Tibbett & Britten expands HEAT`s functionality into revenue collection

Part of the UK-based logistics and supply chain management group operating in 33 countries and focused exclusively on the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, Tibbett & Britten SA has begun to expand its use of FrontRange`s midmarket service and support solution, HEAT - exploiting its exceptional process management capabilities to, among others, improve revenue collection.

Tibbett & Britten SA is the largest FMCG multi-client distribution network in SA, with five large warehouses in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth, and a range of smaller transhipment centres in the Free State, Northern Province and Mpumalanga geared to covering remote rural areas. Customers include Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline Beecham, Pfizer and Kraft Foods.

With an information technology (IT) network and its users spread across the country, Tibbett & Britten initially installed HEAT for its IT help-desk. Having proved its worth there in terms of improved efficiencies, HEAT was then extended to the customer service help-desk to enable more effective tracking, escalation and reporting on calls.

Customer help-desk services include conventional logistics and e-commerce support, with a focus on enhancing the supply chain. Straightforward queries are handled directly by help-desk agents. Depot-related queries are handled by customer service staff at the depots. Implementing HEAT brought help-desk response times down to between 30 minutes and 48 hours depending on the complexity of the query.

In 2004, however, national customer services manager, Mike King, decided to enhance the standard HEAT setup in order to increase the accuracy and relevance of customer service reports.

"A call can come from one of four sources - a depot, a principal, a customer and `other`, such as a driver doing a delivery. HEAT was originally set up with in excess of 12 categories - which created too many choices for busy help-desk agents and calls would often be allocated, in haste, to the wrong category. My customer and service level agreement (SLA) reports would therefore have huge gaps in them.

"So, we`ve customised HEAT to work on only one call type field - the caller`s name. Now there`s no misallocation of information and we can report very precisely on service levels. We`ve also reduced the number of drop-down screens per originating query, enabling us to complete a call log much faster.

"Overall, greater accuracy in terms of call categorisation together with simplification of call logging is reducing the number of outstanding calls. That in turn means that we`re increasing the number of calls we can handle in a day."

King has also allocated additional HEAT licences to the credit department, situated in Durban. "Based on our successes with the IT and customer services help-desks, we`re expecting to bring our credit queries down from an average of two to three months to, ideally, two days. That`s going to massively improve cash flow and bottom line for the client as a whole, quite apart from easing the workload on the credit department and call centre staff."

FrontRange Solutions SA managing director, Tracey Newman, says there is growing trend among HEAT customers to exploit its process management capabilities in areas not originally envisaged when they bought the solution - and, thereby, improve their performance not just at a tactical but strategic business level.

"You usually buy a solution to solve a particular business problem - like needing to report on how you`re meeting your service level agreements or squeezing greater productivity out of a repair division, which is essentially a cost centre and needs tight control. But once you`ve addressed the problem you have time to explore the rest of the functionality of your solution.

"Also, organisations tend to buy a solution because it enables them to make their old manual systems a little slicker. Once the solution is operating they begin to understand the ways in which electronic systems can alter the way one does business - not just in terms of methodology but also overall strategy.

"And, as our customers are discovering, HEAT is particularly rich in functionality and therefore enormously adaptable. In its standard format, it has been successfully applied in more than 70 industries. Also, it incorporates Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practice in incident, problem, change, knowledge and service level management. So, you can`t beat its process logic. And that logic is applicable in most areas of business."

King says that while the reprogramming of HEAT`s database fields was a little challenging because the company chose to develop the skill in-house instead of being dependent on FrontRange and its resellers for that sort of support, "simple reformatting of reports and other routine functions takes only a few seconds.

"In fact, we`re very happy with HEAT. Over the years, we`ve been offered a number of alternative products but, as we`ve no reason to look elsewhere and we certainly haven`t come close to exhausting what HEAT can do for us, we`ve just not bothered to look too closely at them."