Panasonic

Case Study | Panasonic Business Systems

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However, none offered the levels of competence and flexibility that PBS - which supplies, services and supports a wide range of copiers and other business equipment - was looking for.

It was only when it extended its reach outside the country that another solution, Tesseract’s Service Centre service management system, came to light and proved up to the challenge.

"We are quite an intricate business, in terms of our contracts with customers and the way in which we run our operations, which is mainly through the leasing of machines to businesses," says managing director Freddie Potgieter.

"So, the software had to be able to manage that. The other vendors we approached in South Africa were smaller than Tesseract and unable to offer the same support levels, even though Tesseract is based in the UK."

With a suite of easy-to-use integrated modules - Customer Assets, Call Control, Parts Centre, Repair Centre, Quote Centre, Prospect Centre - Service Centre can accommodate every type of mobile communications technology for remote engineer access, including laptops, Nokia devices, WAP ‘phones, XDAs, BlackBerry communicators and tablet PCs.

PBS has 40-50 engineers out on the road at any one time, servicing its equipment throughout the country, and Service Centre plays a key role in scheduling, call logging and management, meter reading, stock control, as well as the invoicing of consumables and machine usage.
Service Centre’s ability to work with a range of industry-standard databases, including MS SQL, was also important to PBS. "This allows us to extract critical information about the business," adds Freddie Potgieter.

PBS has not yet embraced the browser-enabled version of Service Centre, but is looking to do so by mid-2007. "That would give us all the benefits of web access, with our engineers able to use their PDAs to log calls, and also mean far less demand on individual workstations. That would make quite a difference."

As for Service Centre’s performance to date, Freddie Potgieter says PBS is very comfortable with what Service Centre does for its business.
"There are not many other companies that fit our specific needs in the way Service Centre does, while able to offer the right levels of support."

When Panasonic Business Systems (PBS) started to investigate the market in its native South Africa for a software solution that would handle its office automation, meter reading and service control needs, it discovered only a handful of vendors could potentially meet that requirement.