Background...Installed Base is a very important component in SAP Customer Relationship Management – Service Scenario. It contains all the important details regarding the purchased product which is installed at the customer’s premise like devices, machines, etc. It might be intangible items like softwares, patents, etc. Maintenance of Installed base is very important for any Service Organization engaged in providing after sales services of products. Proper and up-to-date data not only saves time and costly maintenance operations but also helps in developing aggressive product services strategies and reduces expensive downtimes of vital Business Processes. This also improves the bottom line and contributes to overall profit margin.
From the initial paragraph, it is pretty evident that proper maintaining of Installed Base is a very important step in the entire Service scenario. This topic of regular auditing of the Installed Base along with the process of keeping the data clean will play the key role. In today’s challenging business environment keeping pace with the new and upcoming changes is concern for the major organizations around the world. With this gamut of challenges all the upcoming Service Organizations are facing a very grave situation of keeping all the Master data up-to-date. The world is fast migrating more from On Device equipments like desktops to On Mobile intelligent devices like Smartphone’s, IPads, etc. It’s now the right time to push these new innovative technologies to enhance SAP CRM Service Scenarios and Processes.
Status-Quo..
With the integration of SAP CRM and major smartphone Vendors like RIM, Sybase, etc. has made it possible to access SAP CRM Systems virtually anywhere and anytime. This means majority ofthe Business Professionals having any Smartphone device now has access to most recent and updated data in a single touch. Roles of these professionals can as diverse as a Sales Representative to a Service Technician.
Overview of Use Case...
CRM Mobile Auditing of Installed Base starts with the Scheduler assigning the Auditing Task to the Service Technician. The main focus for the Technician is to verify the correctness of the existing information of the Installed Base and to update and changes to it. The technician searches for the Installed Base based on certain search fields. Once he has located the proper Installed Base from the search result he navigates into it to make modifications and to update it. The technician can update the Status of the Installed Base to Active, Inactive or Deletion. He can also update the Product Component modifying the Quantity and Identification details.He can navigate further to the Object Component and can make the following changes – Address Changes including Floor and Room Number, Geo- Coordinates and Notes associated to it. The latest handsets are now equipped with latest state of the art technology including Google Map integration feature. This can also be used by the technician to make the changes to the Geo-coordinates. The technician can modify the Text Components which are present in the Installed Base. With the easy to use feature of the Smartphone devices the usability of the use case can have a solid impact.
The Future....
Auditing an Installed Base using the Smartphone device is one of the scenarios among the plethora of capability which SAP CRM can achieve. It will reduce the time to maintain this data considerably which will also improve the overall ROI of the Service Operation cost. There are other scenarios where Smartphone enabled devices can make huge contribution and can improve the customer interaction with CRM. In future CRM’s presence will be much more widespread and will have a major impact on the people directly or indirectly affected by SAP CRM.
