When the service man rings only once

Melitta Professional Coffee Solutions is part of the Melitta Group and the specialist for professional coffee supply in the catering and hotel industry. For the handling of maintenance and repair cases on Melitta coffee machines, the company's own customer service offers a service 365 days a year.

Of central importance for the selection of the appropriate mobile workforce management solution was the seamless integration into SAP ERP CS. The decision was made in favor of the graphical dispatching solution MobileX-Dispatch and the mobile solution MobileX-MIP for Field Service from MobileX.

Region-by-region rollout in Europe

The rollout of the solution in Germany began in 2007. MobileX-Dispatch has since replaced order forwarding via push mail and shows dispatchers at the headquarters in Minden the status of German service technicians as well as open orders and messages in a Gantt chart.

In addition, the system provides information on the daily workload, qualifications and the material carried by the technician, including the route history via map display. This allows the dispatcher to see at a glance which service technician is best suited for a job.

Since the introduction of the new software, field technicians have been using notebooks on which they receive their orders after being assigned by dispatch in the MobileX-MIP for Field mobile solution.

Thanks to the user-friendly interface, technicians were able to use the solution after just one day of training.

The technicians receive all order-relevant information online. This means that they can also access all order data offline, such as messages, documents or the service history, as well as record the feedback.

Customer service orders consist of two categories: fixed appointments or appointments with a predefined completion period, which technicians can schedule themselves.

Since the dispatching department is not staffed on weekends, a dispatcher from home takes over the assignment of orders to his colleagues on these days. Since 2015, order acceptance on weekends has been fully automated by the technicians and dispatching via SAP and MobileX.

With MIP for Field Service, the service technician has the option of reordering material for his vehicle stock or a secondary stock from the central warehouse. The fast flow of information to the leading SAP system ensures that the most common spare parts are always in stock and that second trips remain the exception.

After completing his job, the technician creates the service report on his laptop. The customer acknowledges this with his signature on a signo pad.

The data is transferred directly to SAP CS. If the internal plausibility check does not reveal any errors or discrepancies, the service report is invoiced fully automatically.

In case of ambiguities or questions regarding goodwill or warranty, a manual check is carried out by the order processing department.

The rollout in Germany was followed by rollouts in the Netherlands, France, Switzerland and Austria. In the process, the workforce management system also supports the various languages.

The respective national companies plan and control their technicians from their own branches. Melitta Professional Coffee Solutions was able to optimize processes in customer service and create more cost transparency. The rollout in Great Britain is planned next.