Transforming Aftermarket Experiences: The Power of Service Lifecycle Management
The significance of providing exceptional aftermarket services cannot be overstated in today’s times as organizations strive to meet the dynamic expectations of their customers and stay competitive. Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) emerges as a powerful solution, seamlessly integrating various aspects of post-sales support to create a connected and customer-centric experience. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the multifaceted features of SLM, exploring how it revolutionizes field service, warranty management, service contracts, service parts management, customer service, supplier recovery, service intelligence, recalls, auditing, and service quality. Additionally, we’ll shed light on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Advanced Analytics are playing a pivotal role in powering SLM. Customer Service: SLM enhances customer service by providing a 360-degree view of customer interactions and service history. AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants enable quick issue resolution, while predictive analytics anticipates customer needs, ensuring a proactive approach to service delivery. Warranty Management: SLM enables efficient warranty management by automating claims processing, tracking warranty periods, and ensuring compliance. AI algorithms can predict potential warranty issues, allowing organizations to take preventive actions before problems escalate, ultimately saving costs and improving customer trust. Service Intelligence: Harnessing the power of AI and Advanced Analytics, SLM provides actionable insights into service performance. Predictive analytics identifies trends and areas for improvement, empowering organizations to make data-driven decisions and continuously enhance service quality. Field Service: SLM streamlines field service operations by optimizing technician scheduling, route planning, and real-time communication. AI-driven predictive maintenance ensures proactive service, reducing downtime and enhancing overall customer satisfaction. This feature is particularly beneficial for industries relying heavily on equipment maintenance, such as manufacturing and healthcare. Service Parts Management: Effective inventory management is crucial in providing timely service. SLM optimizes service parts logistics, minimizing stockouts and excess inventory. AI algorithms predict demand patterns, ensuring that the right parts are available when needed, reducing lead times and costs. Service Contracts: The management of service contracts becomes seamless with SLM, providing a unified platform to create, manage, and renew service agreements. AI-powered analytics can identify upsell opportunities and recommend personalized contract options based on historical data and usage patterns. Recalls and Auditing: SLM ensures a rapid response to product recalls by efficiently tracking affected units and managing the entire recall process. Advanced analytics aids in auditing, ensuring compliance with industry regulations and providing a comprehensive overview of service processes. Supplier Recovery: SLM facilitates collaboration with suppliers by streamlining communication, order processing, and performance tracking. AI analyzes supplier data to identify potential risks, enabling organizations to proactively address issues and maintain a reliable supply chain. Service Quality: Continuous improvement is at the core of SLM, as it enables organizations to monitor and enhance service quality. AI-driven analytics identify patterns in customer feedback, allowing companies to address issues promptly and refine their service offerings. Final Thoughts Service Lifecycle Management is a game-changer in the aftermarket services landscape, fostering seamless and connected experiences for both businesses and customers. The integration of AI and Advanced Analytics adds an extra layer of intelligence, enabling organizations to not only meet but exceed customer expectations. As industries evolve, embracing SLM becomes imperative for those aiming to stay ahead in the competitive market, delivering unparalleled post-sales support and solidifying customer loyalty. Tavant SLM solution is a comprehensive solution suite comprising of products and services designed to empower manufacturing ecosystem by simplifying and streamlining service lifecycle management processes.
