National clothing retailer, Dunns, with more than 190 stores countrywide, is using FrontRange`s service management solution, HEAT, to streamline the company`s operations.
Used by over 7 500 companies in more than 70 industries, HEAT incorporates Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) compliant modules to enable best practice in incident, problem, change, release, knowledge and service level management.
Understanding its rich functionality, Dunns call centre manager, Candace Davel, has applied it to the management and support of the company`s IT systems as well as its merchandising processes, store and building maintenance, and performance management through staff suggestions.
"HEAT is superb at process management," says FrontRange Solutions Africa managing director, Tracey Newman. "So there are really no limits to the way you can apply it in a business. Whether you want to ensure a call to the help-desk reporting a broken light bulb in a store is assigned to a maintenance person - inside or outside the business - and gets fixed within a specified time, or that a call about excess stock in one store is routed to a planner who arranges to transfer that stock internally to an understocked store, the process you need to follow is the same. Log the call, track its progress, escalate it according to certain rules if resolution is being delayed, close and report on it. HEAT does all that superbly."
Davel, who handles all changes to the solution herself, agrees. "HEAT is incredibly easy to work with. It`s so comprehensive that we needed minimal customisation to achieve our current capabilities and we don`t anticipate much more change in order to enable our future plans.
"Also, it takes only half an hour to get a user up and running on it."
Before acquiring a call logging system, Davel did an extensive needs analysis - developing a detailed plan of what she needed the system to do.
Says Davel: "Scrupulous in examining all competitive products, HEAT won hands down, both in terms of price and its inherent ability to meet our functionality needs. Dunns is neither an enormous corporation nor a backyard business. We needed something in the middle. What we got was a midmarket price for a remarkable depth of functionality that will easily cope with the massive growth planned for Dunns over the next few years.
"At the same time, HEAT`s very comprehensive reporting system enables me to analyse trends and peaks and troughs in real-time. This allows the company to assess its staffing and merchandising strategy on an ongoing basis - enabling us to enhance performance and making us even more responsive to the market."
Newman says progressively more organisations worldwide are recognising HEAT`s ability to enhance their market agility. "It`s one of the easiest, most cost-effective tools available for live, simultaneous tasting and testing of your external market as well as your internal capabilities to serve that market. It gives you a minute-by-minute snapshot of how well your staff and processes are serving your customers and, therefore, how well they are supporting your business strategy." With its roots in rural, mostly black communities, Dunns` expansion programme includes breaking into urban markets and via shopping malls.
Staff interact with the call centre, based in Midrand, via telephone - logging up to 500 calls a week through three call centre agents. IT staff log hardware, software and systems calls via the Internet, using iHEAT. The IT queries are handled by outsourcers, but the calls are tracked by the call centre.
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