Manufacturers have made huge strides internally in customer-focused quality improvement through process control. Advances in monitoring technologies allow manufacturers to now anticipate and prevent potentially costly product failures before they erode output and profitability. Yet most manufacturing companies have yet to apply the same innovations externally to their service and maintenance offerings—despite the fact that these programs offer significant opportunities to diversify revenues and increase profits while building customer loyalty. In fact, “process control” can actually be more important for services than for products, since service activity usually takes place offsite—where problems are harder to see and fix, and where response times are longer.

Executives who want to improve process control for their service and maintenance programs focus on three key initiatives:

• Establish universal standards for service delivery.
• Develop real-time access to full customer records.
• Institute rigorous monitoring capabilities across all service processes.

Spare parts replacement is a good example. From a customer’s point of view, a 100% quality experience is having machine part availability in real time—either for a scheduled replacement or when an existing part suddenly fails. Anything short of a seamless process for replacement will hurt the customer’s bottom line—and leave a bad taste in his mouth. At the same time, in most industries the customer’s perspective will be that 100% quality for spare parts replacement isn’t “extra,” but “expected;” yet for most manufacturers this “expected” capability requires synchronization of multiple processes across multiple departments, enabled through real-time access to information at the customer’s site.

How do you put this process control in place? With a fully integrated and automated field-service management solution such as Infor’s Service Management for System i. Service Management helps improve service visibility while empowering service organizations to proactively manage aftermarket services in the field by preventing bottlenecks and missed connections at headquarters.

Take the spare parts example: What if a service technician could access and monitor customer service contracts in real time, and create recurring workflows that prompt actions to supply adequate spare parts for scheduled replacements or parts failures? With automation, the end-to-end parts-replacement process (verification of availability, confirmation of delivery date and shipment location, invoicing, etc.) can be standardized—and communicated to internal staff and customers alike—making parts inventories and service calls more predictable and more profitable. Unfortunately, most organizations still manage service operations with a flurry of phone calls, faxes, emails, and voicemails among technicians and internal contacts—a so-called “process” that’s inherently unstable, unpredictable, inconsistent, and rife with error. 

Infor’s Service Management for System i supports the creation of predictable, repeatable standards by enabling best practices and workflows to be embedded into the system and improving customer record accessibility. And with role-based workbenches, front-line employees have direct access to customer records and service activity, allowing them to quickly spot and respond to customer needs and emerging issues. Service Management also includes comprehensive mobile-device support, and can be delivered through a cloud platform. This can reduce wasteful back-and-forth among office employees and field teams, creating a more efficient, effective service model. It also helps create a uniform path for recording customer interaction, initiating root-cause problem solving, and measuring performance and accountability.

With service standards established and customer records available to all staff in real time, service monitoring can occur at multiple organizational levels via various tools within Service Management: detail-level analytics; at-a-glance gauges; ad-hoc reporting; schedule, route, and certification information for technicians; work-order tracking; and inventory and equipment tracking with the addition of Infor Barcode. These capabilities also can be accessed via mobile devices or through a cloud platform.

Leading manufacturers are learning that the skills they’ve developed to control product quality are equally applicable to service offerings. Infor’s Service Management provides a comprehensive, scalable, and easily integrated platform to help them get there.

Posted by Ross Freeman, Product Manager, Infor10 ERP Discrete iEnterprise (XA)