Blockchain – An Emerging Trend in Warranty Management
Warranty providers today are still dealing with the three critical challenges of the industry: protecting against fraudulent claims, detecting counterfeit products, and deciding on the status of coverage. Businesses are becoming increasingly complex with more vendors, dispersed manufacturing facilities, new distribution channels, and disruptive business models to make matters worse. It’s small wonder then that the processing and administration costs of warranty keep on rising. A study[1] by IBM found that in the electronics industry, only one-third of the warranty costs go towards repair or replacement of defective goods, with two-thirds being spent on processing and administration. There is a dire need to find better ways of managing warranties to keep costs from rising steadily. Technology has always provided us with solutions to address these problems in the past, so will it come to the rescue again? Well, it looks like a solution may already be around the corner, based on an emerging technology called blockchain, which originally evolved to enable decentralized transactional data sharing across large networks of untrusted participants, and is based on the concept of a distributed public ledger. Such a distributed ledger technology (DLT) could also be used to track-and-trace parts throughout the supply chain with a complete history of events related to the part. This capability would help in addressing all the three key warranty challenges mentioned above. Since the blockchain-based public ledger is accessible everywhere, warranty providers would be able to validate the claim and the warranty status at any point in the warranty management process in order to make quick decisions. Also, using the track-and-trace capability of the ledger, they could readily trace the manufacturer of the item, helping them get the repair or replacement process started immediately. The extensive history of the part available would also make decisions on claims easy for the manufacturer. Once the complete lifecycle of a part is available through a trusted public ledger, it would be possible to see the exact time and place of manufacture, note when the part transited through the warehouses of the distributor or supplier, check when it showed-up in the seller’s inventory, and find out when and to whom it was finally sold. This detailed traceability would make it very easy to detect counterfeits, which would fail to show the expected transition history through the supply chain of authorized manufacturers, distributors, and sellers. Thus, blockchain-based systems would make the whole warranty management workflow much faster, simpler, and fraud-resistant, drastically reducing administrative and processing costs. A welcome side-effect of a transparent, fast, and efficient claim-handling process would be enhanced customer experience. Thus, blockchain technology could ultimately have a direct bearing on customer satisfaction and brand health while cutting down costs and improving the provider’s bottom-line. Don’t get too excited yet, though; this technology is still at the proof-of-concept stage in most industries with very few production deployments. However, the applicability of the technology to warranty management is pretty certain. It is just a matter of time before solutions using blockchain get proven, and as we have already discussed above, they will not only address the issues of fraudulent claims, counterfeit parts, and unclear warranty status, but will also increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs by making the claim-handling process fast, fair, and fail-safe. Therefore, if you are a warranty provider, get ready as a blockchain-based innovation is coming soon to a warranty solution near you. Want to Explore More? To gain valuable insights into how the latest innovations can help you stay ahead of the market, register for our webinar with a guest speaker from IDC, on September 10, where we discuss the latest innovations transforming warranty management. [1]IBM: Powering warranty reinvention (https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/D6QBER28)
Lifetime Warranty—a Timeless Opportunity?
Starman and his Tesla Roadster became the first automotive satellite of the sun when they were launched into space, as part of the payload, during SpaceX’s “Falcon Heavy” test flight. Based on the distance Starman has covered, the warranty on his Tesla has expired long ago. According to [i]whereisroadster.com, Starman’s Roadster has exceeded its 36000-mile warranty more than 13,000 times over in the past year. Should Starman have taken a lifetime warranty on his Roadster? Well, it depends, since “lifetime” warranties are most often “limited” warranties, and the definition of “lifetime” varies widely. Definitions range between the true lifetime of the product, the period when the product is owned by the first buyer, the period till the point that the production and sale of the specific version or model are stopped, and other narrower definitions. Marketing gimmick or reality? Longer warranties do seem to have become a competitive weapon in numerous industries. Some companies—Midas being a very well-known example—have actually built their whole brand around this concept, and have been very successful. But do customers really get benefitted? It seems they do. As a popular Warranty magazine[1] puts it: “In June 2009, the Detroit News reported that Rachel Veitch of Orlando FL was still driving her yellow 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente, with 557,000 miles on the odometer and counting. Over the past 45 years, she has taken advantage of numerous lifetime warranties. Veitch is on her seventh Midas muffler, and thank you, gentlemen, for the lifetime warranty,” writes the author of the article, reporter Neal Rubin. “She’s had three sets of Sears shock absorbers, also through a lifetime warranty. And though the number seems high, she claims to have had 16 free batteries, courtesy of J.C. Penney and Firestone.” The complex nature of