Xerox Saves $1M in Inventory in First Year

Xerox Office Printing Business was created through Xerox’ acquisition of the Tektronix Color Printing and Imaging Division in January, 2000. The resulting organization merged Tektronix award-winning color printing technology, channel strength and creative marketing with Xerox’ traditional strengths in monochrome printing, technological innovation, distribution and brand marketing power.
The Tektronix colour portfolio complements Xerox’ growing family of monochrome network printers to create a full line of office printing products available through more than 16,000 resellers worldwide. Today, the Xerox Office Printing Business sells monochrome and color printers to the office environment. Their call center averages about 3,000 calls a day from customers throughout the world.

Challenges
In 1997, Tektronix’ printing business had regional home-grown legacy systems with multiple applications in each system. At the time, Tektronix was a $2 billion, multi-national company with 260 technicians located in 23 countries around the world. The company’s existing legacy systems were functioning as separate “islands.” Separate systems developed 20 years ago existed for contracts, inventory, and service dispatching. According to Curtis Chapman, Xerox OPB Customer Support IT Manager, the company was looking for a software system that would:
· Globally manage the dispatching of technicians;
· Help move service from being field-centric to phone- and Web-centric;
· Improve invoicing and accounts payable;
· Interface with Oracle, which was being used worldwide;
· Be Y2K compliant

Solution
A team representing both the Tektronix Office Printing Business, now known as Xerox Office Printing Business selected the Metrix Call Center, Repair Depot, Logistics, Dispatching, Inventory, Contracts, and Invoicing modules.  Chapman explains that what sold them on Metrix was that all modules were in one complete package. “It was an integrated solution,” Chapman said.
The Results

A Million Dollar Savings
The initial impact Tektronix realised from the new system was with inventory management. By being able to view their inventory through 100% visibility, Tektronix (now Xerox) saved more than $1 million in inventory in the first year alone. With Metrix the company can now view inventory at technician truck stop level. With this level of detail, Xerox has been able to reduce the number of parts in the field and, at the same time, ensure that the parts needed by technicians are available.
Focus on Results

Moving Service from Field to Phones and Internet
Chapman explains that a big goal of Xerox Office Printing Business has been to reduce the number of service requests being answered through the company’s Call Centre and web site.
“Metrix has allowed Xerox to move to an environment where 70% of the requests for service are answered by the Call Centre. Currently, about 4-5% of requests for service are solved over the web through a knowledge tree and the remaining 25-26% are solved by a field technician,” said Chapman. “It used to be that our field technicians used to handle most of the service calls. Now our Call Centre does. Our goal is to continue to increase the web-based percentage of service questions.”

Mobilizing the Field Force
Out in field, more than 200 field technicians in the United States link into Metrix through Techlink and solve problems through a combination of hands-on, Call Centre and Internet. Techlink is the mobile extension of the Metrix application suite. Capable of wire-line or wireless connectivity, Techlink provides the full functionality of the Metrix application to Xerox personnel out in the field. According to Chapman, this has meant the field service technicians are better equipped to solve problems in an expedient manner.
Smooth Interface to Oracle
Chapman has been pleased with how Metrix and Oracle work together for Xerox. Parts, parts pricing and parts cost, shipments, and customer address are extracted nightly from Oracle Financials and inserted into Metrix. Metrix invoices are then interfaced to Oracle to be printed and interfaced to Xerox’ GL system for revenue recognition.
According to Chapman, Metrix has reduced the number of rebills and improved customer satisfaction overall. Requests are monitored. “With closed daily verses the older systems, we had to wait for period end, working people overtime to catch up with the workload,” Chapman said.

Spotting Trends “a Big Benefit”
Now that Xerox Office Printing Business has a global system, the company is able to analyse service data by product model and/or world region for trend analysis. This is a big benefit, according to Chapman. “Being able to identify the most common calls allows us to concentrate on call centre training and the design of new models,” Chapman Said.

Metrix Enabled:
100% inventory visibility
Reduced number of field service visits
Increased service through Call Centre
Increased service over the Internet
Smooth interface with Oracle
Curtis Chapman – Customer Support IT Manager