Reference portal

Long-term spare parts warranty, complex and highly customizable products in critical environments and a global, reliably served customer base: this requires a dedicated customer service with comprehensively provided information, including for the company‘s own employees. With its customer and service portal, the specialist for medical beds and furniture has created a 360-degree customer view according to the guiding principle of „one face to the customer“.This forms a milestone for even more reliability and a step into the digital future.

As part of their digital transformation, Stiegelmeyer introoduced SAP‘s commerce platform and developed it into a customer portal. The first step was a spare parts shop, which was combined with an advice system in the form of a chatbot. Gradually, more and more service processes have been modelled and integrated. With the implementation of SAP Commerce Cloud, Stiegelmeyer has embarked on a path that leads away from company-specific applications towards further standardization and a more homogeneous IT environment. This applies to processes as well as master data. As a result, customers as well as employees are able to access and see the same data. Building on a previous project, a knowledge database for field service technicians, new classes of documents were created for this purpose. The database also contains technical data. More than 50 field service technicians are on the road in Germany. The respective technician can access all the product information that is currently relevant to him or her by logging in using his or her authorisation role. Customers select their product, find their bed as they ordered it, see an exploded view and can easily find the right spare part.

In order to do this, B4B integrated the Equipment Viewer as an extension to SAP Commerce Cloud. It provides 2D exploded views of each product assembled at the customer‘s site. Only the components that are installed in the respective bed are displayed. Modelled individually for the customer, various image formats or navigation mechanisms can be integrated. As a medical product, each bed with each component variant has its own identification number (PID). In the SAP system, this is the typical equipment master record. The unique assignment ensures that only the correct, matching component can be ordered. All information is stored in the portal, but depending on login and authorisation roles, only what is currently needed is displayed. At the customer‘s site, a technician can use the PID number to call up the Equipment Viewer with technical information and installation instruction videos for the specific product. This support also works reliably offline, including identification and ordering of spare parts. After all, there is often no Wi-Fi available at the service location in clinics and nursing homes. It also simplifies the training of new Stiegelmeyer employees and reduces the amount of training required at head office.

Adaptation for different languages is possible, as is control via a chatbot. The chatbot is set up with a question-and-answer structure and can also explain the customer and service portal including the shop. Employees in clinics and nursing homes can interact with the bot and receive exactly the information that has been released for them. In the final development stage of the chatbot, customers will not ask their questions first, but will rather receive preset suggestions for relevant topics to start with.

– Complex products with a high degree of customization

– Guaranteeing long service life and a high availability of spare parts for customers

– Creating a 360-degree customer view

– Adapting digital processes to established, analogue processes

One objective is to enable customers to help themselves and to provide them with information more quickly. This is a major competitive advantage for Stiegelmeyer and simultaneously relieves the burden on their service staff.

All information relevant to customers is bundled in the customer and service portal, from orders to delivery notes and invoices to shipment tracking. This means that all customer enquiries can be answered at any time and consolidated in a single place. This 360-degree view gives a complete view of Stiegelmeyer‘s interactions with the customer and vice versa. This includes all customer orders, irrespective of the ordering route, every deployment of service technicians at the customer‘s site and all stocks and equipment that the customer has in use or has used in the past. All this is bundled in the customer and service portal with the Equipment Viewer.

THE DIGITAL PORTAL SIMPLIFIES COOPERATION WITH CUSTOMERS. IT PROMOTES THE COMPANY‘S INTERNATIONAL GROWTH STRATEGY AND ALSO SUPPORTS PARTNERS WITHOUT SAP.

Stiegelmeyer‘s goal is to move to completely paperless processes by creating interfaces to the SAP systems of major operators and linking customers‘ digital processes with the processes at the company

– Close coordination between company and implementation partner with an eye on future requirements

– Clear joint approach by head of management, specialist department and IT management

– Very good and intensive collaboration of Stiegelmeyer project team and B4B Solutions project management according to an agile project approach. All ideas such as the chatbot could be realized.

HAVING A 360-DEGREE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER IS CRUCIAL FOR US. THE CUSTOMER IS ABLE TO FULLY ENGAGE WITH STIEGELMEYER. WE WERE ABLE TO PERFECTLY IMPLEMENT THIS STEP INTO THE FUTURE WITH B4B.

ANDREAS HELD // HEAD OF SERVICE // STIEGELMEYER GMBH & CO.KG