lifetime warranties Lifetime warranties present challenges in the area of cost and pricing models since it is very difficult to predict events over such long time spans. What makes things even more complex is the fact that different types of products have significantly different failure patterns in the long term. Digital products, for example, have very few moving parts, and therefore have a front-loaded failure pattern. If they do not fail early in their lifetime, they may have a relatively failure-free lifetime. Industrial machinery on the other hand, with lots of moving parts, suffer constant wear and tear, and the rate of failure usually increases over time. Due to these uncertainties, some OEMs are transferring the warranty reserve burden for lifetime warranties to franchisees and partners. Other forms of warranties, like the third party extended warranties, service contracts, and labor warranties, are also being used to transfer the warranty risks away from OEMs while still providing customers the peace of mind that they seek. Another interesting development is the advent of ‘Digital Twins’. The data and intelligence obtained from digital twins may soon allow us to get much better predictive models, making it easier to design long-term warranty offerings. In conclusion, though lifetime warranties can be used as a differentiator for competitive advantage and customer loyalty, they can also often be very complex, due to the ambiguity around the terms of such warranties and the difficulties in arriving at reasonable cost and pricing models. It is wise to ensure that such offerings are backed by in-depth analysis and strategic intent. To gain valuable insights into challenges around developing cost and pricing models for lifetime warranties, and how technology can help you stay ahead of the market, please come and listen to our speakers at the WCM conference 2019. [i] https://www.whereisroadster.com/
Re-invent Dealer Experience with AI Platform
The automotive and automotive aftermarket industries are some of the oldest and most established industries. Historically, these industries have faced less disruption than their equally-established counterparts. But aftermarket industry as a whole is drastically affected by several major disruptions, in particular, digitization, shifting competitive dynamics, and changing consumer preferences. And, unlike other sectors, it is changing faster, and the shift has been dramatic. First, new players are beginning to enter the automotive market and established companies have been changing their business models – a trend that is expected to continue in the future. When it comes to consumer preferences, millennials are less interested in car ownership while stricter regulations on emissions are giving rise to electric vehicles. Additionally, with the sudden expansion of next-gen technologies such as AI, IoT, cloud computing, and human-machine interfaces, the automotive aftermarket is facing a wide range of challenges. Some challenges faced by enterprises today in the aftermarket industry include: Aftermarket processes suffer from high latency and lagged response due to legacy and disjointed systems, Lack of customer analytics across channels Increasing regulatory, quality and environmental compliance needs Long cycle time for ‘detection to correction’ in case of issues to be resolved Revenue leakage to spurious spare parts in the market Lack of feedback system for gauging the effectiveness of change management, warranty management Legacy systems are not enabling the customer to do self-service Yet, along with these challenges, warranty management remains one of the industry’s most important and imperative issues. Auto manufacturers and their dealers must leverage an effective warranty management system to win and retain customers. Adopting a few important approaches can help businesses address these challenges, optimize their warranty costs, and enhance their customer experience. Consolidate warranty systems & processes Build extensive validations into the claims entry processes to capture accurate and consistent claims data to manage entitlement verification, pre-warranty authorization, claims verification, and approvals automatically. An efficient and streamlined claims process is important to automate warranty management. Instead of maintaining several systems, centralize all aspects of warranty management including analytics, registration, claims, part returns, and supplier recovery. An integrated system that provides a single view of all information will undeniably cut down duplicate manual efforts and also improve the data consistency. Minimize repeat part returns to reduce warranty cost Companies should only request returns if they need to perform failure analysis or drill down the trends in consumption to proactively identify future problems. For this, it is crucial to automate your supplier claim process to: Decrease the amount of time from failure to claim Minimize the corrective action cycle to avoid continuing to manufacture defective products Reclaim more warranty costs faster from a broader base of suppliers Create a more credible and cleaner supplier claim data Promote supplier collaboration in cut down warranty costs Improve Warranty, Quality, and Reliability Analysis Gaining good failure data from customers, dealers, and distributors will enable brands to enhance product quality and recover a higher percentage of warranty costs from suppliers. Businesses need to analyze warranty data to identify and address emerging issues and factors contributing to warranty costs. Also, to prevent further warranty failures, organizations need to monitor key warranty metrics such as warranty as a percentage of revenue, cost per unit (CPU) Incorporate warranty management into your analytics and decision support systems Managing a warranty in a reactive mode is no longer adequate in today’s digitalized manufacturing industry, which is under a lot of pressure from evolving customers’ expectations. Companies need to react to customer demand more efficiently, and for