Founded in 1974, Lowry Solutions has transformed from a computer peripheral equipment reseller into an industrial IoT (Internet of Things) solutions provider that specializes in supply chain tracking and traceability solutions, enterprise mobility, and managed print services, all of which enhance accountability, process control, and operational effectiveness.
Lowry Solutions specializes in full lifecycle traceability of customer assets, which requires sophisticated IoT platforms to power the services they provide. Their previously siloed systems left them with incomplete and disparate data, and a lack of automation slowed down processes and required manual entry and research (e.g., looking up service level agreements and entitlements for customers manually).
As the business grew and evolved, Lowry knew they had to streamline and consolidate their IT systems and internal processes to better serve customers and drive more agility in their service business. At the same time, they were looking to generate additional revenue through service contracts by improving entitlement visibility while increasing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Gaining a 360° View of the Customer
Lowry leadership knew they could better serve their customers, scale the business, and obtain clear visibility of key performance indicators and financial metrics with a single, cloud-based system that connects sales and service by enabling a 360-degree view of the customer relationship. Lowry Solutions partnered with Salesforce, ServiceMax and Bolt Data to extend their use of Sales Cloud to create a seamless service solution that would address the above challenges, and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.
By leveraging data from Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Pardot marketing automation, and ServiceMax Asset 360, Lowry can drive automated campaigns for assets without attached service contracts and achieve universal visibility across all parts of the business. These powerful insights allow different team members to access existing account and contact data from Salesforce as they engage with customers, and tech support reps and coordinators can leverage Salesforce tools like email integration and Chatter.
Implementing Best Practices
Bolt Data, a technology consulting firm focused on service management solutions in the customer service and field service industries, applied expertise with field service, depot processes and contract entitlement best practices to help meet Lowry’s overall business goals for systems consolidation and process enhancement.
By first understanding Lowry’s requirements for product lifecycle management, Bolt Data recommended best practices to optimize workflow both across and within service sales and renewals and service delivery – saving time, reducing duplication, and powering operational efficiency. The integrated field service solution now enables optimized field service and depot processes, better data management, and improved customer satisfaction:
The solution includes a centralized customer contact center with streamlined dispatch and scheduling. The robust platform empowers service personnel with automated contract and warranty entitlement, vendor PO information, and RMA/depot repair management.
With automated entitlement processes from ServiceMax Asset 360, the system determines repairs that are covered by a warranty and provides this information to coordinators in the call center. This saves time, eliminates leakage or missed upsell opportunities, and enables the call center to better service customers.
The system also tracks various types of customer contracts (onsite business, depot-related services, software, and more), granular pricing terms for labor, parts, and consumables, and service level agreement (SLA) milestones. As soon as a customer work order is generated, all the pertinent information is already in place, with SLA milestone clocks set to ensure accurate delivery on warranties and service contracts.
Bolt Data further streamlines the solution by automatically generating work orders for preventive maintenance based on detailed contract entitlements. With a combination of IoT sensors installed on assets and historical and real-time asset performance data, Lowry Solutions’ network of service personnel can provide usage-based preventive maintenance before unplanned downtime occurs.
Setting Goals to Measure Success
In preparation for the rollout of Salesforce Field Service and ServiceMax Asset 360, the team at Lowry set specific goals they believe they could achieve. This included a 7% improvement in contract attach rates and a 15% improvement in contract renewal rates within the first year.
The team also expects the solution to fuel service revenue growth. By providing visibility into service entitlements across service and operations, ServiceMax Asset 360 protects against leakage from incorrectly entitled work orders and uncovers service upsell opportunities. Service costs are also expected to decline, enabling Lowry technicians to be more productive and provide high levels of personalized service while lowering mean time to repair. Overall systems cost of ownership will also decline due to the consolidated IT infrastructure and the Salesforce architecture’s modern toolset that enables system changes with no or low-code tools.
Looking back at the project, Mark Muehlenbeck, Chief Financial Officer at Lowry Solutions noted,
“Working with Bolt Data on the Salesforce Field Service and ServiceMax Asset 360 project has been a wonderful experience. They brought a deeply knowledgeable team that worked hard to understand our requirements and turn them into reality.”
Looking to the future, Lowry and Bolt Data plan to roll out a customer community and integrate Lowry’s new ERP system, furthering the seamless flow of information from customers and 3rd party contractors to the service organization, with financial information flowing into the ERP system.
Learn more about Lowry and how they simplify supply chain traceability here.
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