The Ultimate Productivity Tool: The Unified Desktop

From Job Satisfaction to Better Business Intelligence – The Desktop Brings It Together

By Randy Saunders at Cincom Systems

Fundamentally, people enjoy being good at their jobs, and they enjoy being provided with the means to do their jobs well. Knowledge empowers the smart agent, and ready access to appropriate information for each customer makes the challenge of a diverse customer base much more manageable and enjoyable for front-line employees. Job satisfaction is closely tied to the ability to understand and execute the tasks at hand, and the unified desktop is an important tool for employee empowerment.

Routine customer-service interactions may require agents to interact with five, 10 or even 15 or more systems. Much of the time, these systems are ignorant of one another, requiring agents to log on each time they access a new system. This requires customer data to be re-keyed with each new program, each with its own unique interface that must be learned and mastered over time.

The only way agents can be productive and meet their performance and satisfaction targets is to understand the slate of tools at their disposal. As a result, companies that persist in relying on multiple disconnected agent applications on the desktop condemn themselves to lengthy, complex agent training practices that must touch on each and every application, documenting all of the use cases, dependencies, and quirks of each one. This is expensive and time-consuming. The alternative, skimping on agent training, leads to wasted time, increased escalation, and lower customer satisfaction.

Unifying the agent experience into a single, consistent desktop takes the complexities out of the training process and job performance. By promoting a single, browser- and tab-based approach that is widely understood by computer-literate professionals, enterprises can streamline the agent education process, making it easier to bring new agents online without spending weeks in technical training. Cutting out lectures on green-screen etiquette also frees up more time for value-boosting activities, such as cross-selling briefings and product education. Simplification equates to higher job performance and satisfaction.

Productivity Beyond the Contact Center

Bringing the entire contact center in sync with the same customer-service desktop has a significant benefit for management reporting and understanding as well. Because all agents have the same tools and techniques at their fingertips, meaningful, apples-to-apples comparisons between all of the agents on the service force are possible. Other metrics, such as customer cost-to-serve and cost-per-sale, are also free of distorting variables.

Management is also more clearly able to see the impact of call resolution because call closure procedures are uniform, no matter what back-end functionality comes into play during the course of the call. Compare that to a contact center using several customer-service desktop tools, where post-call procedures may differ by application and involve inconsistent closure status codes, or not even offer the same abilities to record the status of the inquiry and the customer’s post-call disposition. A consistent view into post-call activity makes understanding customer lifecycle and retention trends much easier.

The universal desktop view also makes it considerably easier for constituencies such as sales, marketing, and finance to understand the customer-service business processes at play and tailor their own activities accordingly. Marketing and the contact center, for instance, can quickly find themselves at odds if customer campaigns are launched when the support staff is not prepared for an increase in call demand or the new requests that will be generated by customer response. When marketing and service can work together, using a common frame of reference provided by the universal desktop, such conflicts are far less likely. In fact, the thin-client accessibility of many available universal desktops enables employees and executives across the company to see the exact customer service experience, without the need to deploy additional programs or special access on the user’s desktop.

The concept of a “universal” desktop shouldn’t be mistaken with one that is inherently inflexible or ill-suited to a diverse work environment. On the contrary, the universal desktop concept is particularly well suited to diverse, complex working environments because the desktop view can be tailored to instantly adapt to the task at hand, whether categorized based on user role or access clearance, or the topic of the customer interaction. Universal desktops can be quickly configured to support multiple departments and customer campaigns simply by implementing rules that dictate how the desktop will appear to each user, all without requiring the user to change applications or even know what functionality they will need at any given time.

The More They Know, the More You Grow

Every aspect of modern business runs on information, and the contact center is the hub of knowledge flow, both into and out of the organization. Bringing sensible presentation and a unified view of critical business data to every agent desktop is a meaningful and critical way to rationalize the powerful yet uncoordinated applications that drive each and every customer touch, and improve client value at every opportunity.