this, they need to have proactive warranty management to make an analytics-driven decision in three significant areas, such as: Issue prediction, detection, and warning Warranty and accrual forecasting Service parts demand management and service contract optimization Based on this data, organizations can anticipate emerging issues and determine potential recall, predict future warranty costs, scrupulously forecast spare parts demand, and subsequently, plan inventory and production accordingly. Build customer experiences from meaningful insights Businesses must integrate the customer data, store the information in place and keep it integrated for a personalized experience to delight their customers. Get a unified 360-degree view of your data to enrich personalization, segmentation, behavior analysis, and loyalty programs to improve your customer experiences. The Road Ahead: The digital transformation can lead to a significant opportunity for aftermarket businesses to streamline their operations. It can be done by shedding non-value-adding functions and unlocking capital from redundant infrastructure while taking in a broader service portfolio that contributes to better margins. The task of optimizing controls on warranty spend is daunting. The needs of the dealer as well as customer experience, both are of paramount importance at every stage. However, leveraging an intelligent aftermarket platform, organizations can realize a significant reduction in warranty costs, increase operational efficiency while improving product quality and customer satisfaction. Reshape business with AI Our customized warranty solution with its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities can help you increase aftermarket revenues, calculate accurate warranty pricing – as well as manage claims and warranty reserves. Tavant Warranty On-Demand is an AI-powered enterprise warranty platform offered on the Salesforce cloud. The on-demand platform offers end-to-end warranty lifecycle management and is the only solution of its kind on the force.com platform. It provides cross-functional integrations with legacy and ERP systems for data consistency and integrity and enables organizations to reduce warranty costs, increase supplier recovery, and improve aftermarket efficiency. Want to Explore More? To gain better insights and to learn how to optimize your warranty cost mail us at [email protected].
Why ‘Repeat’ Customer is the King
Post-sale services aim to create and reinforce positive brand image in the minds of customers. They are an essential component of the strategy to retain existing customers. Depending on the industry and customer demography, acquiring new customers can be 6-10 times costlier than keeping existing ones. A significant factor influencing the customer’s decision-making process is the ease of access to post-sale services and how promptly the current company has honored the warranties of the purchased product or service. Unreasonably long service time, or prolonged disruptions to the customer business or daily life due to faulty products, leaves a negative impact on the customer. As manufacturers consider post-sale services, the warranty is often viewed as a cost center, resulting in below par post-sale service offerings. Warranty Systems to the Rescue Warranty claims processing systems act as an essential enabler in achieving the post-sale service objective by providing the following benefits. 1. Self Service: By leveraging customer warranty portals, the end customer can clearly determine the current warranty status of the product and the extent of coverage, thereby enabling the customer to approach the correct post-sale service provider for resolution, saving both time and money. 2. Hassle-Free Warranty Claims: Simplicity in submitting and processing a claim, maximum automation in claims processing by using a business rules engine, and auto-detection of coverage and claims eligibility vastly reduce claim processing time, enabling service providers to provide post-sale services to the end customer efficiently and within a set time frame. 3. No Ambiguity in Claims Processing: As the claim processing is driven by an automated set of business rules, clear and non-ambiguous reasons are provided when a claim is rejected, thereby reducing the chances to create a negative brand image in the mind of the consumer. 4. Recall Campaigns: Warranty systems enable efficient handling and implementation of product recall campaigns. This allows customers to get defective products fixed free of cost, before experiencing a failure, which reduces the risk of the customer having a bad experience with the product, resulting in a positive brand image in the mind of the customer. 5. Maintenance/Service Contracts: Service contracts enforce periodic maintenance and overhaul of the products, thereby extending the product life and performance parameters over an extended period. 6. 360-Degree Visibility: Warranty systems provide complete visibility of the service life-cycle to the customer, enabling the customers to know and predict the exact time frame in which the products will be serviced, allowing them to assess the corresponding business impact accurately. A Happy Customer Is a Repeat Customer Seamless post-sale services, along with minimum disruption in the daily life or business of a customer, add to the positive product experience. An integrated warranty claims management system plays an integral part in re-enforcing a positive brand image in the minds of customers. Considering warranty cost as a necessary expense to retain existing customers will bring a change in manufacturers’ mindset, encouraging them to build a robust post-sale services offering. Tavant at Automotive Warranty Management Conference 2018 Tavant is excited to sponsor the Automotive Warranty Management Conference and showcase our enterprise warranty solution, Tavant Warranty On-Demand, offered on the Salesforce Cloud. To experience precision and quality in aftermarket warranty, connect with our warranty experts today and schedule your PERSONALISED DEMO!
