ServiceManager Customer Success
When Bob Everest took over as Paragon Bay’s CEO in 2006, it was clear the company needed a systems overhaul in order to provide its customers with exceptional service and value. After a two month collaboration with Paragon, ServiceCentral’s ServiceManager platform delivered the team one solution that integrated seamlessly with its existing system as well as the other customer systems they used for reverse logistics. Since the implementation, Paragon has added new customers and increased annual revenue by 50%. We interviewed Bob to learn more about his company’s challenges and his experience using ServiceManager to help overcome them.
The Challenge
Using multiple customer systems as well as their own in-house solution to manage processes and workflows, the company struggled to deliver on its brand promise.
Our opportunities for growth were limited. We spent most of our time understanding the many workflows within our customers’ systems and lacked the resources to focus on providing quality service and value. Not only did we spend hours and hours training employees on these several systems, but it became clear that the systems themselves had limits and could only take us so far. Even with intensive training, we still encountered situations where we were unprepared, requiring us to contact our customers for support.
At that point in time, we were stagnant and knew we needed a better solution if we wanted to move ourselves up the value chain. We needed a solution that could integrate with our customers’ systems so we had the same data and insight as before, but were working through a software within our control. We needed a solution we could trust, one that could integrate with our customers’ systems but one that was also customizable.
The Solution
The ServiceManager solution gave Paragon the ability to deliver on their brand promise to provide exceptional value and service to their customers.
With the implementation of ServiceManager, we saw immediate improvement. In days, we were operating more efficiently and we saw profit margin growth after the first month. ServiceManager integrated with all our partner systems. Plus, it provided custom reports created for our business as well as ad hoc reports that we could pull often to ensure efficiency goals were being met. Ultimately, we received a solution tailored for our business for an exceptional value.
Those aren’t the only reasons we chose ServiceCentral’s ServiceManager solution over other workflow management systems. The benefit of the platform that stood out the most to us is its ability to grow with our business. We look at ServiceManager, not only as a system, but as our partner, committed to innovating and evolving at the rate our business requires achieving continued success.
The implementation process was collaborative and included people from across our company. Operations staff, administrators, depot managers, and warehouse coordinators were integrally involved in the setup and training. Our partners at ServiceCentral came to our location in person for training and to ensure a smooth deployment.
The training wasn’t as significant as you would think and that’s because the system is intuitive for daily use on the floor. In fact, it was easy to transition from using many customer systems to using only ServiceManager. It continues to be a seamless process to do integrations and make adjustments as needed.
ServiceCentral delivers an outstanding level of support. Although they work with many other businesses, we always feel that we’re their only customer. And that’s kind of a weird feeling in today’s world.
Bob Everest CEO, Paragon Bay
The Outcome
ServiceManager has given our business the ability to expand our customer base, to simplify workflows, to easily collaborate from many locations and, ultimately, to grow our business.
ServiceManager gave us more than what we asked for. Yes, they met our requirements for custom workflows and multiple system integrations, but also they opened Paragon to immense opportunity to work with customers we would not have been able to support in the past. We are now able to work with those customers who don’t have a solution or who have a solution but don’t know how to use it for inventory, warehouse, and returns management. We are able to provide them with these solutions on our system plus provide insight through analytics of our own performance in managing their product on a daily basis.
For example, we currently have 70,000 parts in-house and I need to know the location of each for accuracy, efficiency, and fulfillment for our customers. Daily and on a real time basis, our partners need to know what their inventory levels are. They need to know what parts are available for shipping, tracking numbers for the parts going out, and RMA numbers for products coming back. It’s the real time data that these customers need to be able to make decisions–ServiceManager provides them this insight.
Partnering with ServiceCentral to consolidate our processes and streamline workflows opened Paragon Bay to immense opportunity that we wouldn’t have otherwise. We continue to work closely with them as we add customers and expand our services.
The ServiceManager solution effectively streamlined our operations giving us the time to focus on delivering value to our customers. Our company has transformed from a mere service provider to a respected partner helping our customers make technology decisions, marketing decisions, and forecasting decisions with respect to product launches.
Bob Everest CEO, Paragon Bay