Heineken has implemented a mobile reporting system for
its engineers in Ireland, as part of a drive to improve the quality
of beer served.
The engineers service more than 8,000 pubs, hotels and
restaurants. Using the
AMPower system from Antenna Software on
Blackberry PDAs, servicing information on beer pipes at these
outlets can be automatically updated to the
Siebel CRM system. This enables Heineken account
managers to monitor the maintenance of lines - and well maintained
lines mean tastier beer.
The brewer schedules 24,000 pipe cleans every month.
It previously used a Siebel CRM system to ensure that all lines
were cleaned on schedule and to provide engineers with the latest
information to carry out maintenance checks.
Before the current system was installed, however, all of the
communication was carried out by post/fax/and over the phone, with
lots of printing out of information from Siebel, and lots of keying
in of results arriving, which was error prone.
This made it difficult to manage and measure performance to
service level agreements (SLA) until late after servicing had been
carried, and when talking to a customer, account reps could not
give accurate info regarding when the engineer last called or was
scheduled to call again.
Now with information coming in on the day maintenance has been
performed, the brewery gets much faster visibility into the
progress of work against SLAs.
"It could take from 2-10 days for the system to be updated,"
said Martin Gowran, IT Project Manager, Heineken Ireland. "If an
engineer was posted out a five day schedule of work to follow, the
update on the first day's work could take up to nine days to reach
our head office. Now the rep updates his AMPower system on his
Blackberry the same day as he completes the work and the
information is usually updated on the Siebel system within 2-3
seconds," he said.
Gowran said that it was a large change management process and
changing the way engineers worked was key.
"But by providing each rep with a Blackberry plus removing
paperwork from their daily routine they had a good incentive, as
previously they had no business e-mail address."
By 2010, Gartner predicts that the challenge in customer
relationship management strategies will move from giving
customer-facing employees better tools to putting the tools
directly in the hands of customers - so that clients can access
service data directly and through a variety of means, including
mobile.
Heineken taps SOA for cargo
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