How Can Salesforce Magic Transform Digital Customer Experience?
Businesses are in a constant struggle to improve agility and reduce costs. Organizations are looking to unlock the power of data for better customer management and great customer experiences to improve efficiency and increase productivity. Companies that are reluctant to put the customer first will surely strive for relevance in an increasingly competitive market. Moreover, they will also be threatened by the growing number of businesses that are leveraging customer experience to drive loyalty and adoption of their products. Needless to say, organizations must reinvent the power of customer experience in the era of the connected customer and need to embrace the customer-obsessed culture and create a single view of their customer. They should be able to understand their customers, resolve their queries, and anticipate their future need and understand the paramount value of following their customer’s point of view. However, for an organization to gather information on its customers in order to facilitate better a working relationship can be a daunting task. Salesforce makes it easier for businesses to sell more and grow. Benefits of CRM A CRM solution helps you focus on your organization’s relationships with individual people — including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers — throughout your lifecycle with them, including finding new customers, winning their business, and providing support and additional services throughout the relationship. Here’s how a CRM system can help your business today. Make direct improvement to the bottom line Adding a CRM platform to the business has demonstrated real results – including direct improvements to the bottom line. CRM applications have a proven track record of boosting: Sales by up to 37% Sales Productivity by up to 44% Forecast accuracy by 48% Recognize and classify leads A CRM system can enable you to identify, add new leads quickly, efficiently and categorize them accurately. By focusing on the right leads, sales teams can formulate the opportunities that will close deals, and marketing can classify leads that require more nurturing and prepare them to become quality leads. Boost high-quality referrals from your existing customers Understand your customers better and drive cross-selling and upselling opportunities and win new business from existing customers. Provide Better Customer Support Customers expect real-time responses and interactions at every level. A CRM system helps you to offer the superior quality service that customers are searching. Improve Product & Services An efficient CRM system gathers information from multiple sources across your business and beyond. It gives you unprecedented insights into how your customers feel and what they are speaking about your organization — so you can revamp what you offer, recognize issues early, and identify gaps. Tavant will be showcasing Tavant Warranty On-Demand and FinLeads at the Dreamforce 18. FinLeads is the mortgage industry’s first customer engagement and acquisition platform. It drives and automates a streamlined prospect funnel management process that helps engage prospects, educates them, qualifies them, and accelerates their transition from lead to customer. It integrates the omnichannel engagement across digital assets owned, third-party sources, call centers, and field operations. It brings together the best sources of industry data and leverages an intelligent algorithm to inform how the acquisition journey should be personalized for customers and recommends and automates next best engagement actions. It supports multiple lines of business (Wholesale and Retail). TWOD– Tavant Warranty On-Demand, our enterprise warranty solution offered on the Salesforce Cloud, combines our warranty solution expertise with industry best practices. Tavant has experience of over a decade of working with leading customers to develop and implement enterprise-class warranty solutions. The On-Demand solution offers end-to-end warranty lifecycle management and is the only solution of its kind on Force.com platform. If you are looking to implement a world-class warranty solution without investing heavily in infrastructure or the resources required to deploy & maintain the solution at your own premises; our on-demand solution is tailor-made for you. Want to explore more? Meet our Tavant experts at Dreamforce 18 to learn how to unlock your sales and revenue potential, just say [email protected] to schedule a meeting.
