Excellent B2B servicing leveraged as a unique selling point
The continuing trend for more and better service in the B2B sector opens up opportunities for suppliers of premium products to set themselves apart from competitors with a superior service offering. Simultaneously, the company’s own servicing capabilities can be integrated into their B2B customers’ processes – with benefits for both sides!
Servicing as a pillar in the business model
Many B2B companies offering excellent products and solutions for the manufacturing industry consider repair & maintenance service in specialized workshops and service units as part and parcel of their daily business. The further development and enhancement of the service offering are not only a challenge for the providers, but primarily an opportunity for all business partners involved:
- Industrial customers’ production and business become even more stable and resilient to disruptions thanks to high-quality service. Customer satisfaction increases.
- Suppliers generate service revenues in addition to their product sales and thus secure their service portfolio at the same time: Excellently serviced products cannot easily be replaced by products from any other supplier that does not offer the same level of excellence when it comes to servicing. Satisfied customers become long-term regular customers.
Custom-fit digital solution for repair & maintenance service
Having a repair and maintenance solution that is as well-integrated as possible and that fits your own processes will help you to increase your level of excellence even further. This will help you get a handle on the following critical success factors:
- Better servicing management: Digitization & automation of processes through an integrated overall solution
- More productive service staff: efficiency through pinpoint information
- Single source of truth: A central access point for all stakeholders
- Excellence in quality management and product development: Continuous improvement through reliable information
- Leveraging additional potential: Artificial Intelligence for even greater service efficiency
1. Better servicing management: Digitization & automation through one integrated overall solution
Based on our INFONEA® transact platform, you receive a precisely designed repair & maintenance solution (“servicing tool”) that is integrated into your other business applications. This solution lets you control, track and document the actual service processes – eliminating the need to burden your ERP or CRM system. The specific commercial processes and data, on the other hand, remain in your ERP/CRM systems and are connected to the service department via interfaces:
- Transfer of service registrations and orders as well as releases for cost estimates from ERP/CRM systems into the repair & maintenance solution
- Transfer of the “bill of materials & effort” from the repair & maintenance solution back to the ERP/CRM systems.
- Master data and service information such as service manuals from any existing product information and life cycle management (PIM/EPLM) applications also become centrally available.
Motto: Capture information a single time and then find and use it everywhere in the appropriate context!
The process chain for repairs and maintenance is digitalized and automated end-to-end this way, with well thought-out task sharing processes and the appropriate integration of the systems involved. A potential manual transfer of data at previous system breaks is no longer necessary.
2. More productive servicing staff: Efficiency through pinpoint information
Repair centers need precise information for each return, which is often complex depending on the context: Depending on the product, serial number range or product overhaul and, if applicable, the range of services offered by the repair center, specific service instructions, checklists, proactive measures and spare parts may be considered in each case, for example. Additionally, the repair history of the return plays a role: What has been repaired or replaced previously on a particular item – and when?
Mastering this complexity is time-consuming and poses a challenge, especially for newly trained servicing staff. In times of skills shortages as well as more frequent staff turnover, this can affect both throughput and quality in the service department. That’s why the repair & maintenance solution based on INFONEA® transact delivers all the contextual information you need in the right context at the push of a button. Time-consuming and manual searches in multiple information resources are no longer necessary. This frees up the servicing staff to concentrate on the essentials – efficiently focusing their technical expertise on the actual servicing tasks.
3. Single source of truth: A central access point for all stakeholders
For all typical questions relating to the process, you and your team will immediately find the answers in the repair & maintenance solution in one central location:
- What returns have already been communicated and how will that affect our capacity management?
- Which and how many open service orders are with which servicing unit?
- What is the current status of the assignments?
- Where is the ball rolling and where are we still waiting for the customer, e.g., the approval of a cost estimate?
- What is already on its way back to the customer?
The servicing process becomes transparent throughout the entire process chain, and you can obtain information at any time.
4. Excellence in quality management and product development: Continuous improvement through reliable information
All relevant repair and maintenance data is transferred to your BI/reporting platform, till example INFONEA®. This means that quality management (QM) and product development (PE) have all current KPIs available at all times, e.g.:
- What are our lead times?
- Which products and, if applicable, revision levels have a conspicuously high repair or warranty volume?
- What trends are emerging? Are there noticeable accumulations of error patterns in certain deployment scenarios?
- Where is there untapped potential for optimization in our processes?
- Where do we need to take proactive measures that will prevent the further occurrence of known defects among customers with affected products in advance?
Instead of waiting for the lengthy process of collecting and evaluating service data from a wide variety of systems, QM and PE can act early.
5. Leveraging additional potential: AI for even greater service efficiency
AI algorithms can use service data already available and any comments captured about the fault pattern and work performed: They automatically recognize in freshly recorded servicing cases whether the observed error pattern is already known and which other repairs it affects. Detecting anomalies, for example, helps to initiate necessary proactive measures at an early stage. This allows you to avoid duplication of work, reduce lead times and implement proactive maintenance measures even better.
Taking INFONEA® transact to the next servicing level:
Want to learn more about how to make your repair & maintenance service profitably fit for the digital future? Please feel free to contact us: