With NEO Mobile, Viessmann replaces all paper traffic. This leads to optimized processes and speeds up the back office. The simple operation also ensures that maintenance work can be carried out even more easily.
Customer benefits
Customer
Viessmann Climate Solutions
Branch
Industry
Project environment
Project environment: International and sustainable
Contact
Alexander Wassiltschenko
Head of BU Axians NEO Solutions & Technology GmbH
+49 511 123549-53
Contact us
Transparency and flexibility with NEO Mobile
The increasing demands on technical customer service are also clearly noticeable at Viessmann. After all, when used in residential, work and industrial areas, it is important that the building services systems operate reliably at all times. Sensibly timed maintenance intervals and short maintenance times help here, as does rapid on-site deployment in the event of any failures. What is required here is transparency and flexibility in deployment planning, but also a consistent workflow in order processing, execution, logging and billing.
To ensure all of this, Viessmann began in 2011 to gradually map all of the processes of its global technical customer service, both operationally and in terms of accounting, in a standardized way with NEO Mobile and to integrate them into its SAP ERP system (EAM/PM). “Our decision was based primarily on Axians’ high level of expertise and proven SAP proximity,” says Andreas Schwertmann, Head of Process Organization Logistics at Viessmann. Other reasons that tipped the scales in favor of NEO Mobile were the seamless SAP connection, the simple implementation processes and the ability to offer the solution in several languages.
Step-by-step rollout in national companies
Given the size of the company, which is represented in 74 countries with 11,500 employees worldwide, those responsible decided back in 2010 during the planning phase of the project that the rollout of the mobile solution would take place gradually, i.e., by individual countries. Andreas Schwertmann: “For reasons of better manageability, we initially started in 2011 with our Czech country subsidiary, in which around 20 field service employees were integrated. Together with the Axians developers, we were able to gain valuable experience, which we then incorporated into the subsequent conversions and country-specific adaptations.”
As part of this close development partnership, the mobile customer services of the Viessmann companies in Slovakia, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and Austria have been equipped with the new solution to date, in addition to the Czech Republic. While the plant maintenance of the Viessmann headquarters in Alpendorf and individual branches in Germany are already working with NEO Mobile, the nationwide expansion in Germany will follow in 2016. As before, the experienced project team will carry out the changeover during ongoing operations in the traditionally quieter summer months, so that by the end of 2016 a total of around 350 service technicians will be carrying out their daily work here.
The Viessmann project manager attributes the high level of acceptance by the technicians, including those from the international subsidiaries, primarily to two ergonomic reasons in the best sense of the word: “Firstly, the well thought-out user guidance not only makes it easier to operate the application itself, but also to carry out the maintenance work in the correct order thanks to the wizard assistant,” explains Andreas Schwertmann. “Regardless of whether it’s a small boiler or a very large industrial plant: our service employees have all the relevant components available for use on their end device – as a kind of mobile SAP system.”
In addition to information and data on all orders and notifications, the solution also provides planning and analysis functions and supports documentation – an aspect that is particularly important for warranty claims. Navigation, mobile printing and a barcode reader are also part of the standard equipment. Andreas Schwertmann sees another reason for the high level of acceptance in the localizability of NEO Mobile: “The different language versions promote independent training by our maintenance technicians enormously. After half a day of introduction and half a day of practical exercises, the NEO tool has established itself as a standard working tool for our field service employees.” Viessmann now uses NEO Mobile 7.1 in German, Czech, Slovakian, Dutch, Italian, French and many other languages.
Direct transmission to the accounting department
Optimized processes and an accelerated back office: Due to the international Viessmann product specifics, the deployment planning and the process steps of the service work on site are largely identical. Why is this so important? Appointments must be made and kept. On site, it is not only important to carry out the necessary work steps safely in the specified sequence, but also to create meticulous reports for documentation afterwards, regardless of whether regular maintenance or individual maintenance work is involved. Once the technician has completed all the prescribed procedures, the transmission to the accounting department ideally takes place immediately so that the invoice is created quickly. “This is where the NEO Mobile Solution scores points, especially with the provision of product information and the specification of the individual maintenance and servicing steps,” says Andreas Schwertmann. “In addition, the technician no longer has to write his report on paper afterwards, as all processing steps have already been documented, processed and therefore already recorded.”
Blueprint facilitates implementation
Storing the country-specific billing, tax and accounting modalities requires a bit more customization effort. Depending on the country, for example, individual billing variants based on minutes, quarter hours, half hours or whole hours must be mapped in the same way as expense reports for technicians or country-specific value-added tax specifications. Based on previous experience, the project team has developed a so-called Blueprint for this purpose, i.e. a method for visualizing service processes that, in comparison to other process illustrations, also integrates the customer and his view of the process.
Andreas Schwertmann: “With this structure, we manage to enormously shorten the introduction times of the mobile solution per country. After about four to eight weeks of installation and technical adaptation of NEO Mobile on all devices, the parties involved can already work and experiment with it on a practice basis. Depending on the country, we need about four to six months until the fine-tuning is complete and all functionalities can be used to their full extent.”
Milestones implemented on time
Andreas Schwertmann’s conclusion so far has been thoroughly positive: “After five years of experience with the solution, we have been able to implement all the envisaged goals according to plan.” The former media discontinuities were reduced, so that not only the manual rework in the back office could be reduced, but also the quality of the data could be increased. Likewise, the Viessmann branches recorded a cross-departmental harmonization of service processes, which led to a better utilization of their field service. “I am certain that the reduction and optimization of invoicing times achieved so far will enable us to implement the targeted company-wide consolidation of Viessmann business processes in a timely manner by the end of 2018.”
Teamwork drives innovation
Andreas Schwertmann is more than satisfied with the intensive collaboration with the developers and project managers at Axians over the past five years: “Our development partnership was and is a very gratifying win-win project. For example, the Wizard function of NEO Mobile, which is now a standard feature, is based to a large extent on the experience gained in this project. In short, thanks to their high level of SAP know-how and years of practical experience, the experts from Axians, as professional sparring partners, not only give us valuable suggestions in discussions, but also flexibly implement our customization requests with their hands-on mentality.”