Decoding 5 Key Digital Technologies Reshaping the Agriculture Industry
According to a 2015 report from the McKinsey Global Institute, agriculture is the least digitized industry; far behind healthcare, hospitality, and construction. Conquering agricultural challenges need to break through the weakest link of the food chain by using technology, with digitization as a keystone. In recent years, technology in agriculture, which is also termed as AgTech has drastically changed the agriculture industry. The digital agribusiness is undeniably real, and it’s here to stay. Digital will play a vital role in the agricultural value chain by providing targeted information, data-driven decisions, and recommendations, access to sustainable practices and finance opportunities. How do we do it? Organizations must adapt to survive and thrive People in the industry—farmers, food producers—must embrace the digital transformation trends in agriculture. By leveraging digital technology as a sustainable and scalable resource, organizations can take agriculture to new heights, keeping farm to fork in our future. The overall food production needs to double in a relatively short duration, to support the growing world population. Digitization in the agribusiness sector significantly increases the ability to feed the rapidly growing world population sustainably. Aware but unsure Research shows 90% of CEOs strongly believe that the digital economy will have a significant impact on the agriculture industry; however less than 15% are funding and executing on the plan. It’s fortunate that digitization is helping to connect agricultural concerns across the globe. But what does the future of farming look like? A few significant AgTech trends that are shaping the agriculture industry currently: Artificial Intelligence and robots Agriculture is slowly becoming digital and AI in agriculture is emerging in three major categories, (i) Agricultural robotics (ii) Soil and crop monitoring (iii) Predictive analytics. AI is bringing a revolution to the agriculture sector. Farmers are using AI technologies for sowing seeds using drones, soil mapping, and commodity pricing. Robots will soon be automating many farming processes and take over tasks such as weeding, fertilizing, seeding, or pruning plants. AI helps bring down the operational costs in farms, by reducing dependence on manual labor and allows agronomic expertise to make data-driven decisions. Use of robotics helps in reducing the use of harmful chemicals and contributes towards eco-friendly practices. Soil and crop monitoring by robotics helps in early identification of pest or disease attack and helps contain the damage and treatment costs. Blockchain Blockchain technology will also be a focus in the coming days. It is possible to have real-time monitoring of supply chain leveraging blockchain, and there will be more transparency in agricultural transactions. It is vital for both farmers as wells as consumers: it allows farmers to negotiate better prices throughout the supply chain while enabling consumers to have confidence in the knowledge of precisely from where the produce they buy comes. It is an essential aspect when considering the growing lack of trust in the sourcing of produce sold in markets. Analytics The agriculture sector is innately complex with a wide variety of crops, geographic environments, and climates. This industry has always been loaded with data but scattered across various channels; however, this is changing, and organizations have started unleashing the power of data and analytics. Organizations are now working with farmers to enable them to use data to better plan seeding, management, and harvesting. By making use of sophisticated computer algorithms to evaluate decades of the crop as well as weather data, these days farmers can easily predict crop yields with surprising accuracy, before planting a single seed. Internet of Things The Internet of Things (IoT) is allowing data-driven intelligent agriculture. Intelligent farming using the Internet of Things will enable farmers to reduce waste and enhance productivity significantly, ranging from the amount of fertilizer utilized to the number of journeys the farm vehicles have made. IoT can help in gathering real-time analytical data and take faster commercial decisions. Sensors Recent estimates indicate that in 2025 the global market value of agricultural sensors will reach 288.3 million dollars – a vast increase from its value in 2016 at 99.3 million. Farmers are increasingly using sensors and soil sampling to gather data, and this data gets stored in the farm management system that allows for better processing and analysis. Using sensors to collect data about crops – water requirements, humidity, soil temperature, etc. – is on the rise. Sensors in the field measure soil and weather conditions such as humidity, temperature, and livestock data, while sensors on farming equipment give real-time insight into yield and quality parameters. Agribusiness leaders are learning how to leverage these technologies to: • Increase farming efficiency • Enhance customer experience • Create transparent and sustainable food supply chains • Implement new, sustainable business models • Manage market and price volatility • Engage with the right partners in business networks Connect businesses to the world of agriculture, and the world of agriculture to your business Digital technologies and analytics are transforming agriculture, making a farm’s field operations more insight-driven and efficient. Digital-based farm services are helping to improve business performance and boost yield. Tavant has combined digital technologies such as the Internet of Things with AI capabilities, analytics and its in-depth industry knowledge to help farmers increase their productivity and profitability. • A global digital agriculture company increased the productivity of growers and turned data into actionable insights leveraging Tavant’s AgriTech solution. • One of America’s premier agribusiness and food companies improved processes, boosted their yield, increased profitability, and enhanced customer experience by using Tavant’s AgriTech solution. Want to learn more? You are just a step away. We would be glad to arrange a meeting with you. E-mail us at [email protected] for more information.
