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Service Management

Is your organization missing out on revenue opportunities because you cannot keep up with the demand for service or are unable to identify your most valuable customers and their needs? Are you able to coordinate all your service centers processes in the enterprise to secure the best usage of resource and material, at the right time, for the lowest possible cost, with the greatest return, all leading to improved customer satisfaction? Do you have the processes in place to control your contractual obligations, service level agreements and outstanding warranties to ensure you accurately bill for the services you provide?

Today, when the margins are getting ever smaller in distribution as well as manufacturing, many companies focus on improved customer service as a way of retaining customers as well as increasing revenue. The sales cycle doesn't stop at the point of shipment to your customer! Taking full advantage of the product and customer life cycles in a company is now more important than ever before.

Whether you do field service or run an in-house service centre improved service process management will benefit your organization in many ways:

• Maximized revenue – ensure that all service gets properly billed, contracts get renewed on time and pricing on service and parts is correctly updated
• Product life cycle management – extend the sales cycle beyond initial sales and installation to maintenance, after sales services, additional sales opportunities, part replacements, product upgrades, configuration management and finally product discontinuation
• Improved service level – shorten the lead-time from request to fulfillment and increasing the optimal usage of resources and material as well as enhance the product offering Companies who operate in manufacturing industries, or who own assets for internal use or for rental and leasing purposes, can also greatly benefit from improved service management, whether they have a need for installment management, managing the internal service planning of their plant, or implement preventive maintenance procedures to plan the servicing of sold equipment or goods.

Preventive maintenance scheduling based on measurable quantities and counters such as equipment production hours, vehicle mileage or number of copies made etc. can increase the lifetime of assets, reduce downtime and ultimately reduce your costs.

The 9 Building Blocks of Service Process Support

Epicor iScala Service Management provides you with new opportunities to control your service activities, including full control over, and allocation of, material and resources (external as well as internal). In Epicor iScala service can be provided on stock items, assets in the Asset Management module, or machines and tools used in Epicor iScala Manufacturing. Machines can also be managed in Epicor iScala Resource Management.

The Epicor iScala Service Management module was designed with a wide range of service organizations in mind. If your company's business involves field service activities, in-house service and support or perhaps you need to manage the service of internal equipment and asset with preventive maintenance, then this is the module for you. Using Epicor iScala Service Management together with the Contract Management and Asset Management modules you are all set to run rental or leasing operations (see the individual fact sheets for the respective modules and solutions).

Although providing service can be seen as a generic process, whether you service pumps, photocopiers or cars, different types of businesses in the service industries have different requirements and the need for specific process support. In addition to the generic service process outlined above, some of the more important specifics of common service scenarios are discussed below.

Field Service

In field service operations one of the most important requirements is to be able to manage sites. A site is the specific location such as a factory or distribution centre where the item to be serviced is located. Knowing the working week for those sites, particularly when they are in different countries (known as "site calendar collection) for sites is essential when you schedule material and for resource planning. Another differentiator from other service processes is the need to distinguish 3 steps in the allocation process compared to the standard 2 steps, "plan" and "deliver", the extra "lend to engineer" allocation step is essential.

In Epicor iScala Service Management site codes are used to manage the location of each service object. The 3rd allocation step, lent to engineer, ensures that the ownership of material is managed correctly and has the proper accounting effect, at the right time, in your ledgers.

In-house Repair and Maintenance

When managing in-house service the supply chain consists of the additional steps of receiving the service object from the site and shipping it back after the service or repair has been completed. If a service object cannot be repaired you send an exchange item and bring the faulty item back to your warehouse to see if it can be reused or should be scrapped.

In Epicor iScala Service Management there is sophisticated functionality to manage the "swap process" for both complete service objects, e.g., a pump, or parts of an object, e.g., a compressor, this simplifies the process as well as ensure the correct valuation of the incoming defect item, with no stock valuation impact.

Preventive Maintenance

The preventive maintenance process is best illustrated by the unique forecasting of what jobs (labor actions, cost actions and materials) are needed at specific quantity or time incidents. An incident is a predicted event such as an overhaul or oil change perhaps triggered by vehicle mileage. The incident is planned by the constructor of the service object, e.g., the truck needs a brake change every 50000 km or every 20 months.