Every touch in the contact center, whether inbound or outbound, represents a unique and immediate opportunity to extend and strengthen a customer relationship. Each interaction, whether it is a sale or a save situation, requires that your agents be prepared to respond quickly to the unique demands of the individual customer, and have the best decision support available. The universal desktop gives your organization the best chance to make the right decisions for customer satisfaction and profit growth, each and every time a customer interacts.

 

This article is an excerpt from the Cincom white paper “Grow Your Business: The Value of Knowledge in the Contact Center.”

 

High-value Manufacturers Need to Maximize Customer Ownership Experience

“Getting it right the first time is critical to the customer ownership experience – and a challenge for complex manufacturers.”

 

By Randy Saunders, Cincom Systems

 

Manufacturers of high-value capital equipment and their distributors recognize that the initial purchase of a complex industrial product is a fraction of what the customer will spend over the course of owning and operating that equipment. Over a product's 10- to 20-year lifespan, customers will rely on your service and warranty department's support to minimize downtime and keep their equipment performing.

 

Consistent and reliable customer service – the ability to “get it right the first time” – is critical to satisfying the ownership experience. Customers care nothing for the complexities that make delivering customer service in the manufacturing industry so different and more challenging than other areas. They don’t want excuses or delays. If the customer’s production line is at risk while waiting for a spare part or service, they demand immediate service. Manufacturers that meet these service expectations and challenges have an excellent competitive differentiator that can lead to winning new and repeat business.

 

The Nine Key Customer-Service Issues of Industrial Equipment Manufacturers

Manufacturers of complex equipment have many unique challenges when it comes to customer service. That's why most companies find that ordinary contact center software doesn't meet their needs and that they require a more specialized solution. Here we’ll consider nine of the key issues facing many complex manufacturers and what to look for in customer-service technology that will help you address these challenges.

 

1.       Segmenting and prioritizing high-value customers and projects - Every manufacturer has its top-revenue or profit-generating customers. Or maybe it's the customers with the greatest global potential, a specific project with a tight deadline or a pilot project with a highly desired account. For any number of reasons, you might want to make specific customers or projects a top or higher priority.
What to look for: “Most people leave a company because they feel they’re not treated well,” according to Arthur Hughes, author of “The Customer Loyalty Solution.” “They feel that, for some reason, they have been ignored or not treated properly. The ability to dynamically set priorities so that all interactions from your most critical accounts either go to the top of the queue or are always handled by your top service specialists is a critical first step to preventing this neglected feeling.”

 

2.       Complying with individual service level agreements (SLAs) by customer or even by project - Service-level management for customer support varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and is often one of the most critical and contentious elements of a contract. Some may have a single published service level, while others offer tiered service contracts with perhaps two or three levels of service. Or, individual service-level agreements may be customized by customer or even by project; an agreement may call for different service levels and different metrics for each product the customer buys. Needless to say, this can become very complex to manage in the contact center, magnified even more when there's a merger between companies or even a consolidation of divisions.
What to look for: One manufacturer has found that without a “single view” of the customer through a unified desktop, meeting specified service levels quickly became unmanageable. The ability to track and report on SLA performance metrics allows them to quickly and easily identify any problem areas, and to more precisely negotiate future contracts and SLAs.

 

3.       Supporting complex equipment that's routinely modified and reconfigured over a long production life - Over a product's 10- to 20-year life span, complex machinery is often reconfigured to address changing maintenance requirements or customer needs. Many times the discrepancies between a product's original configuration and its current configuration can be dramatic.
What to look for: One Midwest machine manufacturer had this very problem. Because its machines are highly specialized and have a long service life that may extend more than 20 years, each time a customer called, the service agent had to manually research the customer’s history to ensure that they received the correct part or service order. This led to much longer customer wait times than the company felt was acceptable. A unified agent desktop that automatically searched and displayed a complete profile and history enabled the company to respond quicker as well as measure and track customer interactions and transactions for improved productivity and reporting.

