Warren CAT uses Intergis GPS Vehicle Tracking to enhance customer service

Warren CAT is an authorized factory Caterpillar dealer providing sales, leasing, equipment rentals, installations, regular preventative maintenance, and emergency service repairs. The busy service operation fields 60 calls per day at each location and sends 160 technicians to customer sites.

As a dealer with 19 locations serving West Texas and Oklahoma, Warren CAT places great value on its ability to provide the excellent customer service synonymous with the Caterpillar brand. To live up to that standard, the Company initiated a project with the twin goals of meeting every standard customer request within 24 hours or less, while saving money doing it. The challenge was given to Warren CAT’s Six Sigma team, whose purpose is to provide total quality management solutions for the company. The Warren CAT Six Sigma team, in collaboration with CAT corporate Six Sigma, identified service issues involving both the dealer and Caterpillar.

The company, once managed by 16 dispatchers operating manually, tracked activity with white boards and used cell phones to inform techs when each days’ priorities changed. Problems would appear regularly with dropped calls and outdated or poorly mapped areas.

Warren CAT conclusively determined that integrating scheduling and dispatching of all CAT activities, in one system, would provide major benefits and improvements in customer service and cost reduction.

Since total customer satisfaction was the driving force behind the project, Six Sigma examined the critical customer requirements and dealer needs, which would have to be met in order to develop a successful solution. After careful examination, the team gathered the 38 most critical needs affecting the field service operation and researched 22 software companies who specialize in developing programs for the industry type.

After several tests, the Intergis Visual Control Room (VCR) Solution was selected as the best fit for the company’s needs. The new system was tested in a pilot program in five service vehicles in Lubbock, Texas, from April to September 2007. Each service truck was equipped with an Intergis Maya GPS unit to transmit in-vehicle tracking information. With the pilot a success, a rollout to all 160 vehicles was immediately scheduled.

VCR is an automated fleet management system that efficiently dispatches, schedules, routes and tracks each vehicle on a full-color, graphical map while providing all relevant real-time data on a single screen to dispatchers. When unscheduled or emergency calls are received, VCR automatically determines the most appropriate technician to make the stop based on proximity, (from the Maya GPS data), technician expertise and applied business rules, then schedules the service technician automatically.

The system operates by gathering data from both internal and external sources and combining them in a “Visual Control Room,” giving the user total control. The effectiveness of the system derives from the increased decision-making capabilities provided to dispatchers. These include mapping and pinning of actual customer sites, detailed customer and job information, the ability to schedule and dispatch service technicians, selecting optimal auto-routes, tracking each job in the system, and viewing the resources used. By using the visual options available, the user is able to efficiently coordinate each service call from start to finish.

The results are consistent with a six sigma outcome: Driving time has been reduced, even as the same number of technicians are seeing more customers each day. Fewer miles are being covered through the more efficient routes mapped by the routing software. The prime lever for adopting the solution – customer service – has dramatically improved: customer wait time has been reduced by over 300 percent for jobs requiring specialized technicians. The bottom line? Intergis VCR is expected to return annual savings of $2.8 million.

To learn more about Intergis Visual Control Room and Mobile Resource Management solutions, click on Contact Us.