Epicor iScala Service Management offers forecasting for all quantity and time based incidents that could occur at inspection or service time. Each incident is associated with a job which specifies the required labor, cost and material required. Each forecast identifies the service object, it's serial number and the site location. Each incident can be scheduled uniquely, at 5000 miles or concurrently, every 500 hours. Service schedules can be planned to be executed by the customer or the service centre. A preventive maintenance order proposal is generated and the suggested service object related line can be individually checked, approved and converted into service orders.

Actual reporting of counter based quantities affect the preventive maintenance forecast calculation. To resolve conflicts between jobs scheduled in parallel you can define in what sequence their priority should be executed, e.g., you may not want to schedule the cleaning of a production machine and load the raw material at the same time. Excess charges can be invoiced if you have contractual limits that are exceeded, for example the number of miles a customer is allowed to drive a leased car, and still enjoy service costs covered by warranty.

Management

Installment Management

Installment management is the industry term for when you use service management to schedule maintenance and inspections of machines installed in your own production plants. Or if you need to maintain and manage your own assets such as cars, computer equipment or warehouse equipment.

Epicor iScala Service Management provides you with the functionality for planning and creation of service orders based on the defined maintenance cycle of your machines (defined in Epicor iScala Manufacturing) for example the need for monthly services or daily inspections.

Resource Management

An essential part of service management is the planning and allocation of resources. Detailed calendars of holidays and working hours and the possibility to easily schedule and reschedule resources on service jobs are required. Predefining and classifying the types of engineers needed perform certain tasks and jobs saves time and facilitates the automatic allocation of resources to service jobs. The built-in functionality to help you make sure that your staff is properly qualified in important skills areas, and keep records of their qualifications up to date saving you time and ultimately costs in this process.

Epicor iScala Resources Management, which is a fully integrated part of the Epicor iScala Service Management solution, has a detailed resource register where information such as skill set, address, type of resource etc., can be maintained. The graphical resource scheduling tool allows planning and rescheduling by drag and drop within and between resources, service orders and ongoing projects. This planning board takes into account demands on resources from both the Service Management and Project Management modules and resources can be shared between them. You can plan, manage and monitor the development or resources (internal as well as external), schedule and execute training and certification programs. Using the integrated service order functionality it is possible to manage courses for external resources with automatic confirmations and invoicing or allocation of cost. Resource Management is included as part of the Service Management Module.

Epicor iScala Contract Management

Epicor iScala Contract Management supports contract creation, renewal and cancellation (with or without credit notes). Contracts are independent of supply chain management (which means that there is no requirement to physically deliver something in order to charge for it under a contract). Using Service Contracts in Epicor iScala Contract Management together with the Service Management Module enables you to extend your process to cover the contractual side of service agreements as well as automatically generate Service Orders based on the customer's individual service contracts. Once a Service contract has been created service orders generation can be driven by that contract. Contracts can be copied from existing contracts.

The Service contract supports a separate invoice cycle, with fulfillment of the maintenance obligations being provided through Epicor iScala Service Management, with the option of invoicing either by order in Service Management or by Service Contract in Contract Management. Contract Management is a separate module of Epicor iScala sold separately from the Service Management Module. (See Contract Management fact sheet.)

Features

Using Epicor iScala Service Management you will be able to plan, schedule and follow up all your service activities whether they are in-house, out "in the field" or part of your internal site maintenance. Service Management is, of course, not only designed for service managers, it is also a valuable tool for the individual service engineers, who need to plan and prepare for each job, accessing information essential to both the specific service object and the technical documents relating to products or checklists for jobs. The main functional areas of Epicor iScala Service Management are:

SERVICE ORDER MANAGEMENT
For each Service Request a Service Order is created (logged). The Service Order identifies the incident and its dependencies, such as the service customer, site, and invoice customer (if not covered by the contract). If known, the service object, its configuration number, serial numbers and a link to existing contract line are also identified.

There is a problem description which is updated to the serial number history for later analysis. If serial number information or contract relation is found, the user will automatically see on the order head whether warranties are applicable, if the contract is still valid, and what the response time and reaction time and agreed problem resolution times are.

The system shows the Serial History Transactions in order to give help about the resolution actions to be taken. The person logging the incident enter his ID, assigns a status (normally "logged") and register any promises made to the customer on ETC (Estimated Time to Call Back), ETA (Estimated Time of Engineer Arrival "start"), ETR (Estimated Time of Return "solved"). In addition the user selects the appropriate order priority based on experience. The system calculates the system priority based on predefined weighted percentages of order priority, customer priority and service object priority.