How Mobile Solutions Can Reduce Warranty Costs
As technology advances every day, so do customers’ expectations from manufacturers. To be competitive and to survive in the market, manufacturers must provide improved solutions with lower costs. These goals can be achieved through mobility solutions. 1. Maintenance of Accurate Data Unavailability of exact product and customer information is a major challenge in the warranty industry. Mobile solutions help in capturing that exact data. Field service personnel can visit the customer site and capture the proper customer address, contact information, usage details, and service information. Maintenance of proper data helps in providing the correct coverage and maintenance, which in turn, helps to reduce warranty costs. Proper data also gives insights about warranty problems. 2. Lower Transit Time Field inspectors visiting the customer site can check machinery, perform the repair at the customer site, and update the problems directly from the mobile. The warranty team can start working on the case immediately. This reduces delays between various departments, speeds up the process and reduces the warranty costs. 3. Improved Process Mobile solutions help in reducing paperwork. When using a manual process involving paperwork, there’s a chance valuable data could be missed. Mobile solutions help in avoiding duplicate entries and important data cannot be missed since everything is maintained electronically. Regular reminders are sent to dealers, contractors, and field inspectors. This improves the overall warranty process, which in turn reduces the total cost. 4. Real-Time Connectivity Mobility solutions help in managing the process from any location. GPS monitors can be integrated with a vehicle to track its location. Telematics help to monitor the driving pattern of the vehicle, which reduces fraudulent claims and parts and service costs. It also helps to identify failures earlier, which helps to increase warranty cost savings later. 5. Increased Productivity Mobility solutions provide an option for employees to contribute to business process even while not at the office, which increases productivity. For example, the warranty processes like Warranty Registration, Arrival Condition Report, and Inspection can be done during installation/delivery from the customer site itself. The warranty team can start working on the claims immediately. This helps in improving productivity, thereby reducing warranty costs.
Reasons Why Extended Warranties Are a Must
In 2016, $23 billion on protection plans and $17 billion on vehicle service contracts were spent by consumers on appliances, mobiles, electronic appliances and computers1. Extended warranties are one of the largest businesses in the U.S. How is an extended warranty beneficial to a customer and why should they opt for one? By ‘mobiles’ I think you mean smartphones, but we don’t say that in the U.S. Is that what you meant? When you want to keep your vehicle for a longer period of time: When we like our vehicle, we want to keep it for a longer period of time. An extended warranty helps by providing warranty coverage beyond the warranty tenure to help maintain the vehicle for a longer period. An extended warranty or vehicle protection plan helps to keep the vehicle running smoothly and hassle-free. Repairs are more costly than having an extended warranty on the vehicle: Repair bills on a vehicle can often be very costly. Service appointments are also tiresome and inconvenient. The more you drive your vehicle, the more you will pay for maintenance costs and you run the risk of more repairs. Having an extended warranty saves you money in the long run. Customer satisfaction through peace of mind: The most important aspect of an extended warranty is peace of mind. Owners pay a little more to have an extended warranty, but one of the main benefits of warranties outweighs the cost: peace of mind. That peace of mind assures owners that any needed repairs will be covered. Purchase options: Most consumers mistakenly believe an extended warranty must be purchased only from the dealer or the OEM for a vehicle — not true. Owners can purchase extended warranties from other companies that offer more competitive warranty terms. Consumers can analyze different coverage plans and shop for the one that best suits their needs. Coverage options: There are companies today that offer options to purchase an extended warranty even after the original warranty has expired for the vehicle. Owners are not compelled to buy an extended warranty only for the vehicles for which the warranty is going to expire. Owners have the option to purchase extended warranties for the vehicles for which the warranties have expired. Based on the owner’s needs, the owner can opt for better coverage that suits his requirements. Sometimes, the extended warranty is never used. Buying an extended warranty is similar to health insurance, which we might never need, but we all know that “precaution is better than a cure”. In cases of a large repair bill, an extended warranty acts as a savior and covers all the expenses. We’re listening. Have something to say about this blog post? Share it with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. OR Please add your thoughts, ingenious analysis and novel strategies in the comments section below. We look forward to hearing from you. Meet our AfterMarket experts at Warranty Chain Management conference, WCM 2018 in San Diego from March 6-8, Booth 11. References: http://www.jdpower.com/cars/articles/tips-advice/pros-and-cons-buying-extended-warranty-car
