IBM, Singapore - Innovation in B2B Services
Name of Organization / Company: IBM, Singapore
Category: Award for Innovation in Business-to-Business Services
Entry Title: Achieving Excellence in Maintenance Contract Renewals
Essay:
IBM Quote to Cash (Q2C) Team’s mission is to provide efficient sales support to IBM Technology Support Services (TSS) team to pro- actively prepare Maintenance Contracts to cover expiring IBM HW & SW Services from warranty or maintenance coverage, to free sellers on the tedious tasks performed today on managing such renewals, to improve their productivity and to enable them to focus on new growth opportunities.
Many challenges hindered the team from providing quality support to TSS despite owning the process as a Value Shift from them 3 years ago. There is rejection of more than 50% of the pro- active contracts prepared by the Q2C team due to quality issues majorly attributed to complexity with the process and tools, resulting to loss of confidence from TSS.
Challenges before RPA was developed:
• Speed and Accuracy: The tasks involved were tedious, time consuming and prone to human error.
• Complexity: Business rules are not straightforward and relied heavily on human memory and manual steps. Each country had unique offerings and rules which required dedicated resources to learn and apply the business rules accordingly.
• High Cost of Support: Multiple resources had to support the process due to the volume and specialization required for each country.
A more systematic, streamlined and cost- effective approach was required to handle the renewal process. Action was taken by the AP Process, Kaizen and Developer teams to develop and configure a Robot to replace 95% of the steps performed by the Q2C team.
Phase 1 - Robot extracts all renewal opportunities from multiple databases by interacting with IBM digital systems, determining the scope of opportunities and creating the Maintenance contracts according to each country unique rules.
Phase 2 – Robot raises requests in various IBM tools to get approval for End of Service Extension, Discount approvals, update the Maintenance Renewal Tracking file and sends follow- up to the customer.
Overcoming challenges in the Project:
• Very slow response time from Robot when emulating human steps – Overcome by introducing multiple new software queries for mass processing resulting to improved efficiency and speed
• Misunderstanding by Developer – Overcome by onsite meeting held between the Senior Process Experts and Developer covering a thorough walkthrough of the Robot steps and guidance on the correct logics
• Confusing and missing information in Process documentation – Overcome by improving process Documentation with clarity and completeness
• Errors uncovered by Robot in original contracts prepared by Q2C team – Overcome by additional logics incorporated into Robot as corrective action to address renewal of such contracts based on TSS advise
Positive impact:
1) Cost and Efficiency: Deployment of Robot was able to lower cost, improve quality and keep cycle time to a minimum. 95% of the resources have been re- deployed to other work missions.
2) Cycle Time: Original 30 days turnaround time has gone down to 3 days. Clients receive their renewal contracts from IBM - 90 days before they expire, thus giving TSS and Business partner sufficient time to close the deal with the Client.
3) Accuracy: The Robot logics were customized to fulfil each country’s business requirements, preventing any missed opportunities and errors in contract creation. Accuracy of contracts jumped from 50% to 100%.
4) Client Satisfaction: Improved TSS experience, eliminating doubts on the quality of the renewal contracts, allowing them to focus on other business objectives such as gaining market share especially with IBM Multivendor support offerings
It is vital to keep on reinventing the way we work by incorporating new Automated solutions to drive improved efficiencies and reduce cost throughout the end to end process. This RPA is a testament to IBM’s constant drive for transformation to be best in class in technology and services!
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