Case studies / Manufacturing
Case studyConnected sales and service for an equipment manufacturer
An equipment manufacturer selling through distributors worldwide gave sales and service one customer view in Dynamics 365, with installed assets, order history and parts availability in every call.
Overview
A family-controlled manufacturer of packaging and processing machinery, headquartered in northern Europe, selling through a network of independent distributors in more than forty countries and running its own service teams in its largest markets.
Scale. About 9,000 installed machines worldwide, a spare parts catalogue of more than 40,000 lines and a growing book of service contracts.
The challenge
A salesperson arriving to discuss a new line with a long-standing customer would sometimes be greeted with a complaint about a machine that had been down for a week. Nobody had told them, because sales and service lived in different worlds.
Sales and service teams had no shared customer view. Sales used a CRM that held contacts and opportunities; service used a ticketing tool and spreadsheets of installed machines; distributors kept their own records and shared them reluctantly.
Service histories were missing during sales calls, so salespeople could not see which machines a customer owned, how old they were or how they had been performing. Upgrade and replacement opportunities were spotted by chance.
Open issues were missed. A service ticket raised through a distributor might never reach the manufacturer's own team, and repeat faults on the same model were hard to spot across countries.
Planning a service visit meant phoning the warehouse to check parts. Engineers sometimes arrived on site to find the part they needed was on back order, which turned a one-visit fix into two.
The solution
Sales, customer service and field service now share one record for each customer, with every contact, opportunity, case and installed machine linked to it. A salesperson preparing for a meeting sees open cases and recent visits alongside the pipeline.
Installed asset records hold each machine's serial number, configuration, installation date, warranty and service history. Repeat faults are visible by model and component across all countries.
Field service scheduling assigns engineers based on skills, location and availability. Before a visit is confirmed, the planner can see whether the required parts are in stock locally or centrally and when they can arrive.
Distributors work through portals connected to the same records. Cases raised by distributors reach the manufacturer's service team immediately, and distributors see the history of machines in their territory.
Email and telephony are integrated, so customer conversations are logged automatically against the record. Customer analytics show installed base, service performance and opportunity by region.
The engagement
- Eight months
- Six specialists
- Journey mapping for sales, service and parts, Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service and Field Service, installed asset records, ERP and distributor integration, data migration and a regional launch.
Integrations
- ERP and order history
- Distributor portals
- Parts catalogue
- Email and telephony
- Document store
How we delivered it
- 01
Map journeys and records
Six weeks
We mapped the sales, service and parts journeys from the customer's side and agreed one shared customer record, including how distributors, end customers and installed machines relate to each other.
- 02
Configure and connect
Twelve weeks
We configured Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service and Field Service, and connected order history and installed assets from the ERP, so every machine shipped appeared with its configuration and warranty.
- 03
Migrate and train distributors
Eight weeks
Customers and assets were migrated and de-duplicated, which turned out to be the largest piece of work. Distributors were trained on the portal and on why shared records helped them as much as the manufacturer.
- 04
Regional launch
Nine weeks
The platform launched region by region, starting with the markets where the manufacturer ran its own service teams, then extending to distributor-led regions.
Results
- Order history in front of service before every call
- Open issues visible to sales before every meeting
- Parts availability checked when visits are planned
- An accurate installed base across all countries
Service teams now see order history before every call, so they know what the customer owns and how it is configured before they pick up the phone.
Sales sees open issues before every meeting. Salespeople no longer walk into complaints unprepared, and several have used service history to propose upgrades that resolved recurring problems.
Parts availability is visible when planning visits. More faults are fixed on the first visit, and engineers spend less time travelling to sites where they cannot finish the job.
The data clean-up has paid off beyond the project. The installed base is now known accurately for the first time, which has shaped the manufacturer's service contract offer and its parts stocking policy.
We spent more time cleaning our customer and machine data than configuring the software. It was the best time we spent.
What made the difference
Clean customer and asset data mattered more than any feature.
