Every customer is unique
Babcock & Wilcox, BT Industries, others leverage tools that bring designs, service into tight alignment with customer needs
By Roberto Michel, senior contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 6/1/2005 6:00:00 AM
Getting closer to customers often starts with being able to quickly configure custom products for them. But what if you aren't configuring from a preset mix of common components? What if your solutions must fit the unique process engineering and facility layout specifications of each customer site?
In the past, such engineered solutions required lengthy bid-generation processes before the supplier could deliver a strong response to a proposal request. That roughly describes the selling environment that enterprises like Babcock & Wilcox Co., a manufacturer of power generation and environmental cleanup equipment, have learned to excel in.
Over the years, the Barberton, Ohio-based company had taken steps to accelerate its bidding process, even installing a knowledge-based engineering system in the late 1980s. But even with such steps, much of its design know-how emanated from "tacit knowledge" locked in the minds of senior designers, says Don Langley, VP of operations.
"The customer requirements we get are unique every time," says Langley. "There are many variations involved in coming up with each bid, and the really good designers have a feel for what would be the right answers."
By implementing an application for rules-driven product management, or RPM, Babcock & Wilcox is capturing more of this tacit knowledge, accelerating the bidding process. As a by-product, says Langley, the system contributes to greater customer loyalty. "We think we do a better job now in these bid processes than ever before," he says. "We provide better information, we show up with designs that are more complete, and we believe this all adds to the experience of doing business with us."
There are many types of enterprise applications that build customer loyalty. The most obvious category is customer relationship management (CRM), which includes sales force automation tools, as well as call-center or field-service management functions. But CRM installments often focus on sales force productivity, rather than the service focus some experts see as key to customer loyalty.
"What more customers want today essentially is a partnership," says Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor, a Portsmouth, N.H.-based management training firm focused on customer loyalty issues. "That partnership can take many flavors, including new product innovation that reflects the competitive needs of your customers."
There are multiple strategies for building customer loyalty (see left). In Babcock & Wilcox's case, the RPM system from RuleStream is accelerating the manufacturer's engineer-to-order (ETO) wet scrubber program, and streamlining its request-for-proposal (RFP) and design processes.
Designs on demand
Utility companies use wet scrubbers to reduce power-plant sulfur dioxide emissions. The scrubbers are complex pieces of equipment that must mesh with each customer facility.
David Vredenburgh, CEO, RuleStream, says ETO manufacturers often face the challenge of integrating their custom products with each customer facility. An RPM system, he says, automates much of the design generation via rules that govern facility interfaces, as well as by generating a 3D model. "The rich definition of facility interfaces is a critical part of what RPM supports," he says.
Kip Alexander, manager of engineering operations at Babcock & Wilcox, says that by reusing existing rules, and via integration with a 3D CAD tool from SolidWorks, the RPM system has significantly cut the time it takes to generate wet-scrubber design proposals. An initial design for a scrubber's spray header can be generated in minutes rather than several hours. Coming up with a nearly complete spray header design can now be done in a day or two, rather than a full week.
The RPM tool is fast, says Alexander, because its rules address component engineering and layout concerns simultaneously, which reduces the number of design iterations. Additionally, by generating the core design very quickly, other aspects of the solution —e.g., material sourcing, manufacturing, and installation—can be analyzed rather than roughly estimated from past projects.
"By putting a design together quickly, you're giving everyone else more time to see that design, and work from it to do the rest of the bid," says Alexander. "By getting to the heart of the design much faster, we have more time to address alternatives that help satisfy customer needs more closely, either through lower cost or tighter performance guarantees."
The RPM system is database-driven, says Alexander, which makes it much easier to build rules for compared to the knowledge-based legacy engineering system. Rather than having to program "if, then, else" statements to cover every possible permutation, Alexander, RuleStream, and a team of designers worked with the tool during the implementation phase to build basic rules that reflect the interrelationships that impact most installations. "The rules we are capturing are pretty fundamental, though the conditions considered for each customer are unique," says Alexander.