 

4.       Solving customer issues quickly - Most customer-service departments routinely access four or more different business applications to find an answer. Often this is because of existing databases or systems that are not able to collaborate across applications. Not only is this time-consuming for the service rep, the customer is waiting.
What to look for: A unified desktop that gives your service reps a 360-degree view of all pertinent customer information will enable them to improve first-call resolution and call-handling times. By delivering the right amount of back-end information to address the task at hand without toggling from system to system or drilling through information, the service rep’s time and effort is reduced and the customer experience enhanced. One manufacturer found that such a system enabled them to improve their call response time by 73%.

 

5.       Sharing customer and product knowledge across all reps - Duplication of efforts is frustrating for both service reps and customers alike and practically unavoidable when the systems don’t integrate across applications and stations.
What to look for: While it would be great if a customer could communicate with the same customer-service agent with every interaction, often this is not physically possible. However, it is possible to create a case management and contextual knowledge base that reps can tap into to resolve customer issues. Make sure the application can be configured to store any information about customer communication history, product issue-related events and status, and any product information such as operational and warranty/repair information.

 

6.       Consistent handling of customer requests through their communication channel of choice - Gone are the days when customers just picked up the phone to call customer service. Today, they may communicate using web forms, web-based live chat, e-mail or fax. On a single problem or issue, they may interact with your service center using a combination of all the above.
What to look for: The ability for service reps and engineers to manage, synchronize, and coordinate all customer interactions over multiple communication channels. So no matter how the customer interacts with the contact center, all communications are managed, queued, and tracked consistently. For example, the parts and services group at a large machine manufacturer uses a hosted application with multiple channel capabilities to interact by phone, e-mail and fax. They are able to view all previous interactions regardless of channel to get a complete view and status of any parts or service orders.

 

7.       Intelligently routing customer interactions to the best available service rep - All service reps are not created equal, and as every business will testify, not all customer interactions are of equal importance.
What to look for: The most successful contact centers are able to group service reps by skill level, geography, and familiarity with a specific customer, dealer, or project. This is especially true for complex manufacturers. The manufacturer mentioned above intelligently queues all customer interactions and then distributes the contact using skills-based routing to ensure a qualified rep handles each interaction. Additionally, if a customer needs to be escalated to a knowledge worker such as an engineer, you’ll want that knowledge worker to view the same history, case management, and resources so that you can have an uninterrupted, continuous conversation.

 

8.       Balancing the workload across all service reps and locations - A key to maximizing call center operations is to optimize the call distribution and level the workload by managing the interaction queue and routing all communications appropriately. What to look for: A web-based, hosted system that can route calls and present desktop views anywhere, giving you flexibility to manage high call volumes and leverage company experts at home or in other locations. This also provides a strong level of business continuity capability in the face of an emergency or other event that might otherwise impede service.

 

9.       Performing real-time measurements and reporting on your customer-service and warranty operation - In the pursuit of the continuous improvement required to remain competitive in today’s business, it is a necessity to be able to track, analyze and report on what's happening in the service center.
What to look for: Managers should have the ability to analyze critical service metrics including service-contract performance and profitability, up-to-the-moment service activity by customer, and actionable customer and business insight. Managers should also have the option to select from standard reports or create their own ad hoc reports. This has enabled the contact center manager of one manufacturer to track the number of quotes converted to purchases and provide detailed reports on results, helping to guide future actions.

 

Manufacturing experience delivers rapid ROI and implementation

The unique nature of industrial manufacturing and the common issues of multiple databases and applications often bring complexity to the contact center. Manufacturers looking for a customer-service and warranty communications system should look for a vendor that has experience in the manufacturing industry and understands their unique environment. They should expect to see examples or testimonials from existing installations that show measurable results in the following areas:

·          Improvements in service efficiency

·          Increases in parts and service revenue

·          Increases in new-equipment sales and replacement parts from new and returning customers

 

A recent trend in the industry is a move to hosted solutions. Hosted solutions can greatly streamline your implementation, minimize internal IT requirements, eliminate hardware investments, and reduce maintenance costs. With these advantages, you can reap the benefits of a robust customer-service application, with minimal risk.

