In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, service is emerging as the catalyst for transformative change, enabling manufacturers to drive significant profits and gain a competitive edge. This leads companies to be more focused on providing ongoing services and solutions to meet the ever-changing needs of their customer base.
Bosch Rexroth AG, one of the world’s leading providers of tailor-made system solutions in drive and control technology, aimed to improve its customer experience by providing technicians with the right qualifications and quality service while increasing overall productivity.
The business transformation success of Bosch Rexroth is demonstrated through how its premium-quality field service support has been a key driver of success.
Taking Customer Experience to the Next Level
Bosch Rexroth aims for real-time scheduling and seamless communication, which allows service technicians to respond to customer requests and resolve issues faster. Scheduling technicians based on their skills, availability, and location — ensuring the right technician with the right expertise and tools — helped the company not only increase productivity, but also take the overall customer experience to the next level.
“We need to make sure that the right quality and the right people with the right qualifications are on the road,” said Carsten Breitenbach, project manager at Bosch Rexroth, in the webinar Taking Field Service Teams Digital, the Journey of Bosch Rexroth. “The wrong planning not only costs us money as a company, but also causes customers to lose trust.”
He added,“It significantly improves our response times and enables better route planning and resource allocation resulting in lower operating and maintenance costs and he continues.”
Facilitating real-time communication between customers, technicians, and support teams enables technicians to collaborate with support teams and access experts remotely to resolve complex customer issues. By having access to the customer database and service history on their mobile devices, technicians can diagnose and resolve issues quickly.“Technicians can see where they need to go, where is the site address, and who is the contact person directly on their mobile devices,” Breitenbach explained.
Digitization also helped customers to easily schedule appointments. Now they can track job progress and provide feedback through self-service portals and mobile apps.
Highlighting that customers have been given positive feedback about the digitalization of the overall service, Breitenbach concluded: “With FSM [field service management], the technicians can focus on the job and spend more time with the customer instead of paper-processed administrative tasks. We also hear feedback from customers that they love to see us becoming digitalized.”
Maximizing Workforce Productivity
Amid this exciting paradigm shift in the field service sector, many companies continue to rely on outdated, inefficient systems.
“When the complexity is bigger, this is nothing you can handle with Excel or Outlook,” Breitenbach shared. “This is why we decided to implement the FSM application.”
Highlighting how time-consuming was the former process within the company, he further explained: “Our technicians had to enter the hours manually into the timesheet. Now, the data is available immediately and you can directly start the invoice process. We could reduce the reporting time from weeks to days. With FSM, we achieved not only a faster process but also reduced the effort of manual input”
By simplifying the processes and leveraging digital tools, Bosch Rexroth recognized that a user-friendly and intuitive digital system was crucial for its adoption and success.
“If you adopt new digital services, it must be simple,” Breitenbach added. “If it’s too complex, people will simply not use it. It is very important to make the job easier, not hinder them on the job.”
Within Bosch Rexroth, different countries and business units were using their own FSM applications. The company needed to bring them together in just one pilot project and have a common field service management template.
“One of our main goals was to seamlessly integrate automated booking and back-end ERP integration without disrupting existing systems in Europe,” Christopher Thiesen, solution manager for CRM at Bosch Industrial Technology, shared in the webinar.
Without making any changes to the ERP system but utilizing the ongoing systems, Bosch built a flexible system that enables seamless communication within each division, business unit, and country where it is needed.
Meeting Regulations and Legal Requirements with Standardization
Acknowledging the importance of keeping up with the increasing governmental regulations and legal requirements, procedures, and industry standards, Bosch Rexroth integrated field service processes to support compliance with local rules and regulations.
“The last goal was the harmonization and standardization of field service execution,” Breitenbach added. “We try to harmonize as much as possible and use standards wherever possible. This certainly helps us to achieve a common quality standard.”
Bosch Rexroth now has the flexibility offered by FSM, allowing the company to adapt to different regulatory environments.
Growing Revenue Generation
Through a guided approach and data collection, Bosch Rexroth has witnessed remarkable growth in revenue generation. According to Breitenbach, “Boosting the sales lead generation helped us to generate revenue. We did not expect such a high result.”
The implementation of FSM transformed its sales process by directly guiding technicians to ask a set of specific questions. By doing so, Bosch Rexroth ensured the collection of accurate and relevant data, guaranteeing the quality of the information gathered. This valuable data is then seamlessly transferred to the customer relationship management (CRM) tool through an interface. As Breitenbach further explained, “Then the sales guys can take up the lead and follow on that potential.”
By simplifying the processes and leveraging digital tools, Bosch Rexroth has streamlined operations, enhanced customer satisfaction, and empowered its field service technicians with a user-friendly, flexible, and simple solution. Witnessing a remarkable growth in revenue generation, Bosch Rexroth achieved a common quality standard while accommodating country-specific regulations.
By embracing the power of FSM, Bosch Rexroth has established a competitive advantage and continues to thrive in the ever-evolving business landscape.
Oyku Ilgar is a marketing specialist for Digital Supply Chain at SAP.