Reverse Logistics Function – A Strategic Review
It’s June, the end of the planting season of the corn crop (i.e., one of the crops contributing to most of the farm incomes in the United States and our client), and a farm equipment manufacturer is loaded with a lot of warranty cases for repairs of its farm equipment. The timeline to deal with these warranty repairs is a few weeks before the harvesting season in October — when the manufacturer’s customers are expecting the defective farm equipment (for which he raised a service request for repair) to be up and running. If you closely look into the problem, there are a lot of things that should have been taken care of by the manufacturer before the planting season, even before planning the sales of its farm equipment for the year. The diagnostic areas for our client, the manufacturer, could be the development of a robust dealer network to deal with warranty repairs in locations near to the concentration of large farms, availability of technical expertise in dealerships to repair the high-tech farm equipment unserviceable by technicians without special training; logistics and technology capability for part returns to cater to the high seasonal demand; and above all, the customer service centers to ensure the process of a repair request to delivery of the farm equipment back to the customer location is smooth and hassle free, to prevent the farm owner from having second thoughts when he considers buying farm equipment from you next time. These are just broader areas of concern in reverse logistics. If you delve deeper, there are other problems — unpredictable demands that may eat into profits of any big organizations if not handled well, like the geographical separation of the supplier network; transportation and labor costs; recalls; disposition strategies of the returned goods; and government regulations affecting the reverse logistic functions, to name a few. The reverse logistics look more complex, and are more an area of concern as compared to the forward logistics, which are more organized and also a part of planned strategies of any organization in the business of manufacturing, selling, storing, distributing and servicing its goods. Historically, reverse logistics is one area that is often an overlooked and disorganized function of any manufacturing organization. But not anymore. For the organization that does not have a planned strategy for reverse logistics, the trends of its financial performance and market share may be a gloomy picture. Statistics show how “Reverse logistics—the management of returned and recyclable goods” is, in fact, an important business activity. It is more expensive than expected, costing companies approximately US $100 billion per year in the United States alone. Costs associated with returned goods can be anywhere from 8 percent to 15 percent of a company’s top line. In fact, the cost of processing a return can be two to three times that of handling the original outbound shipment. Product returns exact a toll not only on a company’s financial performance but also on its image and sales. A major recall done by any automotive company can spread the negative sentiment about the company brand image like wildfire. So, the way of the future is looking at reverse logistics as more of a strategic and diagnostic tool to differentiate from competitors. The strategic approach demands strong infrastructure backed with the technological capability to have data visibility throughout the reverse logistics cycle. Big data and predictive analytics can be used to make important strategic decisions in network planning and cost optimizations. Many organizations have chosen to outsource their reverse logistics function completely to optimize cost. But choosing a third-party service provider is a big decision, before which a company needs to understand its current returns flows, identify the total cost of returns, profile the end-to-end returns, and quantify and categorize its return flows. The diagnostic tool approach demands looking at the root cause analysis of failures in logistics and manufacturing, recalls, and repairs to come up with metrics of predictive analytics and performance management that can identify areas of risk, improvement, and performance in both the forward and reverse logistics. The reverse logistics function should be viewed more as a profit center than a cost center. Companies should develop a financial framework to look at all financial transactions in the reverse supply chain and map them to the P & L and cash flow statements. Last but not the least, performance management of the reverse logistics functions using key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to ensure that the function is performing consistently and is in line with the strategic planning of the organization is important. Financial KPIs can include return costs as a percentage of sales, return processing costs by category/channel/supplier, shipping costs, inventory levels and carrying costs, and write-offs. Sources: http://www.supplychainquarterly.com/topics/Strategy/201201reverse/ http://www.supplychain247.com/article/managing_reverse_logistics_to_improve_supply_chain_efficiency_reduce_costs/fedex_supply_chain Meet our Warranty Experts at Booth #11, WCM Conference 2018 to learn more! 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