Dec 2006
MILLER'S VANGUARD INVESTS IN NEW CALL LOGGING SOFTWARE
Miller’s Vanguard (a business name of Aga Foodservice Limited PLC) is a specialist maintenance provider for bakery & catering equipment to UK supermarket industry. In a business that is driven by response Miller’s Vanguard needed the very best field management and parts control system, they selected Computer Software Group’s Siclops and have now achieved considerable business efficiencies with high levels of customer service.
Miller’s Vanguard is a market leader in maintaining commercial catering equipment, and they make it their business to provide practical commercial solutions, enhanced efficiency and increased profitability to the foodservice marketplace.
This is achieved through know-how of reactive and scheduled maintenance solutions for major retailers and catering professionals and having partnerships with leading manufacturing suppliers of bakery & catering equipment. Equipment supported includes all bakery, rotisserie, ovens and other cooking devices such as doughnut fryers.
Things took a radical change in 2003 when a second large supermarket contract was secured. At this time the company was using a highly bespoke development of Microsoft Access for call management and stock control. Knowing that the application was already “struggling to run” something had to be done.
Miller’s Vanguard contacted several potential suppliers but it soon became clear that in terms of features and value for money that Computer Software Group’s Siclops was the one to choose. This was confirmed by a visit to a non-competitive Siclops user who endorsed the product favourably. The key features of the product were its capability to deal with customer call logging (at over 50,000 in the first year), field service and maintenance planning and stock control. At the adoption of Siclops the stock information resided in the accountancy package, which although working well, did not have integrated access to real time events in the field. This caused a degree of lost business efficiency.
Miller’s Vanguard prides itself on high service levels and doing things correctly, retaining the characteristics of its roots as a family business. The Business Process driven nature of Siclops CRM, Field Service and Stock has allowed high levels of business process automation to be achieved without additional operating cost in “back office” headcount.
In addition to its service operations of reactive breakdown and scheduled maintenance Miller’s Vanguard has an equipment refurbishment business and also is a reseller of AGA group products. It can call upon specialist skills and resources from the group in meeting a broad scope of customer demands. Siclops takes a role in this through work planning and part location.
The Siclops deployment was project managed by Paul Stanton, F.M. Control Centre Manager and Maurice Williams, F.M. Operations Manager following training by Computer Software Group. The system was readily put into use, once some conversion training and familiarity had been achieved owing to the stock system transferring from one system to another. The legacy CRM contact data was imported from the old system.
Addressing the return on investment from Siclops, Paul Stanton said, “the principle benefit is that the system is robust enough to handle what we demand from it,” adding, “specific advantages have been found in back office efficiency despite growth in the business, and we have a clearer view of our all important stock and van stock.”
Reports sourced from the Siclops system data give managers a clear view of “first time fix”, “completions per day” and adherence to SLA (Service Level Agreements).
Paul now reports that the original more than 50,000 calls per year has lowered to about 46,000 despite significant business growth; A coarse but valid measure of accumulated improvement in all aspects of Miller’s Vanguard business, a company that wishes to keep the values of its founders and provide highly competitive and valuable services to their demanding customers.
About Miller’s Vanguard
Miller’s Vanguard provides specialist maintenance for bakery & catering equipment and is a business name of the AFE Group - the market leader in the domestic and commercial catering equipment industry.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Brent Miller, Miller’s Vanguard’s Managing Director, please contact:
Eve Rigby, Marcomms Manager
Tel: 0161 764 7374
Fax: 0161 761 5141
E-mail: eve.rigby@millersvanguard.co.uk