 

Leverage What Works and Keep It Simple

Understanding the value of the agent desktop

By Randy Saunders | Cincom Systems

 

Increased and streamlined access to knowledge is a critical component of contact center modernization efforts, and it is certainly clear that the distractions and ambiguity created by too many applications on the agent desktop are a hindrance to the smooth flow of information. As a result, some vendors and consultants see a modernization effort as an invitation to “rip and replace” functional systems and architecture with a completely new, and in many cases, completely untested platform. The promise is a single-business operating platform.

 

What they sometimes deliver instead is an application that does far less than advertised, far later than was promised, and which in the final analysis, does not even work as well as the systems it purported to replace. In these scenarios, single sign-on is not achieved, and knowledge remains just as locked up and frustrated as it ever was. Even in best-case scenarios, the end result is no different than a coordination layer that acts to blend, unify, and synchronize the proven, time-tested systems that run your business today.

 

The universal desktop approach, on the other hand, acknowledges and honors the fact that the systems that run your business today do so for a good reason – they work. Whatever they may lack in front-end integration, at their functional core, they are the time-tested, battle-hardened programs that are tightly integrated into your everyday business. Taking them offline for the promise of a new application is a gamble, and more importantly it is a gamble most companies need not take at all. Valuable knowledge transfer can be promoted by building a common, unified front end to these valuable back-end systems using clearly defined web services standards.

 

One example of a company that successfully implemented a universal desktop with disparate back-end systems was a large cable company that provides several core consumer and business services, including high-speed internet access, digital cable, and digital telephony services.

 

Before the implementation, each product line had its own separate and unique groups of customer service agents, divided further into subgroups based on interaction channel. Each group used different systems, processes, and channels and lacked access to customer information outside the group. This structure not only created operational and financial inefficiencies, but inconsistent and time-consuming service led to customer dissatisfaction.

 

The company set out to reduce costs and increase operational efficiency while enhancing the customer’s experience. To do so, they wanted to test the feasibility of a “universal” agent capable of handling customer requests across all product lines and communication channels.

 

To validate and measure the universal agent concept and technology, the company designed a measured trial involving 75 agents across three call centers, including an outsourced group.

 

At the end of six months, the trial revealed the following results:

 

·          Shorter Training – Each training class was reduced by three weeks due to the system’s transparency, its navigation, and the ability to access multiple systems from a single interface. This resulted in a projected savings of more than $5 million per year. It also eliminated the need for retraining when back-end systems were consolidated. As the universal desktop provided system transparency, agents never knew that the data had moved to a different back-end system.

 

·          Increased agent satisfaction – Agents experienced a reduction in system and business-process complexity, leading to a projected reduction in attrition.

 

·          Faster log-ons – The system eliminated 10 minutes in system log-ons, which directly resulted in significantly lower handle times.

 

·          Improved business planning – Once the complete customer view was created, the ability to track trends and make business decisions improved.

 

Even better, the improved knowledge available to agents noticeably increased customer satisfaction. Customers received consistent and relevant help across all three product lines because agents better understood the customers’ histories and preferences.

 

The result of implementing a universal desktop with your existing systems provides the best of both worlds – an agent desktop built on the same key functionality that already powers your business, but delivered with the coordination and ease-of-use of a modern thin-client. Functionality need not be compromised, re-invented, or even taken offline during the transition. Such rapid system integration at the desktop means faster resolution at the customer level, and far less service interruption and migration time for the organization, all without the expense and tension of a “rip and replace” operation.

 

Go Fish for an Agent Desktop

Go Fish for an Agent Desktop Or 13 questions to ensure you get what you asked for

By Randy Saunders, Cincom Systems

 

When a customer is “on the line,” and your agent is “fishing” for the right information to respond to that customer, it might be a little bit like real-life fishing – but a lot more frustrating. The agent trawls for information, searching through billing, ordering, inventory, and a score of other applications, piecing together the appropriate information. This takes time and patience, just as fishing in the wrong place or with the wrong equipment or knowledge can be painstakingly slow and exasperating.

