Case Studies

SupportCenter Plus was implemented quickly and smoothly at Lantmännen Maskin, with measures to improve both the user-friendliness and efficiency of the organization’s support services. lt is now a case management hub for all service support and spare parts. "We have a simple, stable solution that turns our case officers into heroes for our customers," said Johannes Roos, parts support manager at Lantmännen Maskin.

Lantmännen Maskin is a Scandinavian company based in Sweden that imports, markets, and sells tractors, equipment, and combine harvesters, offering both new and used machines.

In the Swedish market, the company is responsible for the entire supply chain, from import to sales. It has facilities at around 50 sites throughout the country, offering machine sales, repair shops, and spare parts stores. In addition, there are a number of centers for spare parts delivery located around Sweden.

High-quality support

Lantmännen Maskin is headquartered in Malmö, where its central spare parts warehouse is also located. This warehouse distributes parts to all of Scandinavia.

The company takes pride in providing high-quality support and spare parts to its dealers, something that is easier to do today than previousIy.

Lantmännen Maskin’s spare parts support, staffed by eight case officers, used to receive inquiries mainly by phone, but also to each case officer's personal email address. On the other hand, service support, with 12 case officers, had no organized solution at all.

In total, 20 to 25 people work as case officers.Two years ago, the spare parts support and service support departments got together and came up with a common requirements specification that led to a SharePoint solution. This provided a baseline that really excited them, and when UDK called, the time was right to take the next step—more systematic case management.

UDK had previously delivered a PIM solution, C4 Contexture, to Lantmännen Maskin and now contacted the company to assess its need for additional services.

A call at just the right time

"UDK called at just the right time. We wondered if they had a solution for case management, and they mentioned SupportCenter Plus from ManageEngine. lt didn’t take a whole lot of demonstrations before we realized that what they were showing us, SupportCenter Plus, would meet our needs," said Johannes Roos, parts support manager at Lantmännen Maskin.

Apart from the product’s functionaIity, Lantmännen Maskin was impressed by its simpIicity. "UDK rebuiIt the portal to suit Lantmännen Maskin and make it easier to navigate. We saw right away how user-friendly the system is, how customization is reIativeIy easy to do, but also that it has major development potential."

Quick implementation

Once the wheels were in motion, implementation was fast.

"We planned for a three-day implementation phase, but it went much faster. The staff's in-house training took about two hours. After that, they could start working in the system," said Roos.

Of the 30,000 to 40,000 cases handled by Lantmännen Maskin’s support team per year, 60% arrived in writing via email or the SupportCenter Plus web portal. The remaining cases came in through other channels, mainly by phone. Now, all cases are handled in SupportCenter Plus, whether they are price or technical support inquiries.

"All types of inquiries handled by our spare parts and service support team go through SupportCenter Plus. Our goal is to receive more cases via the portal and none via direct email to case officers and to reduce the number of phone inquiries. We noticed that we risk not registering 10% to 15% of cases when inquiries come in by phone."

Systematic confirmation of receipt

Roos explained that about half of all incoming cases are things that can be handled very quickly and do not require much time or energy, while the other half require considerable processing.

"One major benefit of SupportCenter Plus is that we get systematic confirmation of case receipt, which we lacked before. Until now, confirmation was normally a responsive rather than proactive process. We have now turned that around and taken control of the situation, providing better value to our customers. What’s more, we can also see exactly which cases are open."

There are now fewer and fewer cases that go directly to individual case officers, and, unlike previously, customers can easily register cases directly in the email client.

"We use an add-in developed by UDK that allows us to carry out all the important registration directly in Outlook. They have also created ready-made templates for different types of cases, where the templates also guide the processes."

A winning formula has been to leave the door open for UDK to come up with solutions. They quickly understand what we want and then deliver it.

- Johannes Roos, Parts support manager at Lantmännen Maskin

Johannes Roos

SupportCenter Plus allows multiple business units to connect to a single portal.

"This makes life easy for our customers. Whatever the issue, they can access a portal through which we process the case internally in the way that is best for them."

One important requirement placed on the company’s case management system was full transparency between business units.

"Another requirement was the ability to easily transfer cases between case officers so that no case would go unprocessed because the case officer was sick, for example. Case management should not depend on a single person. Currently, one of the few case officer errors we experience is cases being transferred incorrectly between business units."

The feedback that Roos has received from case officers has been wholly positive.

"SupportCenter Plus has been a huge plus for us because our case handling is now systematic and offers ease of use that allows our case officers to become heroes to our customers. The next step will be to improve confirmation even further by clearly responding when a case is received, and not just sending an ID number." Moreover, Lantmännen Maskin will increasingly work more with SLAs.

"In our dialog with our customers, we want to give them the right expectations about how their case will be processed. They should be told within what time frame we will resolve it. For this to work, we need to have the right SLA levels, with fixed escalation processes and clear confirmations of progress so we don't need to field calls about a case's status. In the long term, we want to display the flow on a shared screen, showing status compared with SLA levels, and be able to allocate resources ad hoc." Other departments at Lantmännen Maskin have also shown interest in the solution.

SupportCenter Plus is a complete package solution for managing support and help desk cases from one supplier to multiple clients. Clients can raise cases and also manage them through a dedicated support portal that is unique to each individual client.

Single Sign-On and Quick Reports are two additions (add-ins) developed by UDK to further increase SupportCenter Plus' functionality.

"A perfect fit for our needs"

Roos is very satisfied with UDK’s work.

"You couId almost say UDK lucked out, coming in at just the right time, and they have proved to be a perfect fit for our needs. UDK is incredibly driven and dedicated, sees everything as a challenge and solutions instead of problems. A major reason why we are where we are today is that SupportCenter Plus is so easy to deveIop custom solutions in."

He explained that UDK has designed the system so that Lantmännen Maskin’s support team can populate fields from the case if they want to create a generic solution in the knowledge base, created dedicated searchable fields, and implemented customizations to make categorization easier in the solutions database.

"I'm convinced that the development process won't stop here. The more we learn, the more we see what is possible, which is why we plan to maintain regular contact with UDK. A winning formuIa has been to leave the door open for UDK to come up with solutions. They quickly understand what we want, and then deIiver it. Because SupportCenter Plus is a wholly new product for Lantmännen Maskin, having firm confidence in UDK as a supplier has been criticaI."

"They are quick to correct errors and are transparent in all stages. It’s impressive how quickly they have implemented the solution, and we have realized that the solutions get better the freer the rein we give UDK," concluded Roos.