Collicutt Energy: Bringing Vital Processes and People Together with Versago

Collicutt Challenges

• Inefficiency and poor visibility into production workflow and job status
• Gaps in hand-off from sales to service team for maintenance contract offer
• Lack of visibility into stock-outs and inventory for the parts team
• Inefficient and error-prone absence request/approval workflow lacking company-wide visibility into employee absence schedule
• Inefficient, error-prone, time capture for technicians
• No central management of field service activity

Solution

• Simple, user-friendly Versago web portal enabling people in different roles to access and update only the information they need to perform their job
  • Production Job Board
  • Sales-to-Service Notification
  • Parts Team Portal
  • Absence Scheduler/Calendar
  • Field Service Portal
  • Invoice Approval/Payment Workflow
• Real-time processing and synchronization of portal activity with SAP Business One

ROI

• Eliminate blind spots into production job challenges as they’re occurring
• Immediate insight and risk mitigation relative to job costs and available materials
• Recapture maintenance contract revenue and customer satisfaction
• Planning accuracy resulting from removing inventory blind spots
• Company-wide resource availability visibility
• Field-service delivery and cost predictability
• Increase employee morale from reduced confusion and simpler communication
• Fully leverage the investment made in SAP Business One!

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be done finding uses for Versago.” — Ryan Krutzfeld, VP Operations, Collicutt Energy

The Big Picture

ERPs allow for planning, tracking, and measuring a business’s operational processes. However, typically they are touched by only a fraction of the people effecting the business. A business fails to realize its full potential even when it has an ERP because the larger population of employees, customers, and vendors is unable to contribute to or benefit from essential information! This disconnect is costly and introduces speed (and accuracy) bumps across the enterprise. Speedbumps take lots of forms. Some of the more familiar ones are: stuck in an email inbox, filed in a cabinet, hidden in a spreadsheet, not integrated, not mobile, not systematized, etc.

Speedbumps have a way of going unnoticed, slowing things down, sometimes for years. Why? Because people get used to them and the frustration they cause. But they undermine the performance of the company. They are also often the root cause of customer and partner satisfaction problems!

About Collicutt

Collicutt Energy is a world class leader in anything related to industrial engines. They sell, service and provide parts for a variety of engines that power compressors, generators, pumps, etc. Collicutt represents and carries world-class products like MTU/Rolls Royce Power Systems, Scania, Waukesha, and Motortech that support the business in order provide to top-of-the-line service to customers. Collicutt’s customers are treated to a relentless pursuit of improvement through innovation and agility.

About Versago

Third Wave’s Versago portal platform (including Bizweaver integration and process automation) removes costly speedbumps and accelerates information flow by enabling employees, customers, and vendors to access and contribute to critical business information. They do this in the context of their jobs and in complete sync with SAP Business One. Collicutt is taking full advantage of Versago to cure gaps in various processes and areas across their business.

With Versago, anyone, can accomplish their tasks easily and accurately at just the level of involvement they need in any process or activity. They can access or update any information via simple, user-friendly web pages from their laptop/desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone.

There is no end to the use-cases Versago can address. To make setup easy, Versago ships with pre-built screens and integrations to SAP Business One.

Collicutt Use-Cases

Problem: Job Workflow & Tracking
A variety of things can constitute a ‘job’ at Collicutt, including solution builds, rebuilds, and maintenance. These are complex projects taking place across a 70,000 sq ft facility. Communication re: job stage, status, materials, cost, and time was decentralized across email, paper, etc. A limited number of people had the ability to key updates back into SAP manually. This mode of operation was inefficient and too error prone to be at the heart of Collicutt’s delivery process.

Solution: Versago as Job Board Portal
Using Versago, tasks for jobs are issued to the floor. Versago becomes the digital shop traveler. Technicians on the floor using iPads can access the tasks, log time against them, and update the status. A two-step workflow enables approval to move from project managers to supervisors. From a common screen supervisors can track job performance against quoted cost and hours, and purchase order status. Everyone has the interaction and visibility they need.

Problem: Sales to Service Hand-Off
After a generator is sold there is supposed to be a handoff to a ‘service salesperson’ to offer a preventative maintenance contract. This handoff was handled in email and being missed. It resulted in customers not benefiting from the full range of Collicut’s service value as well as a loss of additional revenue.

Solution: Versago as Sales Portal
Based on an order status change, the service salespeople receive a notification and from Versago can access the order and see the appropriate actions to take with the customer. Collicut also enables any employee to generate a lead from Versago, Sales to add and update opportunities with follow-up, and Sales Management to ensure follow-ups happen.

Problem: Inventory Visibility for Parts Team
Members of the parts team need to have 24/7 access to inventory to participate in job planning and respond to customer needs. To do this they would take a laptop home so they could log in to SAP to check stock. With Versago, Collicutt saw a better way.

Solution: Versago as Parts Team Portal
Configuring access to inventory in Versago requires no work. Versago ships with a template SAP inventory listing that can be assigned to the appropriate roles, filtered, and formatted to what they need to see. The Collicutt Parts Team members can access this from their phones at any time.

Problem: Employee Absence Request
Employees filled out absence requests using editable PDF files that were then emailed to their managers. This was yet another decentralized process resulting in low visibility into employee PTO across the company.

Solution: Versago as Employee Portal
This was another quick win for Collicutt with Versago. Employees can log in to Versago and fill out a simple form indicating planned absence. It then becomes visible to a supervisor who can approve it in Versago. Bizweaver is then used to update an OutLook calendar making it visible to the organization. The PTO is also displayed in a calendar within Versago which is accessible by all employees.

Problem: Field Service Coordination
Like all the above examples, field service coordination and information exchange were managed via disparate forms of communication. This caused all the same time efficiency, error potential, and frustrations. Collicutt was in the market for a field service application which can be expensive, require integration to SAP, and would be yet another app added to the organization. Collicutt saw how their field service needs could be addressed using Versago.

Solution: Versago as Field Service Portal

Dispatchers use Versago to assign a job to a technician or multiple technicians.  Based on how the job is set up, certain Versago forms become available to technicians.  When they get to the customer’s site, Versago steps them through job tasks in a certain order. They fill out mandatory/job specific forms, confirm or edit the equipment information (with a real-time update back to SAP if there is a change), enter their time and fill out a resolution.  Time entries go through a 2-step approval. It is automatically updated in the job costing module in SAP. Customers log in to Versago to access nicely formatted service reports.

“We are very passionate about Versago. It’s an amazing tool.” — Ryan Krutzfeld, VP Operations, Collicutt Energy