 

No Fishing Allowed

A unified agent desktop brings all of the right information – for and about each customer – directly to the agent’s desktop. No need to fish through murky backend systems, casting and recasting until you get a hit. With a unified agent desktop, the agent has a crystal-clear view of the customer – including their history, contact information, resources, and relevant applications.

 

Catch and Release

Your customers, just like fishing resources and all of our natural resources, are too valuable to be wasted. A unified agent desktop helps promote and preserve your customer base by treating them with care and efficiency.  Equipped with the necessary information, tools, and resources on the desktop, you can effortlessly reel in the customer with little to no pain (hold times/inadequate responses/repetitive input) and then release them happily into the market where they can advocate to other hungry customers about just how great their experience was.

 

Back to Go Fish – Make Sure You Get What You Asked for

So you’re convinced that you need a unified agent desktop, but you’re not sure of what to ask for. What capabilities should you look for? Should you consider hosted or on-premise? What is important to look for in a vendor?

 

Here are 13 questions to consider as you fish for the solution, and the vendor that is best for your organization.

 

1.       Are you making the proper presentation on the desktop?

 

Like the fly fisherman selecting the perfect lure to fool a finicky trout, you must present the right information at the right time for success. Look for a solution that can expose data from your legacy systems and silos of information, and present them in one desktop view. This universal view enables you to maximize your previous technology investments while providing all of the information your agents need to satisfy the customer’s request at the time of contact.

 

Some of the categories that should be accessible from the desktop include:

·          Contact management

·          Workflow

·          Legacy applications – billing, ERP, inventory, shipping, etc.

·          Resource and content management – intranets, websites, FAQs, decision trees, access lists, etc.

·          Knowledge management

·          Interaction management

·          Activity management – to manage customer issues from beginning to end through activity and task management

 

2.       Is the desktop dynamic and relevant? Does it adjust to provide the proper tools based on who is contacting you or the nature of the contact?

 

Matching your tactics and equipment to your situation is vital to success. You wouldn’t use a rod built for tuna to catch sardines. Similarly, your agents aren’t going to save much time if the desktop doesn’t automatically populate with the content that is relevant to the customer or interaction at hand. Look for an “identifier” capability such as a customer’s phone number, e-mail address, account number, or social security number that triggers a lookup of a complete, detailed history of the customer, and initiates the workflow and desktop content that puts everything at the agent’s fingertips. This also eliminates the need for customers to repeat contact information even when the contact is escalated to someone else.

 

3.       Does the desktop highlight information so that agents can easily find it?

 

Once you cast your bait out in the water, it can be difficult to tell what’s going on below the surface. That’s where a bobber can save the day. When it goes under, you know the most important information right away, and you can react. Today’s desktops can serve the same function, highlighting important information so that agents know what is going on.

 

Some applications do a better job than others at presenting information. Things to look for include:

·          Does the application present a universal view of the customer? Most do not. Sorting through various applications to find the correct information wastes time and aggravates the customer.

·          Does the application use pop-up windows or “folder tabs” to organize different information? Pop-up windows are tedious to navigate, requiring the agent to click multiple times and remember which window has the appropriate information. Folder tabs are comparatively much easier to navigate.

·          Can the application be customized to always present selected information to the agent? This is made more difficult, if not impossible, if the solution doesn’t utilize a universal view or folder tabs. If the solution utilizes multiple windows, it is likely that windows will eventually block each other and the necessary information.

 

4.       Can you see a total view of the customer across communication channels all within the single desktop (phone, fax, e-mail, web chat)?

 

Information is the key to learning and success. Much like today’s underwater cameras have unlocked mysteries locked in the deep with a complete unobstructed view, today’s desktop can provide a total view of the customer. To get the full benefit of the desktop, your customer touch points – voice, e-mail, fax, and chat – should be integrated. Without leaving the desktop, agents not only see current activity, they also get a complete picture of all of the customer’s previous contacts. This enables the agent to see a complete history of the customer’s communications and interactions with the company and allows them to act accordingly.

