Mobile Customer Service
Mobile customer service and graphical deployment planning
It started in 2013 with a diagram and an idea, which was to catapult the Ersa service into the Industrie 4.0 era. Quote, Ersa team: we need a better, graphically supported deployment planning for the office service and an app for our service technicians. With the mobile service solution, Kurtz Ersa is ending the paper-based service process for data recording and is simultaneously reducing the operative recording efforts. All service-relevant business processes are portrayed transparently in the central system. The basis is the SAP standard software, in this case the CS module (Customer Service) with integrated mobile service process.
Objectives of the mobile service solution:
-
reduction of process steps
- reduction of the process running time
- no media breaks
- reduction of transport and waiting times
- no redundancy in data management and working steps
- acceleration of invoicing (in 3 days)
With the introduction of the app, manual recording and planning in the digital system were simplified – for service technicians in field service and also for the office service in post-processing. In the “Mobile Service Solution“ project, the decision for a software provider was taken at the end of 2014, the project started in 2015, the software adapted to Kurtz Ersa’s requirements was completed in January 2016 following numerous tests and preparations. A purely SAP solution was not possible as the graphical SAP plan board is not flexible enough – with a view to today’s customer requirements, but also with a view to the joy in innovation of the Ersa sales management. The new graphical plan board gives the planner all the tools he needs “to keep it simple”. For example, a planner produces a new service order with a mouse click directly in the visible gap via the “Service Capacity Monitor” – and books a service technician for the required time. The “Service Capacity Monitor” also supports in personnel planning with self-explanatory icons and a portrayal in colour which the user can set himself.
Leaner service processes
All the processes in service were tested in the course of the project and were simplified and made leaner. Today, all the service technicians use the service app. Service Capacity Monitor and service app were and are being rolled out in the Kurtz machine factory and with the Kurtz North America subsidiary in the USA. 100% of the feedback of travelling and working times from the service order run via the service app. Customer invoices are produced within three days on the basis of the service docket which is connected via Sap and is distinctly quicker and has also been signed by the customer. The successfully slimmed-off process leads to a faster cash-flow, as customers have to clarify less in-house as far as service deployments are concerned.
Ersa service app inside
When the user opens the app, he gets an overview of open service orders and finds out more with a double click. The service technician can download the complete history of all service reports and service work already done for the machine serial number in question – without a separate log-in with SAP. In each service job, the current SPS and Visu status of the machine is inquired and confirmed by the service technician. The app synchronises these figures to SAP into the machine history, with the result that office service can have recourse to current software figures.
If more than one service technician is on the way to the same order, this is also displayed to the app user. The service technician reports the travelling and working times directly from the app and can produce his report at the same time. The app also provides the possibility of having the material used in the order printed on the report by “ticking and removing the tick” from a suggested list of components. This can also trigger a subsequent activity for the office service, which reaches the responsible clerk in the office service as a service report via the SAP workflow. Thanks to the Service Capacity Monitor, planning of the capacity and also the current status of the order in the sense of a status quo is immediately visible in office service. Even the booking of flight tickets and visas for foreign countries has become distinctly easier as a result of the graphical planning tool and the icons connected to the status of the commission. Deployment planning for the Ersa service technicians is automatically transmitted to all the technicians directly from SAP each week.
Future prospects
Thanks to the users’ constructive inputs, the app will continue to grow. The next step is the direct transmission of the travelling expense and travelling time settlement to Human Resources, in order to profit from the lean processes across area borders. In the app, proactive checklists and protocols are to give support in commissioning and maintenance of systems. App, app and away, Ersa Service!