Babcock & Wilcox went live with the RuleStream system in 2004, after working closely with the vendor to develop the integration with SolidWorks. This interface wraps the rules engine and its results around the 3D CAD tool so that a 3D model of the initial design can be generated on-the-fly. Building the initial rules, says Alexander, did not take that long, but it did take some experimentation with the engine to extract less obvious rules and interrelationships from the minds of designers.
A key advantage of the system, says Langley, is that it retains engineering knowledge, and gives newer designers a feel for the interplay of parameters that drive the best designs. But the system's advantages are more than internal, he adds. "It all comes back to being more precise and more effective in our efforts with each customer," he says.
Agile service
While custom-crafting solutions is one route to winning customer loyalty, another key is providing better service over the product life span. "You need to make sure your customers understand the value they are getting for the price," Durkin says. "For an industrial product, this can mean offering a higher level of uptime on the product, and extra fail-safe mechanisms."
For BT Industries, a lift-truck manufacturer based in Mjölby, Sweden, a mobile service management solution is cutting costs and improving customer service. As Johan Malmgren, BT's service market director, points out, the initial performance specifications of a lift truck remain important to buyers, but reliability and service are critical.
"BT regards first-class customer support to be a critical success factor and a prerequisite in the development of long-term trading relationships," says Malmgren. "That's why we strive to develop innovative ways to add value to our service offering."
BT uses the Movex enterprise suite from Intentia as its backbone for enterprise transactions and service-related processes. The suite's field service functionality is pre-configured for handheld use. BT deploys a handheld solution called Sogeti Service InMotion, developed jointly by Intentia and consulting firm Sogeti to give mobile service management capabilities to some 1,500 technicians across 10 countries in Europe.
The solution handles service dispatching functions, online parts ordering, and online logging of work completed. It also alerts technicians to routine or preventive maintenance that may be performed when on service calls, and gives access to complete service history on the handhelds. As soon as service is completed, customers can approve the work directly on the handheld, with invoicing triggered based on what was recorded in the field. Previously, many of these tasks were paper-based.
"We have better service planning and quality, and we can deliver first-class service and support with less administrative cost," says Malmgren. And because the solution is mobile and near-real time, "we always have updated and correct information in our business system."
Know all interactions
CRM solutions can indeed impact customer loyalty if they truly manage the customer experience, not just internal sales efforts. By deploying a business process management package with CRM capability,Altman Lighting, a Yonkers, N.Y.-based manufacturer of architectural and theater lighting systems, is getting closer to its customers.
Roger Pujol, assistant general manager at Altman, says Exact Software's e-Synergy package blends CRM with document, workflow, and business process management capabilities, making it easier to respond to customer needs. "This system is all about the customer," he says. "It's gives us a flexible, low-cost way to have what some of the largest enterprises are striving for—a 360-degree view of the customer."
Rather than using Microsoft Outlook to communicate internally, all customer-related processes are handled through e-Synergy. Pujol says Altman has configured about 10 customer-care workflows, and another 10 engineering workflows that impact customers, such as a part-number change process.
As part of the deployment, every customer-related phone call is logged into e-Synergy, and faxes and Web site requests are automatically merged into the system. As a result, every customer touch point is available through e-Synergy. Those in sales know the latest service or credit issues, and people in customer service and finance can see the latest sales interactions. Says Pujol, "Now that we have a full history of the interactions, we can better serve the customer, and we spend less time shouting across the office to find out who spoke to who, and what was said."
It took some discipline to get everyone to enter brief summaries of customer-related calls, but Pujol says users quickly saw the benefit of having all that information at their fingertips. "Just like other systems, discipline is paramount," he says. "After about two weeks [of logging all calls], people started to see benefits, and we got quick buy-in."
The browser-based system, says Pujol, has a "Google box"-type feature that makes it easy to look up records by multiple parameters. The system's workflows also integrate with Outlook, which is used for external communication; and with Altman's ERP system, also from Exact.
The deployment went live last July, and represents a leap forward from the days of using accounts receivables records and scattered PC-based contact managers to access customer information.
"All of our customer-related information is in e-Synergy," concludes Pujol. "It's not just a matter of having the history, but also an understanding of what our customers need now and in the future."