If the user feels capable of resolving the issue, during the call, he can change the status from "logged" to "Help Desk". The system launch a knowledge base and two counter to measure the time of the support call. Depending on if the time can be charged or not you select the applicable time recording. The knowledge base offers search capabilities for pre-entered problem/solution codes which retrieve a structure graphical question and answer chart for discussion with the client on the phone. As well as looking at stored documents related to those problem areas, problem resolution documents can also be e-mailed to the customer.

When the problem is resolved, the user changes the status to "closed" and the system uses the measured time as activity lines for either internal or external invoicing. If the problem could not be resolved over the phone and engineer work is required, the appropriate service job, if known, can be selected in the help desk and copied to order lines. The Help Desk action is terminated and time spend is transferred to activity lines. The status is changed to "detailed analysis / planning".

PLANNING, DISPATCHING AND REPORTING OF ACTUALS
The shop floor planner opens the Service Order Monitor which shows them the status of all incoming orders assigned to status "detailed analysis / planning". All orders shown on the monitor are ranked according to Logged Time / ETC / ETA and the escalation levels. Escalation levels are calculated by the system based on predefined waiting hours between logging and actions.

The shop floor planner then opens the order in the Service Order Monitor and assigns the required labor activities, cost activities and materials in order to resolve the issue. This can be done either manually or by choosing a predefined job. At the same time the shop floor planner assigns the resources for the specific job, which is based on predefined skill sets and default engineers for certain tasks. In the resource planning board, it is possible to graphically view the current allocations, conflicts of resources and reallocate (move by drag and drop) the allocations if required. Part of the dispatching process is to check the material availability and chose between possible delivery options, drop shipments, JIT manufacturing process or deliveries for the warehouses you can access. This is all possible in the Service Management Solution integrated with Epicor iScala Logistics and MPC. Order Confirmations or Quotation Documents can of course be sent to the client.

Once the shop floor planner is happy with the allocations her or she sets the status to "to be started". The task scheduler sends the allocated task via mail to the engineers as well as registering the task in the public resource calendars. They can also see their allocations on the Service Monitor. Next step, for the engineer, is to change the status to "started" and print out the Service Order Document and study what work needs to be executed. The engineer can check the attached Check list and Technical bulletins to see how the job needs to be performed and access information about the service object.

Depending whether a repair/maintenance job or inspection is performed internally or at client site you print out the material picking lists and go to the warehouses and load the material in the service engineer's car or the work place and report the material status back to the system (lent to engineer). If required print and send the Delivery Note to the client.

After resolving the problem the engineer changes the status to "report back", enter the actual material quantities used, the time spent as well as cost such as expense and freight in the system. Lines can be added for unplanned activities and material. It is possible to adjust configuration changes, serial numbers or batch allocations as well as serial number history information. The status should be changed to "closed ready for invoicing".

INVOICING
While planning the order lines the system picks up the predefined pricing information as well as costs involved for each activity and materials required. The system automatically allocates a proposed invoice customer on line level to define who has to pay for what part of the service, depending on warranty or contract rules.

The accounting/invoicing department can verify and adjust the actual reported and adjust invoice rules and quantities if required. They can also upload other ledger costs from 3rd parties such as suppliers, out sourcing companies and sub contractors. The Invoice Proposals can be printed to verify that the content is correct, and then the invoice is printed and sent to the client. It is time to close the service order, at which point all information is moved for statistical analysis to the service history.

SERVICE ORDER HISTORY AND STATISTICS
Every service of a service object is stored in the history file. The history file shows you who did what to a product, where and when, what parts were exchanged and what other measures were taken during the job. By viewing the history your service engineers can quickly assess the situation and learn from past observations and corrections to known problems.

The Service statistics allows you to view work load, order summaries, time spent on jobs, gross margins on performed services and much much more. You can also design your own statistics by using provided templates.

Detailed analysis and post calculation between planned, actual and invoice figures for quantities, cost and revenue are provided based on stored statistical transactions. Depending on business needs, financial actual figures can be posted to the ledgers. There is a large variety of setup possibilities available, cost accounting, accrual accounting, (GIT) work in process accounting, value/date stamping for currencies (FASB52). This enables continuous monitoring possibilities on the financial ledger level.

For further information, please contact us at (852) 2581 9373 or email to salesenquiry@polyasia.com.

For the product details, please refer to the official web page of Scala Business Solutions at http://www.scala.net