"Service Module” Enhances Operational Efficiency, Helps Improve "Service Order" Management, and Effectively Manage "Service Contracts"
Business Challenges
A manufacturing company makes and sells modern parking meters. The company hosts credit card payment transactions for customers. The company also provides warranty on equipment sold and provide repair services.
The company used NAV "Blanket Sales Orders" to record warranty contracts and hosting contracts for serialized equipment in the field. Billing cycle could be prepaid annually, quarterly, or monthly. Sales Invoices were manually created from the Blanket Sales Orders. At month-end, Accounting would have to manually reconcile and post General Journals for "Revenue Recognition".
The company used Excel "Warranty Database" to record warranty repair and billing activities. Parts consumption, tasks performed, skills and workloads of service technicians were manually recorded on the Excel spreadsheet.
Excel Warranty Database Data Schemes
Excel Warranty Database Workflow
solutions
A thorough Diagnostic Analysis shows that the company's service challenges could be resolved using NAV Service Module.
Business Cases
Business cases for all departments were presented, validated, and consolidated:
- (Sales) Make “Warranty Quotes”. Need to know ‘warranty status’ – SN, expiry, type of warranty.
- (Sales) Fill order for “configuration change”. Fill order for “more Equipment” similar to past/recent configuration. Need to know current configuration.
- (Sales) Match Key Code with recurring orders or secure Equipment Transfer. Need to know what key code is attached to Equipment.
- (Sales/Finance/Support) Deal with customer reported “Lost Units” or deactivate units. Needs to know SN, stop warranty Billing, stop Hosting support.
- (Product) Manage End-of-Life. Need to know statistics on Equipment out there and their current configurations.
- (Sales/Support) Manage “Transfer of Equipment” better than currently ‘Notes’ column in Excel. Notified by emails or phone calls. Need to know SN, key code, owners, installation locations.
- (All departments) Run queries or tracing to find out end-to-end information. Need to easily point to status, including “service location”, of any one of the 100 pieces of Equipment shipped on one line on Sales Order.
Go-Live
Business Scenarios were identified and mapped to NAV functions. Service Management Processes, Workflows, and Data Flows were visualized and tested. Service Module were set up and the go-live was a success.
Service Contract Management in NAV
Service Order in NAV