No way, no how!

teknihall Elektronic GmbH, as the central "after sales" point of contact for large retail chains
and almost all supermarket discounters in Germany and Europe,
simply had to act within a very short time.

The after-sales service at teknihall includes the repair, assembly, storage and warranty exchange of electronic devices that end customers have bought at discounters or online. The company is also the call centre that takes the various orders. In order to guarantee this service at all times, teknihall faced a major challenge in the summer of 2020: a new IT service management system was needed within a very short time.

For a long time, teknihall had been using a mail and ticket software that a system house had developed especially for the company. Then there was bad news: the manufacturer of the system was no longer available due to a sudden business closure and the software was only to remain in operation for one month.

"For us it was an existence-threatening scenario, because without a suitable system we could no longer fulfil the agreed services of our customers," remembers Roland Kolbe, IT and online manager at teknihall.

He and his colleagues had four weeks to set up a new service management system.  

Even though the first step had been taken, the real challenge now lay ahead for both companies - the implementation within the shortest possible time. Normally, such a project is planned well in advance and extends over several months - here, however, the responsible persons only had a good two weeks left.

Apart from the time pressure, there were no major problems with the implementation. On 3 July 2020, two weeks after the start of implementation, the go-live could take place. Afterwards, however, there was an unusual challenge to solve: The system ran very slowly and had severe performance problems. Among other things, this was due to the need to improve authorisation checks of UI components and data loading problems. However, with night and weekend shifts, the experts were able to solve the problem in time.

"It was exhausting weeks and weekends, everything hurt. Everyone involved worked until they dropped to achieve the goal. This commitment cannot be offset with money, and our new service provider has also made a lasting impression on me in further customer support," says Kolbe. The painstaking days have paid off for teknihall. All employees get along with the simple operation - a plus for employee satisfaction.

Since the ticket system maps all processes logically and clearly, the number of manual errors could be reduced to a minimum. Important work steps could also be automated and standardised. There are already more than 37,000 assets in the equipment database, which allows teknihall's service staff to link customer enquiries to the appropriate item in the shortest possible time.

Teknihall has been able to reduce the cost of using the service management system by 50 per cent. "In comparison, the monthly support and maintenance costs are really cheap," says Kolbe, "and the move to the cloud has also eased the burden on our budget." Thanks to the cloud solution, teknihall now no longer has to operate and maintain its own servers. The time-consuming and sometimes insecure internal data backup is also no longer necessary.

Roland Kolbe was satisfied with the implementation:"Sometimes I can't believe it: we manage the after-sales service for almost 40,000 technical products with our system. That makes up to 9,000 tickets per month. From battery milk frothers to XXL sun sails, everything is included. With around 28,000 square metres, our warehouses are as big as four football fields - and yet everything works smoothly."

This interview article was also printed in the current issue of the trade journal
"IT-Mittelstand" (12/2021, p. 46).