What is the first thing that comes up in the mind when you come across the word 'social network'? I presume most of us will think of 'Facebook'. Undoubtedly, Facebook has redefined the way we communicate. The word 'social' in itself describes plurality be it one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many. Social media is here to stay with many social networking sites and social apps being launched in the market almost on a fortnightly if not on a daily basis.
By Prashanth N.
We are at the dawn of "Big Data" era. Data is available in plenty; internet traffic is expected to reach 667 Exabyte by 2013. Powerful analytic tools are also under development like in-memory computing technology Hana by SAP or Oracle Exalytics. There are analytic tools to handle the unstructured data from social network for example "sentiment analysis tool" by SAP which can be used to analyze comments on social networking sites. For insurers this could solve dual problems; they could develop new products customized to needs of client and also detect fraud. Insurers are looking at developing 'Social-Risk-Profile' to proactively detect frauds or fraudulent behavior of their customers. Future/current needs of insured could be derived from the kind of social activity, customers could be categorized into groups and products could be modeled to suit the characteristics of the groups.
Continue reading "Service Capital: Fuel for Insurance Industry - Part 2" »
Continue reading "Rypple Acquisition: A Vision for tomorrow's Enterprise" »
In my previous blog Customer Experience - Part 1 I had detailed a long ordeal that I faced for a refund processing. In this blog, I share my thoughts about how this service could have been delivered much better to provide a good customer experience.
Spare Parts Management plays a critical role in Field Service processes, especially in the manufacturing industry where servicing installed products is a steady source of revenue.
The typical process flow may work something like this. The customer calls in and requests for a service to be performed on the installed product onsite. The task is created and assigned to the appropriate engineer. The engineer, before he travels to the customer site may determine any spare parts that he will require to perform the service. If he doesn't have the spare parts that he needs, he may place an order for them. The order is then created and shipped.
This is where we come to the question in this blog post. Where these spare parts should be shipped?
Many companies follow their own processes and many IT applications support some or all of the below mentioned scenarios.
Ship to Engineer: The spare parts may be shipped to the Engineer address defined in the application. Typically such an address could be the Engineer's home address. The engineer takes receipt of these spare parts and proceeds to the customer site to perform the service. This process places an additional responsibility on the engineer in terms of receipt, storage and transportation of the spare parts.
Ship to Customer: The spare parts may be shipped to the customer. The customer is then required to take the receipt of the spare parts and provide them to the engineer when he arrives at the site. This process places the onus on the customer to manage the spare parts till the engineer arrives on the scene. Not all customers may be willing to take this responsibility.
Ship to 'Special' Location: Sometimes parts may be required to be shipped to a one-off 'special location. Such a situation may arise because the engineer may be travelling between different customer sites covering a large geographical area and does not have to return to his base location to pick up the spare parts. These one-off location shipments come with their own risk so proper care should be taken to ensure receipt of what could potentially be precious cargo.
Ship to Incident Location: This is a variation of Ship to Customer process. In this case, the field service is required to be performed not at the customer site but at the location of the incident. In this case, spare parts could be shipped to the location of the 'incident'. Feasibility of this option may be limited as there could be constraints on the receipt of the spare parts at the incident location.
Ship to Third Party: This is also an option where spare parts may be shipped to a third party and would be available to the engineer before he makes the field service call. Many consignment carriers like Federal Express may provide such services. This option provides the flexibility in as much that organizations can leverage the geographical spread of such third party service providers. It frees both the engineer and the customer from the responsibility of taking receipt and storage of the spare parts. But it does necessitate that engineer is required to make an extra stop before he goes to the customer site to collect the parts. Also the cost structure of such arrangements should also be evaluated against the value that they provide in the final analysis.
Above are the broad options that organizations have today when they have to decide on the process of shipping their spare parts. They may use some or all of them depending on their individual needs. Organization could have other special needs which may influence their decision to choose any of the above mentioned option. This could be the situations arising out of reassignment of tasks from one engineer to another, the lead time required to store such parts before they are consumed by the engineer in service, the geographical area that is covered by the field service engineer, the value and size of the spare parts and so on and so forth.
By Prashanth N.
New transparency rules, new products, new sales channels are few developments in insurance sector, however the critical development has been shift from product-oriented to customer-oriented model of business. This primarily implies Insurers need to pull customers to them rather than fighting price wars on push-products. Customers are looking for more transparency in communication, customized products and timely service from their Insurers. The relationship of insurer and insured commences with contract of good coverage for a reasonable price. Attractive marketing campaign and good sales effort could sell a product, however the acid test occurs when claim is made; this is opportunity for Insurer to offer prompt, quality and quick customer service.
Continue reading "Service Capital: Fuel for Insurance Industry - Part 1" »
If we closely observe the traffic in our cities, we see people commuting to and fro from their offices and you can associate a set pattern to this routine. There will be congestions on all major roads of the cities during peak hours both in the morning and the evenings when people return back to their homes. But, there is a big section of these commuters who travel the entire day frequenting various places which fall under their zones. These people are the field service engineers who can be our cable operators, furniture carpenters, electricians, equipment maintenance guys, etc.
During Oracle Open World 2011, Oracle announced Siebel Open UI, the new paradigm for enabling a standards based, rich and versatile UI for Siebel applications.
Most of us, practicing CRM professionals, would have experienced the typical CRM program lifecycle. With much fanfare and excitement, an organization embarks upon a business transforming CRM program. The CRM application is a key enabler for this program. For a typical, on-premise COTS implementation, most organizations start with the noble intent of leveraging vanilla capabilities. Over time, more and more features and capabilities are implemented, resulting in a highly complex application that is disliked by the end users.
With respect to Siebel, one of the key complaints from end users is the complex UI, too many clicks, non-intuitive etc. We have seen organizations which have eventually abandoned the Siebel OOTB UI and built completely custom UI, a highly time and effort intensive exercise.
The Siebel Open UI should provide an in-house solution to the problems mentioned above by enabling a user interface that is simple, interactive, intuitive, productive and accessible.
Continue reading "Siebel Open UI: Application Usability or Mobility?" »
By Richy Yati Mishra
Recently in one of the release webinars of Salesforce (SFDC) I came across "KLOUT". This was grouped with Social Media giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Linked in etc. This created an interest in me to know more about KLOUT.
Continue reading "Salesforce IT Ecosystem and Way Forward" »
