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Case Study | Viglen
Providing software solutions
for over 25 years.
Lead Story:
Viglen
Viglen, the leading-edge supplier of hardware systems, networks and software, is planning to further improve its customer service levels by using the browser functionality of its Tesseract service management system to enable clients to access real-time data on technical service and service call status.
The move, destined for implementation once remote service technician access is successful, is the latest stage of the company's continual improvement programme that embraces every aspect of the business.
With 36 seats of Tesseract’s Service Centre 4.2, the software's powerful yet easy-to-use functionality is effectively utilised enterprise-wide at the company's impressive new 85,000 ft2 site in St Albans. It is linked to despatch (for parts), has database query functionality for the sales team and relevant financial data can be extracted for invoicing, in addition to its core use for service call management/history and asset management.
Serving customers in the private and public sector; SMEs, education, health, local government and voluntary organisations, Viglen is the fastest growing IT solutions provider to the UK school's sector and is the principal supplier to over half of Britain’s universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.
It specialises in the design and implementation of quality, bespoke IT solutions by offering a complete range of products and services, from the sale of a single PC to the configuration and fulfilment of a Local or Wide Area Network.
With around 20,000 UK customers served by 300 group employees (which includes Xenon Computer Services, an industry leader in Network Attached Storage and Storage Area Network technology) Viglen CEO Bordan Tkachuk explains how the company’s recent quest for a customer service system that would support clients from cradle to grave was resolved with the installation of Service Centre.
“We needed a system that would enable us to proactively track every product serial number from our manufacturing shopfloor through warranty support, as well as effectively and efficiently handle all the associated service contracts undertaken by our nationwide team of 80 service technicians,” he says.
“Ideally, too, we wanted to track products in post-warranty and, eventually, to allow customer access to relevant areas of the call control data so they can obtain up-to-date views of their technical calls and to survey expected engineer on-site arrival times.”
“Since Service Centre 4.2 is a browser-based product, we found everything we wanted in a single, easy-to-use and cost-competitive system.”
Reflecting that in replacing its home-grown customer service system the company did look at alternatives, Bordan Tkachuk also says that the views of Xenon - an existing Tesseract user - helped win Viglen over.
“We chose Tesseract because it meets all of our requirements concerning customer contracts, spare parts despatch and engineer allocation.
We work to very tight service level agreements and so it is critical we meet these in a structured way, which Service Centre enables us to do.”
“Also, with Xenon already running Tesseract, we wanted to maintain separate databases between us yet have the ability to communicate directly with Xenon for dynamic database updating.”
Asset tracking was also considered vital, since Bordan Tkachuk points out that computer hardware “has a longer life in the education sector; systems are not thrown out every three years, so we must be able to track every product for an extended period”.
This, he says, enables the operation to not only quickly identify post-warranty chargeable actions and items, but the data is also used to monitor component failure - which is fed back directly to product assembly.
“Every improvement to product quality means fewer service calls and happier customers,” he remarks.
“It is clear that Service Centre is a well-designed, fit for purpose product that incorporates rich functionality,” concludes Bordan Tkachuk. “I have no doubt that our service operation will utilise that functionality to the full, and further improve our customer service levels while also gaining in-house efficiency improvements.”
