Case study - Adidas, Global 360

With products available in virtually every country of the world and over $6 billion in sales annually, Adidas owns an estimated 15% share of the world market for sporting goods.

Adidas is one of the oldest and most successful sportswear manufacturers in the world - but with its 80-year business legacy came antiquated processes that were slowing the company down and costing it money.

Adidas was facing a number of key business challenges: it needed to reduce lead time in customer claims processing and customer responses. The customer service, credit and claims processing departments were drowning in paper and were unable to efficiently manage workflow processes. Hand-offs between departments were manual and time-consuming. Customer records were difficult, if not impossible, to find or effectively track. Confidential customer records were not secure - causing great concern for the Adidas legal department. In addition, the company was unnecessarily losing money on claims, simply because documents could not be found for verification and claims substantiation.

Adidas was faced with the major challenge of transitioning many years worth of information and paper-based files to an electronic format that could be leveraged throughout the organisation.

Adidas began using Global 360 Enterprise in 1996 in its customer service department to simply transition from a paper and microfiche-based document management process to an electronic records management system. It outsourced digitising and indexing of the 200 000 records received every month into a "library" had been taking anywhere from three weeks to three months - which meant Adidas customer service representatives often were unable to find the documents they required to do their jobs.

With the G360 Enterprise implementation documents no longer needed to be sent out - the scanned documents were indexed and available within the document management system within an hour. Users were able to locate all related documents instantly and in one spot, streamlining their processes and increasing productivity.

The credit and claims management departments soon adopted Global 360 Enterprise as well, but their requirements and usage of the solution were far more complex. They shared many of the same record tracking challenges faced by customer service, but in addition they needed business process management capabilities that would enable them to organise their work, automate the aggregation of records, and simplify inter-department process hand-offs.

G360 case management capabilities enabled them to create automatic case folders, which meant all related documents-regardless of where they were stored were linked and consolidated into a single view. These folders could contain references to workflow work items, diverse file types such as Word documents, PDF files, or HTML links, as well as objects in SAP repositories. All information needed to process a case was readily accessible and tailored to the user's roles and privileges.

G360 Enterprise also enabled the optimisation of workflow between the claims analysts, researchers and other departments involved throughout the entire claims management process - from the time the claim was received, through the resolution process and all the way to record archiving. The accounts payable and compliance departments also transitioned to G360 Enterprise, and because of the ease of use, both departments use Global 360 as the front-end interface to SAP. Manual intervention in the hand-offs between all of these departments has been eliminated, and customer service level agreements (SLAs) are now automatically tracked and managed. Analysis of this workflow process is made possible for continuous process improvement.

G360 Enterprise is providing Adidas with an end-to-end customer and claims business process management solution. Multiple departments are now part of a BPM closed loop solution that addresses the many touch points with customers, which translates into business speed, greater efficiencies and better customer service. The company has decreased its overall claims processing time even-fold, and attributes this speed to its ability to communicate quickly and easily find the information needed. Ultimately, Adidas is better able to meet its corporate goals of "achieving excellence in execution" and providing world-class customer service.

G360 Enterprise BPM functions leveraged:

* Case management
* Workflow
* Document management
* Imaging

Industry: Retail
Global 360 customer since 1996

Departments using G360 Enterprise:

* Credit and Claims Management
* Customer Service
* Accounts Payable
* Compliance

Number of users: 165

Integrations:

* Tibco
* SAP

"Serving customers is our top priority, and Global 360 enables us to do it effectively and efficiently."

Challenges:

1. Time-consuming, paper-based processes
2. Inefficient workflow, low productivity
3. Manual hand-offs between departments
4. Customer files difficult to track translating to lost revenue
5. Complex process to verify and match customer data and documents
6. Lengthy lag time before orders and invoices were available in the system

Goals:

1. Real-time access to customer files
2. Cost savings in credit and claims management
3. Efficient, streamlined organisation of work processes
4. Readily accessible documents
5. Faster claims processing
6. Elimination of paper-based files and indexes

Results:

1. Improved customer response time
2. Reduced claims payments
3. Seamless, automatic process management
4. Integration of legacy records into BPM system
5. Innovative consolidated invoicing
6. Increased productivity and efficient workflow
7. Easy integration with other enterprise solutions
8. Reduced cycle times
9. Lowered cost of doing business

ROI:

1. Elimination of document storage fees
2. Faster, more cost-effective claims processing
3. Less employee hours required to perform tasks
4. Claim document substantiation translates to less claims written off