“Nobody was winning.”
That’s what Robert Eggeman, Service Champion for Mettler-Toledo International’s multi-million dollar Process Analytics Division (www.mtcom/pro), said when he inherited the management of the company’s technical documents, called “Certificates of Calibration.”
Numbering in the tens of thousands and growing daily, Mettler-Toledo’s Certificates of Calibration contain critical information about the company’s products – precision instruments for professional use in the laboratory, industry and in retail. Each certificate includes product values, calibrated and recorded by a technician, which verify that the product meets specific quality assurance parameters before it is shipped. This process must be repeated yearly once the product is at the customer site, and a new certificate issued. Customers request copies of certificates for their files.
But, wait a minute – or a week! Before Eggeman took over, customer requests for certificates were handled in what might be considered one of the most time-consuming ways possible.
It was a one-by-one process that clearly was inefficient:
- First a customer would contact their local Mettler-Toledo field office with their Certificate request.
- The request was passed on to Mettler-Toledo’s Zurich or Boston office, and sent to the U.S. office of either the Service or Production Division.
- A staff member in one of the U.S. offices would search across the company’s servers to find the certificate.
- Once located, the certificate was e-mailed back to the customer’s local Mettler-Toledo field office.
- The certificate was finally sent to the customer by their local field office.
It was the slowest of relays, with the entire process taking up to a week and half.
In addition, entering new certificates each day into the database – typically 100 or so – as well as responding to customer requests for certificates, consumed hours of staff time each day.
“The old process was very labor-intensive with no good return, and it was frustrating for customers,” said Eggeman. “I knew we had to automate the process just to keep up.”
He went on the hunt for a better solution and found it right in his own company. His colleague in the marketing department had been using a marketing asset management (MAM) solution called RevBase® for several years. She was using it to manage all marketing materials, including sales support and literature fulfillment. She recommended the solution to Eggeman because she had experienced significant benefits since implementing an automated document management system.
“When I heard about the solution my colleague was using, I took a close look at how they were using it, its technical capabilities, and what it was like to work with the vendor,” said Eggeman.
He learned that by using a MAM solution his colleague was freed from mundane tasks similar to those Eggeman was dealing with, like entering new documents into the system, handling requests, finding documents in the system and sending them to requesters. It also provided a repository for all the marketing assets created by the marketing department, and enabled both internal and secure external access to those materials. These are issues many marketers face who are trying to manage ever-increasing quantities of print and digital sales and marketing assets for their organizations.
Eggeman decided to try a MAM solution for his department. He proposed a limited roll-out as a test. He pulled a group of certificates, each stored in PDF format, and sent them via secure FTP to the test system that had been set up. The data was automatically, and successfully, imported and a limited number of customers given access to it through a customer portal. It all worked exactly as planned. From there the decision was easy – build an expanded system.
“We established a structure and a fantastic mechanism for implementing the system,” said Eggeman. “Once everything was set up and all the data collected, the data was imported automatically into the system and available on our website. Everything went flawlessly. It was quite impressive.”
Eggeman’s Service Division MAM system now takes care of all processes related to the management of the Certificates of Calibration and to customer requests for certificates. All existing Certificate data is available and is updated as needed. New certificates are loaded by technicians as soon as the product calibration is completed and are accessible immediately. All certificates are available directly to customers simply by entering the product’s serial number. Each evening an automated report is generated updating the system for Eggeman.
“My staff and I are saving a tremendous amount of time thanks to the system taking over all routine tasks related to certificates. It’s also great that now our customers have instant, on-demand access to all certificates and can download, email, or save certificates to a “favorites” area for easy future access.”
“The process could not be any simpler or smoother now,” concluded Eggeman. “Change has definitely been good.”
Now, everybody is winning.
