Create and manage top customer service through advanced call center functionality Ensure effective control of service processes and full use of resources Provide excellent replenishment and control of service inventory and spare parts Achieve optimized engineer planning from your office
Any business offering service repair and maintenance can benefit from this solution, which is fully integrated with IBS Enterprise software. IBS Advanced Service is specifically designed for the technical field service industry and is one of the most advanced service systems available for efficient field service management from inside the office.
Send the right field service engineers with the right spare parts to the right customers. By reducing unnecessary and costly service visits, IBS Advanced Service can help to lower expenses, increase revenue and improve customer satisfaction.
CALL CENTER, SERVICE JOB QUICK ENTRY IBS Advanced Service lets you fulfill several tasks – such as identifying or creating customers or service objects – from the Call Center panel. All information is easy to access, with a direct link to engineer planning. Fast-entry screens, easy-to-use templates and extensive search functions aid you in identifying, adding and maintaining information about customers, jobs and service objects such as machines. Additional information, including reason codes, geographic location, credit limit validation and job-specific notes, provides complete control of any service job, all from one place.
EXTENDED CUSTOMER SEARCH FUNCTION Powerful search capabilities give you quick access to all customer information. Location addresses are included during a search, as well as data from the service job quick-entry screens and user-defined search fields. The search function offers easy access to templates that help you create and set up new customers.
SERVICE JOB STATUS OVERVIEW The job status overview provides a quick perspective of a job's status, with automatic updates for job events such as completions, delays or engineer re-assignment. Select jobs by values such as customer, engineer, postal code, second visit, completed, etc. If a job is waiting for spare parts, a flag shows when the parts are available in the warehouse.
The overview is available throughout a job's lifetime and can be overridden manually. Constant, updated knowledge about a service job helps to ensure up-to-date customer service.
STOCK TEMPLATES IBS Advanced Service comes with stock templates to help ensure that the right spare parts are automatically replenished in each engineer van. Automatic replenishment is based on minimum quantities, and the templates hold a list of minimum quantities defined. Applying a stock template to an engineer's warehouse starts the transfer of all items listed during the next automatic replenishment.
Templates can be reviewed using the spare part consumption list, which compares the parts listed in the template against actual consumption. This review process results in a better ratio of second visits versus capital tied up in the engineer's warehouse.
COMMISSION CARD HANDLING In order to have accurate information about service objects, there is a tool to register commissioning card information and ensure accurate warranty handling, by applying additional object information and assigning a service object to a specific end-customer.
ENGINEER CALENDAR An engineer calendar shows the daily availability of your service engineers, using time schemes that define the number and type of visits that an engineer is able to perform. A by-week approach caters for engineers who work in different districts on fixed days. In addition, specific slots can be allocated to non-productive activities – such as training – on a daily basis.
ENGINEER PLANNING Engineer planning shows jobs to be planned and a matrix of engineers and schedules. Job planners can pick and display information to allocate jobs to engineers. The system makes suggestions for matching jobs with engineers based on job urgency, location and required or critical skills. The job pool and engineer list can be filtered, based on the planner's technician group assignments. Multiple visits can be planned, and all planning history is recorded in the system.
PLANNING CONFIRMATION Optimal job scheduling might require several changes of job-engineer allocations. Therefore, a job's status is not advanced to out-in-the-field until the job planning has been confirmed and selection criteria such as cut-off date, technician group, etc. have been provided. Automatic execution of the notification routines for confirmed jobs and scheduled initiation of the confirmation process are possible.
ENGINEER NOTIFICATION A Notification Method can be defined per engineer. If not equipped with an IBS Mobile Service license, the engineer may be notified using a printed report that may be faxed or emailed. The report contains route overview, job details and service object history details. For engineers with access to IBS Mobile Service, all job information is stored into the interface pool, then transmitted via IBS Integrator to a Domino server.
EXTERNAL ENGINEERS Jobs can be assigned to external engineers and the state of these jobs can be manually registered in the system in order to follow up requests and delays.
SPARE PART SUPPLY IBS Advanced Service offers comprehensive support for spare parts management. Jobs that are waiting for any spare parts are flagged. When all parts are available, the solution allocates the job to an engineer.
The system can assign a special high-priority warehouse to order lines to handle urgent spare part order suggestions. Consolidated replenishment orders for non-urgent parts helps to reduce warehouse overhead. The system lists spare parts that are received into stock and jobs that are waiting for these parts. This allows the creation of dedicated replenishment orders for priority jobs.
JOB CLOSING After service, the system performs one or more tasks to close the job. These tasks can include assigning the appropriate job state code, registering used and/or returned parts, and preparing the job for invoicing. If an engineer is unable to complete a job for any reason (e.g., an absent customer or a missing spare part), the job must be reinstated into the service process.
SOFT SERIAL NUMBER TRACKING AND SERIAL NUMBER INTERFACE Soft serial number tracking allows information connected to a service object (such as customer name of date of delivery) to be preserved without actual serial number registration of the object in the warehouse. The IBS Enterprise interface supports serial number scanning to collect service object information. A service object is created if the object that is scanned does not already exist in the system. Manual entry is also supported.
WARRANTY AND GOODWILL COST ACCOUNTING IBS Enterprise supports the use of debit codes on an order line level. This allows the registration of work and spare parts to be billed to an internal department instead of to a customer. For example, the cost for these order lines can be accounted for on a product group level, which helps to keep track of the warranty and goodwill costs.