 

5.       How does the desktop present all of these legacy systems?

 

Fishing guides, like vendors, come in all shapes and sizes. Rarely is the one-size-fits-all variety a good choice, but each has its place. A dedicated fly angler won’t be happy with Johnny-the-worm-drowner as a guide and vice versa. Vendors also can have vastly different approaches to creating a unified agent desktop – some are more invasive than others. The “non-invasive” approach typically uses web services to present any web-enabled application to the desktop. If an application is not web-enabled (typically older, legacy systems), professional services work can get you there. If the desktop doesn’t support web services, expect a much larger integration and customization project for each application you need to access.

 

6.       To host or not to host? And is there a migration path from hosted to on-premise that’s licensed with the same desktop? If not, what are the differences?

 

It’s not uncommon for someone who is new to fishing to immediately buy armloads of expensive equipment before they understand how they will use it. Soon after, they find that the equipment they have chosen doesn’t suit their needs. That’s where careful research and just a little patience and experience could have saved them both money and aggravation. Many companies offer both hosted and on-premise licensed solutions. At first glance, this looks like a logical path for small and midsize businesses or departments – begin with the hosted option and then migrate to the licensed version after a proven ROI. But often the hosted and licensed solutions are not the same solutions, having completely different features, functions, and desktops. As a result, there is a less-than-linear migration path, with additional training and costs to move to on-premise. To ease migration, look for the same solution in both environments, and consider testing the waters with the hosted model.

 

7.       Can I still be operational if my center goes down or my agents can’t make it to the office?

 

Contrary to what some believe, fish will bite in the rain. The prepared angler – with a wind- and waterproof suit to protect against hypothermia – could experience some of the best fishing to be had. Similarly, your contact center has to be prepared to handle customers even when the weather turns bad, power goes out, or another emergency hits your location. A hosted option, where the software operates in a secure, remote location with 24/7 redundancy, minimizes your risk. Agents can access the system from anywhere with a high-speed internet connection whether that is from home, a hotel, or a satellite office. This provides two major advantages. One, in the event of an emergency or disaster, your agents (or your entire contact center) can relocate to safety and begin working as soon as possible. The second advantage is that because the agents can be located anywhere, you can hire the best possible candidate for the job.

 

8.       Can you be provided with company names and/or references from two current customers and one company that did not select your services?

 

Equipment failures on the water are a source of exasperation that can be eliminated with research. Ask experienced anglers and store clerks what they recommend. They are often more than willing to share what equipment they use (but probably not the location of their secret honey hole.) Likewise, established companies should be able to provide references of its capabilities. Additionally, it is wise to ask about lost businesses. Every company loses deals, and learning why could provide valuable insight to help you make a decision. It also is a good measure of how open the potential vendor is willing to be.

 

9.       What is the typical ROI? How long should it take to realize 100% return on investment?

 

How long will it take you to catch a fish? Well there are no guarantees that you’ll ever catch a fish – that’s why it’s called “fishing” and not “catching.” However, if a vendor has done its due diligence during the discovery process, they should have an in-depth understanding of your business and the areas where the unified desktop will impact your business. Using this custom data, they should be able to provide a quantifiable figure and timeline for reaching your break-even point. As a point of reference, ask for examples of the ROI of other implementations.

 

10.     What levels of product support are available?

 

After your implementation, you don’t want to be a fish out of water if you suddenly need assistance. Make sure that your vendor has a clear, established support infrastructure including escalation procedures. With your contact center on the line, 24/7 support is mandatory. Talk to existing customers to understand their experiences with the vendor’s support staff to ensure that you will have experienced and responsive product support.

 

11.     How long is a typical implementation?

 

When you hop on a boat for a fishing excursion, you typically have an idea of how long you plan to be to out there. Likewise, established companies should be able to provide a reasonable estimate and actual examples from past installations of the length of time required to implement the solution.  Typically, the more complex your environment – the more systems and applications you are presenting through the desktop, the complexity of workflows, and the number of customer channels being implemented – the longer the implementation. Spend the time upfront with your vendor meticulously planning the implementation and setting expectations within your organization.

