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- Amdocs CRMmodules: ClearSupport, Web Support, ClearContracts, ClearLogistics, ClearQuality and ClearContracts
- Users: 100 user registrations, 60 part registrations
- Interaction volume: 500 knowledge base searches
- Database: Microsoft SQL Server 6.5
- Operating system: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
- Hardware: Dual 166 MHz Dell PC
- Integrations: Primus Knowledge Management hub
| | | | | | At the root of supporting customers is giving them easy access to all the information they need to use your products properly. One way to do this is by bringing key support and engineering departments under one system, which allows you to easily extend this internal knowledge to customers and provide seamless support to them via the Web. That's exactly what Emulex did when it implemented Amdocs CRM for its internal and Web-based self service systems.
“The fact that you can quickly deploy and integrate into Amdocs CRM allows you to effectively manage all those unexpected changes that may occur in your business.”
Barry Davis, Senior Manager of IT, Emulex
Every morning, countless people throughout the world log onto their corporate networks. Whether they're accessing a WAN or LAN, chances are they're using fibre channel technology from Emulex Corp. A market leader in high-performance fibre channel, print server, and network access products, Emulex may not be a household name for consumers, but the companies that embed Emulex technology into their products include currently, over 20 key OEMs, including Data General, EMC, Hitachi, HP, IBM, NEC, Sequent, and Siemens-Nixdorf.
Emulex provides critical components to these and other customers' systems, which is why the company must be able to resolve any customer questions and problems immediately. To improve operations and meet ambitious business growth goals, Emulex chose Amdocs CRMto power a full-service customer support Web site and unify its support, engineering and quality operations under one shared system. Emulex, a registered ISO 9000 corporation, also uses Amdocs CRMto track ISO issues so that quality concerns are monitored, regardless of the originating department.
Self-Service Customer Support
Emulex uses Amdocs ClarifyCRM's self-service system to provide customers with Web-based support 24 hours a day. Customers can log onto the site, create a customer ID and password, and enter cases themselves. They can view the detailed progress of their case as it makes its way through the support process, and even add comments into the case at any point to hold a virtual conversation with the support staff. If they need to speak directly with someone at Emulex, they simply provide their customer ID and case number and the support staff will have instant access to the same complete case history customers see on their own screens. “Customers are much happier when they know what's happening,” says Bob Stanley, senior programmer and analyst at Emulex. “If they don't see progress, customers assume nothing's happening.”
Customers can also search the Emulex knowledge base via the Web, entering keywords to locate the exact information they need. Having such a system available 24 hours a day has made a great difference for Emulex's customers outside of the United States. “Our operations in Europe and the Far East particularly appreciate the system because they're in different time zones,” adds Stanley.
“Amdocs CRM has significantly reduced the cost of keeping our products up to spec.”
Bob Stanley, Senior Programmer and Analyst, Emulex
The Web-based self-service customer support system is so effective that Emulex has been able to continue meeting its service-level agreements (SLA's) for its growing customer base without increasing its support staff.
Amdocs CRMDrives Emulex Internal Operations
Today every PC at Emulex has access to Amdocs ClarifyCRM. This cross-departmental information sharing gives Emulex an instant view of what's happening with its products. Staff can monitor every step of the quality process, including products returned for repair or upgrade, questions and problems reported by customers, and issues being worked on by the engineering staff. “Amdocs CRMputs everybody on the same page,” says Barry Davis, senior manager of IT at Emulex.
The Amdocs CRMimplementation at Emulex centers around a knowledge base that serves as a common repository for support, logistics and engineering data. Previously, engineering and technical support were running on completely independent, home-grown, VAX-based applications. The logistics group had no application whatsoever. “Amdocs CRM has definitely facilitated a closer relationship between engineering and tech support,” says Davis.
Amdocs CRMlets Emulex managers analyze data in the knowledge base to discover potentially critical trends and patterns in the business. In the earlier environment, it could have taken months to discover that the company was working with a batch of bad components. Today, they can tell almost immediately. “Amdocs CRMhas significantly reduced the cost of keeping our products up to spec,” says Stanley.
“Our operations in Europe and the Far East particularly appreciate the [Amdocs CRM] system because they're in different time zones."
Why Amdocs ClarifyCRM?
Emulex began looking for a new solution after Davis realized that the company's old system wouldn't support future growth and changes. The company was also in the process of moving from a VAX cluster environment to PC-based client/server systems, and the VAX applications showed limited migration ability. Davis identified three critical business areas that would benefit from integration: technical support, software bug reporting and fixes, and tracking product returns. After evaluating several tools, Emulex chose Amdocs ClarifyCRM. “The company came in and did a very good job of demonstrating the product, especially on-the-fly modification to forms,” Davis explains. “Amdocs CRM has a strong back-end with Microsoft SQL Server, which we need in order to do sophisticated realtime queries on the data.”
Amdocs ClarifyCRM's flexibility was also a critical factor. Although Emulex wanted an off-the-shelf product that would save them from reinventing the wheel, they needed to be able to tailor it quickly to suit their specific requirements. The fact that customizations in Amdocs CRM are preserved from version to version was a major plus as well. “If you can just imagine what losing your customizations entails, you'll understand how much we appreciate Amdocs ClarifyCRM,” says Davis.
Emulex implemented Amdocs ClarifyCRM's support module first, followed by the logistics, quality, and Web support modules. Training users on the system has been a painless process—in fact, the flexible customization capabilities within Amdocs CRMhas reduced the average training time to only 30 minutes. “Amdocs ClarifyCRM's ease-of-use helped us a lot,” says Stanley. “This is especially important since providing extensive training on the applications we deploy is not part of our IT department's charter.”
The Amdocs CRMsystem extends to Emulex's European operations via a WAN link. When Emulex implemented their manufacturing outsourcing strategy, all manufacturing operations were transferred to a contract manufacturer in Texas. Within five weeks, Emulex set up a secured SQL Server replication environment between California and Texas that fed data back into Amdocs ClarifyCRM. “The fact that you can quickly deploy and integrate into Amdocs CRMallows you to effectively manage all those unexpected changes that may occur in your business,” says Davis.
Future Directions
Emulex is currently testing the next version of Amdocs CRMand is also looking into implementing ClearSales to tie the sales force with engineering and tech support. Davis would also like to expand the company's Web site to enable customers to input more data themselves. Ultimately, Davis plans to link Emulex's Amdocs CRMsystem with the Amdocs CRM systems implemented at several of its OEM partner facilities, creating one giant, intraorganizational Amdocs CRMnetwork.
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