ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘customisation’ CATEGORY

We look at how power generation manufacturer Dale Power Solutions have improved their service delivery operations by using Eagle Field Service by Exel Computer Systems...

Company Profile:

Dale Power Solutions, based in Scarborough, employ around 300 people and have been manufacturing and providing maintenance services for generators and UPS systems since 1935.

The Challenge:

Dale Power Solutions had planned for increased efficiency throughout the business as a whole, but specifically targeted the service division for increased revenue growth.

The Solution:

A single ERP solution for manufacturing and service, with the flexibility to tune the solution to changing needs

The Benefits:

Increased efficiency through greater automation, as well as improved reporting, has supported a 40% increase in revenue

The Detail:

Is bespoke or off-the-shelf better?

Thanks to Exel's EFACS E/8, the best of both worlds is available. Following a business process review, Dale Power Solutions has found EFACS has improved its management reporting, enabled business process automation and supported strong business growth.

Founded in 1935, Dale Power Solutions is a leading provider of secure power solutions for situations requiring uninterrupted power. The company manufactures generators and UPS systems as well as providing maintenance services. Based in Scarborough, Dale Power Solutions employs around 300 people.

The company used to rely on multiple applications for its manufacturing and field service divisions. The software had limited functionality, so EFACS E/8 was selected and implemented in early 2014 as a single solution to cover both areas of the business, with 100 back office users and 75 remote engineer users.

While the manufacturing side of the system worked well, the initial deployment of the field service element had been to a basic level, without a great deal of tailoringWhen IT and Communications Manager Az Yasin joined the company in late 2014, he recognised that the system hadn't yet achieved its full potential.

"EFACS E/8 had been deployed with all the modules," says Az. "It was an off-the-shelf package along with one or two customisations."

While the manufacturing side of the system worked well, the initial deployment of the field service element had been to a basic level, without a great deal of tailoring. The company’s plan for 2015 was to rely on the flexibility of the solution in order to increase service operations from 30% to 50% of its turnover

"The key problem for us was that we were trying to grow our services. There were processes that needed to be fixed through EFACS E/8."

Although the original implementation had delivered improvements, with some business processes changed to fit. Not everything had been automated, including service engineer scheduling, and some spreadsheets remained in use. The reason? Insufficient business process mapping to identify the data required.

Gap Analysis:

A project team was formed in 2015 to improve the use of EFACS E/8 for increased business efficiency.

"We decided to do a gap analysis of the whole organisation," says Az. "We identified the key issues and listed about 100."

This list was divided into areas that could be fixed in-house and those that depended upon Exel's consultancy services. The idea was to streamline data and process flow.

"The key was giving end users improvements to meet their needs."

An improvement programme began with an Exel consultant spending 10 days on-site. As refresher training for the project team, the consultant also demonstrated the field service capability and then advised on the changes. These covered everything from quotation and contract management, through to service delivery and documentation.

"Exel know their product very well. They were able to guide us through."

Supported by temporary contractors and Exel's consultancy services, the project team set to work. New reports were written in-house making use of new custom fields for business data.

There were improvements for service, engineering projects, manufacturing amendments and the supply chain. The strength of the Customisation Toolkit provided a useful way to enhance standard functionality.

One task was a set of electronic forms for service engineers to record details, such as defects found. Used on mobile phones, this enabled data to be captured, processed and uploaded into EFACS E/8. Other highlights included new buttons to 'push' service data into other areas, such as new quotations.

Exel also delivered some of the required changes in a new software release.

"Exel performed well in making the changes. We managed to quickly achieve about 75% of what we set out to do."

New Efficiencies:

The company has seen a £10 million growth in turnover in three years to £35 million. Greater automation, backed by improved business reporting, has supported that 40% increase. For example, higher efficiencies in purchasing have benefitted manufacturing and service operations, including vehicle stock replenishment.

"EFACS E/8 has enabled us to grow quite rapidly," says Az. "The service division is using the system more thoroughly than ever."

Service engineers have new Samsung mobile phones. These run the field service application and support completion of the electronic forms. Service engineers have new Samsung mobile phones. These run the field service application and support completion of the electronic forms. Mobile usage is now better and quicker than before.

The inherent integration within EFACS E/8 allows the separate business divisions to feel joined up. There is now commonality between the business divisions, as it offers easy access to, and use of, shared information.

"We are looking to be clever with the Customisation Toolkit on some key processes in order to improve them further," says Az. "EFACS E/8 is very customisable and I think that is one of its biggest strengths for Dale Power."

