As companies grow globally, the process and system landscape also grows. The challenge: this diversity makes consistent, transparent and efficient service processes across the various companies difficult. But this is exactly what a demanding, globally active customer base expects.
One of our customers from the healthcare sector commissioned cbs to optimize the service and repair of medical devices using software solutions. Over the years, the various companies had developed different processes for the same service business transaction. This resulted in inconsistent communication with customers, depending on which repair center they contacted.
The processes were also time-consuming and complex for employees and involved jumping around in different tools and sometimes paper-based processes with subsequent manual entries to the ERP system. In addition, the company could not easily evaluate the heterogeneous data and use it for quality assurance.
The cbs solution at a glance
At its core, the solution comprises several apps on the SAP Business Technology Platform with a SAPUI5 interface, three of which are presented here. The solution creates uniform user interfaces for the employees in the company and supports the harmonization of the central process steps while retaining the specifics of the individual repair shops. The apps are connected to the respective ERP systems via the BTP, data is read and written in real time and no longer needs to be transferred additionally. Another advantage of the BTP is that the investment in innovation is not jeopardized when the ERP systems are later migrated to SAP S/4HANA; the apps continue to function without any problems.
1) Defect Code Management
The first app is used by key users to systematically record and describe the expected faults in the devices. The errors are assigned to the IMDRF (International Medical Device Regulators Forum) catalog and internal guidelines. In addition, the error types are enriched with metadata and photos. Various data sources are made accessible, for example the QM error catalogs are loaded from the ERP system. These predefined error types are then stored centrally in the HANA cloud, from which they are then retrieved in the next app.
2) Inspection Evaluation App
The Inspection Evaluation app is crucial for the actual device inspection and repair. The device is checked using the defect catalogs from the Defect Code Management app. Identified defects are transferred to the quality notification and the necessary repair steps and materials are automatically added to the service order.
The app enables a fully guided process for incoming inspections, including warranty decisions and comment options for the customer form. This speeds up the inspection processes and makes them much less complex, so that new employees can be trained more quickly. Data quality is also significantly improved, which supports QM processes.
3) Customer Report App
The Customer Report App uses the data generated during the inspection to create a diagnostic report for the customer. A PDF is created directly in the app via the Adobe API service.
Customer service can view the report with the images and comments created by the inspector and has the option to make changes. The service employee can then translate the report into the required language and send it to the customer.
The key benefits of the solution
The company now offers its customers a uniform and flawless customer experience in service, regardless of which division they work with. The company received a lot of positive feedback on the customer form in particular, with customers benefiting from a high level of transparency and user-friendliness thanks to the additional data, standardized error descriptions and clear structure.
The company gains standardized data through the service and can use the better overview in quality assurance to detect production errors and weak points more quickly. The improved analysis results enable faster repair times in the long term.
Thanks to the apps with structured data entry options, data entry is greatly simplified. Thanks to the time saved, employees can concentrate on the essentials. The user-friendliness of the apps also facilitates the onboarding of new colleagues. Core users no longer need to be specially trained for SAP systems – the apps make SAP processes accessible to non-SAP users and can even be used in repair shops that previously worked entirely without SAP.
The three BTP applications shown are customer-specific, but can also be tailored to the industrial processes of other companies and sectors – like an off-the-peg tailor-made suit. cbs offers a one-stop store for SAP BTP consulting & implementation. How can we support you with digitalization?
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