 

12.    Are there reporting and analytics capabilities? Can you access real-time statistics as well as standard and customized reporting to build out in-depth business intelligence?

 

Other anglers could be quite reserved with information about what they are catching, where, and with what bait. Or they could just be lying. Fortunately, contact center reporting and analytics enable you to monitor and track communications to improve your customer service. Make sure that the vendor you select gives you the ability to query the database for the report that your business needs, not what the vendor determined ahead of time. Additionally, if you are considering a hosted solution or plan to utilize remote agents, ensure that you will have adequate reporting and real-time monitoring capabilities to effectively manage those agents.

 

13.    Has your preferred vendor been acquired or experienced a recent merger with another company?

 

Wildlife agencies are taking a much more proactive role in managing their resources. Because of this, regulations often vary from one body of water to another, or even within different spans of the same water. This puts the responsibility on the angler to make sure they know the regulations wherever they are that minute. Likewise, in the technology industry, recent mergers and acquisitions have resulted in wide disparity in the knowledge, experience, and service capabilities within these companies and their newly acquired or legacy solutions. Make sure that the vendor you plan to work with has the internal resources, longevity, and commitment to make your implementation a success.

 

Whether equipping yourself for fishing or for improving customer service in the contact center with a unified agent desktop, determine what you are really after, ask the right questions of the right people, and make the proper investments. Then you will be well on your way to productive days.  While no one solution will be a true one-size-fits-all, some solutions are dramatically more flexible than others. This can make a substantial difference later if your needs or desires change and you want to go after bigger fish in larger waters. Tight lines all!

Follow the Money . to Mass Customization

By Jim Wilson, program director, Cincom Systems.

 

A greater than 50 percent increase in demand for customized, complex, manufactured products is predicted over the next two years, according to a survey of U.S. engineers by software developer Cincom Systems.

 

But only about two-thirds of U.S. build-to-order and engineer-to-order manufacturers actually know how much it costs to produce each of their customized products, say those same engineers. Furthermore, almost three-quarters of those companies DON’T know the cost of engineering change orders - a fact of life in customized manufacturing. Thus, the study’s findings clearly indicate that many manufacturers are likely to incur significant losses in taking orders for customized products - even though for some companies, that’s where the greatest profit lies.

 

Market leaders in this field - the companies raking in those profits - are easily identified: They’re the ones that have a handle on this data. Furthermore, those companies that have already integrated back-office manufacturing and engineering configuration systems with front-office selling systems are positioned to jump on this predicted expansion and even further cement their places as leaders in this field.

 

So, the question arises: How can you make sure that you are on the bandwagon moving in the positive direction?

 

Product Customization - the Road to Growth

Product customization occurs across a wide range of products, even relatively low-cost ones. Almost all of the engineers surveyed said their companies’ ability to customize products that cost even less than $1,000 was “very important.” As might be expected, the more expensive the product, the more important was the ability to customize it. With products costing more than $100,000, the ability to customize was perceived as “critical” by a very large majority.

 

Furthermore, product customization enables their companies to increase prices at least 10 percent, said almost 60 percent of the engineers.

 

With all of these realized and potential advantages, customization may be a major savior of American manufacturing. However, finding that so few manufacturers know the true cost of customization leads one to wonder how much longer some of those companies will continue to even survive.

 

Mass Customization - the Road to Growth at Less Cost

With Mass Customization methods, customized products are created with production costs and prices similar to mass-produced products. So, the cost-reduction objectives of many companies’ managements, which usually mean reducing customization, are met along with customers’ needs for products that meet their individual requirements as well.

 

In addition, with Mass Customization, engineering finds itself less often in that precarious position between customers’ demands for (and willingness to pay for) customization and manufacturing’s (and management’s) pressures to reduce costs via greater product standardization.

