For Crown Equipment – an award-winning lift truck manufacturer and service provider - the need to provide fast, quality customer support in the field is paramount to its client satisfaction and business success.

In 2004, the company recognised an opportunity to enhance its existing field services division by embarking on a visionary wireless and mobile field automation project – iSMS - designed to extend the capabilities of its traditional service management system. 

Crown chose to underpin the iSMS (intelligent Service Management System) project with the Serviceware component of Lawson’s Mobileware software platform – which works in conjunction with wireless networks and Pocket PC devices in the field.

“Since going live with the new system, we have already reaped many benefits, achieving new levels of customer service, process efficiencies and administrative cost and time savings across our field service operations. Mobileware has been a major asset to the iSMS project as a whole,” says Wayne Greenaway, general manager IT.

“The initial field trial and subsequent branch rollout has been very successful. Today we can automate call allocations, enable remote collaboration with field Service Technicians, and eradicate process bottlenecks. This reduces potential job delays and call handling pressures in the branch office, and ultimately increases customer response times,” says Greenaway.

Greenaway explains that previously, it might have taken an average of five days to manually process a job from start to finish.

“Traditionally, service calls from the branch communications room would have to be despatched to the service techs by voice over a trunking radio network. Job reports were then completed in the field and the paperwork would have to be returned to the branch office for manual data entry and processing through inventory and invoicing systems.”

“Now, we can turn a job around in less than a day - a five-fold improvement on our previous service capabilities.

“Firstly, by integrating Lawson’s solution with Crown’s customer knowledge base and intelligent despatch systems, all next-call details and previous call history are sent direct to the service tech’s pocket PC over GPRS. Voice despatch over radio has been eliminated.”

“The Crown service tech then completes service and inspection reports using the Serviceware application on the pocket PC. The customer can sign for the work on the device itself and the job is automatically sent straight to the back-office systems. This totally eliminates all paperwork - and processing of reports can happen within minutes of the service tech completing the job in the field.”

“We have also increased communication-room visibility on job status such as travelling and work completed.”

“Finally, integration with our Warehouse Management System has allowed us to reduce the time taken to replenish used parts in service vans and respond quickly to ad-hoc parts requests from the field.”

Crown Equipment has received highly positive feedback from users and customers. 

Greenaway says that service technicians in particular are very happy with the system and the removal of paperwork. But most importantly, customers are also recognising the benefits to them in faster response times.

The company
Crown Equipment has earned a reputation for exceptional product design, engineering and manufacturing of its award-winning line of lift trucks. From its smallest hand pallet truck to its highest lifting turret truck, Crown’s goal is to always provide customers with the safest, most efficient and ergonomic truck possible to lower total cost of ownership and increase uptime.

Crown Equipment offers customers a wide selection of products ranging from turret trucks to 16-ton engine powered lift trucks.

Why Lawson
One of Crown’s key requirements for the project was securing a ‘partner’ for the project - rather than just buying a solution from a vendor.

“We wanted a supplier that would work with us throughout the implementation, a team that could help us with changes or enhancements that might be required along the way,” says Greenaway. “Lawson demonstrated a great deal of success in this area and a lot of experience”.

“Another key factor in our decision was Lawson’s partnership with IBM – with Crown’s hardware platform based on IBM iSeries, integration was critical and Lawson’s partnership and commitment to IBM’s iSeries was a very important part of the project.”

Implementation
The implementation and initial testing began in February 2004. Following its success, October 2004 saw full roll-out to all service technicians in the Sydney branch office. The implementation was quickly completed by January 2005.

“Overall, the roll out of the pilot project was extremely smooth and successful,” says Greenaway. “Lawson delivered on all our expectations”.

“Much of the success of the project was due to the hard work and contribution of a number of people – including the Lawson development team that worked very closely with us throughout the trial. This close collaboration was key to ensuring the project ran as smoothly as it did.”

Future plans
Crown continues to look at the benefits being achieved from the Sydney operations and as part of the overall project, planned for full national roll out in 2006.

March 2007