Tech Solutions - Giving a Technical Edge to Service

Optimizing Service Management

In the business world, the bottom line is customer satisfaction. The people of Tech Solutions, Inc. understand this, particularly when it comes to the development and sales of their service management software. Tech Solutions builds software to give service personnel a technical edge when dealing with their customers, enhancing customer service through wireless and Web capabilities and strengthening overall customer satisfaction. Their service management software caters to a wide range of industries, including telecommunications and utilities companies, field service organizations, and computer integrators and resellers. With such varied clients, the people of Tech Solutions needed a solid, reliable client/server platform that would not only help create high-quality, service management software, but one that would also accommodate the increasing needs of service managers and personnel on a global scale.

Tech Solutions recognized that customers are becoming more sophisticated everyday, and in order for service personnel to adapt to the changing needs of their customer base, they would need a reliable platform that was flexible enough to grow along with these needs. Tech Solutions wanted a development platform that embraced the future of customer communication through e-mail, Web, and wireless capabilities, and one that also accommodated daily service management needs.

4D Helps Take Customer Service a Step Further

After examining various service management solutions, Tech Solutions recognized a common problem with most of the products on the market. The majority of service management software was developed by technical managers who were looking to program solutions on a case-specific basis, not as professionally designed, global solutions that would fulfill the needs of a wide range of businesses. "After analyzing service management products, many of them were developed in inexpensive, but not necessarily reliable or flexible technologies," said Myles Wakeham, President of Tech Solutions, Inc. "Systems emerged from service managers who built their own solutions in languages that were either free or bundled with other products, rather than using professional software development expertise to choose the right development environment for the job."

Wakeham also saw the need for increased Web capabilities in a service management solution. If only service personnel could access all their information through Web browsers, the possibilities for increased efficiency and customer satisfaction would be endless. Too many of the solutions he encountered in the market relied on ASPs (Application Service Providers) for this, and according to Wakeham, "Most service organizations that we’ve encountered don’t want their data on someone else’s computer system. They want to host it themselves. Security is the biggest concern. Also, the timeliness and synchronization of this data means that the organization can have up-to-the-second accuracy, preventing the dispatching of technicians to jobs that have already been closed out."

4D Provides the Technology to Expand Service Management

After careful survey of development platforms, Tech Solutions chose 4D as it provided them with a comprehensive and reliable foundation with the open-road growth and flexibility they required. The result was Eclipse Service Management Software. Eclipse applications focus on the operational functions of service organizations such as job and service call management, labor efforts, inventory control, billing and receipting, marketing, management reporting, service agreement and contract management.

With 4D technology, Eclipse has been able to transcend the traditional relationships between service personnel and their customers. 4D’s integrated e-mail and Web serving capabilities enable Eclipse to help service personnel maintain an edge in the industry. Service personnel are now able to be consistently updated while out in the field. "Eclipse can support wireless technology for field-based service technicians through alphanumeric paging and e-mail enabled cell phones, and through wireless Web capabilities, field technicians can have the tools that their office counterparts have, all at their fingertips," said Wakeham. 4D’s Web capabilities have also enabled Eclipse to provide customers with easy access to their own service history. Adds Wakeham, "Now, service personnel can keep the customer totally in the loop through the service history ‘portal’ provided to the customer. Customers can even log their own requests for service via the Web. The service organization now looks professional, and customers just love it."

Tech Solutions, building upon the advantages of 4D technology, has been able to create innovative service management solutions that truly cater to knowledgeable service personnel and a thriving, diverse set of customers. For service personnel, helping and managing customers has never been easier or more productive with the strong backing of 4D’s database and Web technologies.

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