 

Of course, Mass Customization requires a good deal of strategic planning and thinking, as well as close relationships with customers. To make Mass Customization result in a win-win outcome, customers are involved in product specification, requirements planning, and design and development.

 

Interestingly, more than 80 percent of the engineers surveyed said they were using customer collaboration in developing customized products, even though only a small minority employs specific Mass Customization strategies. The customer collaboration described by so many may be largely a form of collaborative design, but this trend can provide support for implementing Mass Customization strategies. So, it may be that many companies may already be on the road to Mass Customization. The question is whether they will reach the destination or be held up by roadblocks arising from their own unwillingness to re-chart their courses.

 

Barriers to Customization (and Overcoming Them)

Somewhat surprisingly, only half of the survey respondents said they use software to develop customized products. At the same time, between 40 percent and 55 percent said they did not have complete information to support service information, catalog information, selling systems, product development, and customer documentation/usage instructions. Furthermore, at a number of companies, this (often incomplete) information was not available until more than a month after a customized product was created or updated. A number of these problems could be solved by implementing readily available software solutions.

 

These information-flow difficulties are probably some of the greatest barriers to implementing successful customized manufacturing strategies, mass or otherwise. Overall, product complexity itself doesn’t prevent customization, according to the engineers surveyed. Rather, they said, it was customers’ lack of knowledge about options (67 percent) and the field’s similar lack of information (44 percent). In other words, survey respondents implied that most customization problems can be solved, but the people closest to those problems did not have enough information to realize this.

 

This study indicates that a disconnect exists between the back office and the front office that separates engineering and manufacturing from the selling system. As mentioned earlier, the relatively few companies that have integrated back-office with front-office systems report market leadership. Unfortunately, most companies surveyed do not fall into this category.

 

The solutions to overcoming these barriers are clear, but are not easy to implement because they require major changes in the often pyramid-shaped, silo-inducing ways current business organizations are structured. To increase competitive advantage, become a market leader, and essentially, survive and thrive as a U.S.-based manufacturer:

 

- Define strategy - such as Mass Customization - with metrics

- Align back-office and front-office systems

- Determine true costs of completing a customized order

- Capture intellectual capital through knowledge management and succession planning

 

Dayton Progress Reduces Order-to-Shop Processing Time by 60% 

 

As the worldwide industry leader in the production of catalog and special punches, punch blanks, and other metal stamping tools, Dayton Progress provides premier customer service by maintaining the highest of quality standards. They did this by replacing a 30-year-old software system and streamlining their order-entry process.

 

Providing innovations and techniques that improve the performance and productivity of stamping operations in customer plants, Dayton Progress Corporation, a global subsidiary of Federal Signal Corp, accepts a high volume of order line items per day from around the world, with most being engineer-to-order. In addition, Dayton Progress maintains renowned quality standards, holds the tightest of tolerances, and offers their customers delivery schedules that are as short as one day.

 

The Challenge:

·          Replace a custom-designed software system that had been in use for over 30 years.

·          Implement a system that domain experts, not just IT, could maintain.

·          Capture the intellectual capital of Dayton Progress’ product experts.

·          Integrate with Dayton Progress’ ERP system, while being able to validate orders, create a variety of custom routings, perform inventory analysis, and simplify time standards.

·          Reduce system maintenance and streamline the order-entry process.

 

Solution:

Implement an interactive selling and product configuration software solution from Cincom that captured the product knowledge formerly held only by their engineering, customer service and other staff.

 

Key results:

·          Payback of less than two years of software and services from Cincom; derived from efficiencies in maintenance, order entry, customer service, and process engineering.

·          50% time reduction in time standards programming.

·          Capture of over 30 years of intellectual capital and system data.

·          60% reduction in order-to-shop processing time.

·          Reductions in inventory, optimized to customer demand.

 

Cincom Systems targeted the survey at senior engineering managers at 900 manufacturers of complex industrial, electrical, and transportation equipment and systems between January and February 2007. To receive a copy of the full report, visit www.cincom.com/EngReport.

 

 

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