton Showers work-force were  more comfortable with the modern platform format that Eagle could provide, in particular delivering a mobile CRM capability
• Develop the solution with Exel to provide an on-going, workable and stable solution

Conclusion

Service Manager, Graham Neve, has found working with the Exel team has considerably broadened the business calibre of his service team.  Working with Exel helped the staff at all levels in the business to understand the changes required in their role as a result of the solution, improving the way they communicate with the customer.

He believes Triton Showers are in a much stronger position thanks to their implementation of Eagle Field Service and the support received from Exel.

Find out more about Exel Computer Systems including videos, white papers and news in the Field Service News directory here

Nick Frank, a specialist service management consultant with Noventum Service Management continues his series of case studies outlining best practices in field service...

Previous case studies showed some of the steps companies can take to understand the value of service to their business. Companies have deep dived into their customer’s journey, gained insight into what the customer’s perceive as value, as well as determined what their own corporate strategy is to make money. Secure in this understanding they are ready to implement their GO To market strategy. And the first step is to develop and deploy service propositions that speak to the customer.

What is he talking about you may be asking yourself?  Go look at your website or those of your competitors and see how the services propositions are described. I looked at a company I used to work for and found what is typical for many. Descriptions of what they do!

If you are an engineer or product guy, it kind of makes sense, because its what we do! But think from the customer’s perspective. Managers are interested in outcomes. In most commercial organisations this is how they are paid and what they do.

So if you are really a customer led organisation should you not also focus on the outcomes? This is what Yokogawa did. In our previous blog we talked about how they developed a clear view of the value their customer’s perceived they could offer. Well they took this view and designed their propositions around it.

They literally tried to design service propositions that would speak to their customers.

So if you look at their vigiplant (http://www.yokogawa.com/vps/vps-index-en.htm) service offering, you will notice that the language they use to describe their portfolio has a very marked customer orientation. They group their services in terms of outcomes:

• Opportunity Identification Services
• Solution Implementation Services
• Lifecycle Effectiveness Services[/unordered_list]

They try to use a language that describes the value. In other words they talk of ‘Production Excellence’, rather than how it is might be delivered through ’Software Products’.

Now this is quite a different approach and one that took me a long time to really appreciate. That the words we use are a reflection of our own values. So if we look at how companies describe their services, what we see is their true culture and attitudes towards their customers and clients.

At Noventum we call this ‘Service Thinking’. To learn more about this and how to successfully deliver service propositions that really speak to your customers, why not look at this case study on Service Thinking (http://www.noventum.eu/cases/believe-in-service-thinking)

Nick Frank is a service specialist with Noventum Service Management

Read part one of Nick's series here

Read part two of Nick's series here

Read part three of Nick's series here