 

Be social and share

In part one of this exclusive interview with ServiceMax COO Scott Berg we looked at the the similarities between widely differing industries, the rapid rise of ServiceMax and why the IoT hasn't quite got fully up to speed as yet.

Here in this second section of the interview we begin with the another key significant technology trend, Big Data and why it was the at the heart of the headlines coming out of the ServiceMax CIO summit a few months earlier.

As our conversation turns to this Berg begins nodding agreement.

“We think we are in quite a unique position to make Data actionable.” he says. A pretty bold claim.

He begins to expand further “These Data lakes and all the other terminology around Big Data, all this predictive stuff and data science is all great but somebodies got get it into the hands on a technician in order to benefit from it. To maybe direct their next step or predict their next move. There will always be people involved in the chain, so we think its really our unique place to play as we make Big Data actionable.”

 

“We have a configurable process, we have the mobile device, so if there is going to be any directing or leading or sharing and tapping into knowledge its probably going to be done on a disconnected mobile device under ground at the top of a scaffolding or something like. So our interest in it is trying to connect data science and Big Data into that actionable footprint that you can put in front of the technician.”

This focus on the end user leads us to another current topic of conversation in software circles – is customisation the root of all ills or an acceptable process to refine off the shelf solutions?

 

“I think the whole nature of customisation has changed” answers Berg as I put the question to him “As you know we are on the Salesforce.com platform, and I don’t think that customisation is necessarily a bad word because its so controlled and its such a configurable and extendable experience anyway.”

“We certainly do stress configuration to the extent that this year we’ve really tried to repackage our implementation and delivery offerings. For small businesses we have something called Express, which is an out of the box ‘trust me this is what you need’ solution. If you work with us in three weeks you’ll be live and it’ll look just like the demonstration.” He says

“So we’ve tried to get certainly more prescriptive about it but I do think that peoples notions of customisation are ERP. So obliterated unrecognisable sets of code that drop you off at the road map and that quite frankly it’s a large part of our success I think. Because there is so much of that in Siebel today, one of our big customers has three versions of Siebel all of them deprecated so their off support and they’re faced with this problem its unrecognisable, its un-upgradeable they may as well just go buy another solution.”

“I think that the Salesforce platform has really changed everything. The way that we have to operate in that platform as an independent software company on someone else’s cloud means everything has to go through vulnerability, security and compatibility automated checking. So anything your customer would do on top of that, or anything we would do for a customer, basically inherits that stability. I think that’s just a radically different technological model than traditional ERP”

 

Of course Salesforce.com ended up proving a lot of their far bigger competitors wrong and now it seems that this is a rush to catch them up. It’ll be interesting to see if in the future all companies will follow their route.

As Berg himself outlines “ I think you’ll see a lot of the vendors out their trying to follow Salesforce’s lead and trying to follow some of Salesforce’s approach and try to become that platform as a service provider. You see them all launching market places and trying to attract people. Microsoft have been making a lot of noise around this and trying to launch the Dynamics platform. “

“But as somebody who jumped into the Salesforce.com bandwagon early on and as someone who every year we periodically reassess our situation I can say that nobody has really built the breadth and depth of a business application platform that those guys have.”

It is obvious to all that the connection between Salesforce.com and ServiceMax is particularly close. But is it too close? How reliant is the continuing success of ServiceMax on the Saleforce platform I ask.

“Having been involved with several start-ups in the past I think that they [Salesforce] were extremely critical for us especially in the early days.” Responds Berg.

 

“If you think of what it would have taken for us to launch a data centre and secure it, to build all the platform capabilities and redundancy, also that some of our first 12 customers were in the Middle East and Europe and there we were with two founders selling everything themselves out of northern California… how could that be right?” he pauses leaving the question hang for just a second before continuing.

“All because of the global reach and the global acceptance level of the Salesforce.com platform. So yes it was very important early on.” He concludes.

However as Berg explains the relationship has changed overtime as ServiceMAx themselves have grown to stand on more of an equal footing.

“Overtime I think that the value of the relationship has shifted a bit.” Berg concedes “Salesforce has become much more of a platform, and we don’t tend to get as many outright business referrals from them as before.”

“And it is certainly a big credibility statement to pass our EU safe harbour framework certifications and things because we’re in it but we’ve expanded so much in our own intellectual property investments around the mobile devices, iPad, and frameworks for our configurable workflow that I think when you stack up all the functionality in our product today, its heavily tipped to us now.” He admits.

Look out for the final part of this exclusive interview coming next week... 

be social and share this feature