SmartPDF – Communicate digitally
The opportunity:
Simplifying the business process with digitalisation
The initial situation: The sales representatives of the internationally active jewellery company Pregis visit their customers, the jewellery retailers, at regular intervals. During the customer visit, data such as orders, forecasts, etc. are recorded and updated. The „Customer Meeting List“ is used to record this data. At the beginning of the visit, it provides the existing customer data from the SAP CRM system, corresponding changes are recorded and then written back to SAP CRM, which starts the necessary follow-up actions. Previously, printed paper lists were used for this purpose, which contained two media breaks – between SAP CRM and the field service and between the customer and SAP CRM. This meant a high susceptibility to manual transmission errors as well as a lot of time, personnel and costs.
The solution:
An end-to-end digital process
Together with the international integration partner Pregis, kühn & weyh developed the appropriate solution for this problem. The small but decisive difference in the newly developed process: the Customer Meeting List is no longer handed over to the field staff in printed and paper form, as before, but is provided digitally in the form of fillable PDFs. The rethought process contains the following process steps:
- The sales representative requests the data sheet for the planned customer visit.
- SAP CRM provides the data via web service as XML. The OMS generates a fillable and machine-readable PDF file and sends it to the employee.
- During the customer visit, the sales representative enters the current data (orders) and sends the completed PDF form straight back to the head office.
- Input Management extracts the data and uses it to update SAP CRM, triggering follow-up actions if necessary. Finally, it creates a read-only PDF copy for the customer.
Conclusion:
Digital is that simple!
On the basis of standard systems for output and input management, an end-to-end digital process has been established. This not only saves time and resources because it does not involve any media discontinuities. It is also much more modern and easier to use than the paper-based process.