MCR Systems is a company that is much like many others.  It supplies equipment - in this case, point of sale systems mainly to the hospitality industry - and it has a service operation to support the kit and its customers.

According to service director, Leigh McManus, its service operation is 'regarded as a profit centre in that it is a revenue stream but it is not designed to make profit - it breaks even'.    However service is critical to the company he says. 'We want MCR to have a respected and professional service organisation.  We need it to support the sales team and to represent the company.'

So far so good but….  'We are proud of what we can do as a company but we recognise that our customers' needs are changing and that this is an increasingly competitive industry.  We need to make a difference in our service,' he says.

The biggest problem McManus has with the business is control.  'There were a number of specific challenges,' he says.  'The accounting system was unable to cost work properly - we did not know whether a contract was profitable until it was over. We would have to work it out at the end of the year based on the calls they had placed and if it was too much put the price up next year.

'Customers were asking for different types of contract, which we were unable to handle on our automatic system and they had to be administered manually. 

'Customers ask for monthly reports on our activity which we can only give them after a lot of detailed manual work going through the records.  We knew we were doing the calls but did not have real time control. It took a lot of time to create these reports.

'We want immediate service level agreement visibility i.e. we want to know how we are doing against our targets.

'Customers were asking for quarterly maintenance agreements - our system couldn't handle them so I have to do it manually and add it to the system - it was Dickensian.

'We want to give reports to customers to justify what we do or give them advice on what is causing their problems.

'Scheduling - where are the staff and how can we get this job done?  There is no place we can go to find out where they are and what they are doing.  So if a customer calls in on an emergency, it could take us up to two hours just to find an engineer who could do it.
Jason Massey, the helpdesk/technical support manager says: 'When we get in contact with our engineers just about every call starts with "Where are you?"'

He adds: 'We have a helpdesk to assess calls when they come in but we have no way of looking back at the performance of the agents dealing with them and the type of advice given so we miss an opportunity to assess our training needs.

'Our engineers mail back paper job sheets back and they have to be re-keyed so it could be up to four or five days before a call is finally updated.  In the meantime something may have happened, another engineer assigned and no connection between the calls is made.'

It sounds desperate but that is not the case.  'Our service is good,' says McManus.  'For example with one customer, we currently have 1000 sites with just one till.  In the last 15 months, across the country including Northern Ireland, we have not missed one eight hour fix time.'

But he knows MCR could do things better.   When he joined in 1992, the company had just one engineer and calls were logged in a book. 'We tried to have just one person logging calls but sometimes a different person took a call and it wasn't always logged properly.'   So incoming call handling was centralised. 'I employed a full time helpdesk person and he developed a call handling system for us in Lotus Approach.  I drew up what I wanted on a piece of paper and he created it.  It was an excellent system and we still use it today.'

And there lies MCR's challenge.

'Our customer base is still growing and the type of installation - these tills can be networked like a computer system - is getting more complex. The helpdesk handles on average more than 200 calls a day, of which 30% are escalated to second level and about half of those get an engineer call.  MCR has about 5000 active customers and another 2000 on contract.  The company now has 24 engineers.' 

The old management system is just not up to it.

MCR has embarked on the process of installing a modern professional management system.  'We initially though we needed a helpdesk system but found they were aimed at IT support and not really suitable for a field service operation.  We went to Service Management Europe and were amazed at how many there were to choose from and what the systems could do. 

'We wanted to get the best fit for our business now and in the future.  We talked to the manufacturer of the tills we sell (although they don’t have a field service operation), talked to our own suppliers such as the company that supplied our telephone system, read articles in magazines, talked to competitors.  In the end looked at four systems and finally selected  Solarvista.'  MCR has decided to install a customer-managed solution and starting with mobile communications and helpdesk. This will be led by Jason Massey.
 
McManus doesn't understate the challenge ahead.  'Our necks are on the line with this system but I am confident we can get it to work for us'.

For the first installment of Jason's story see Features