Prithviraj Nath, Consultant, CUTS International Nilanjan Banik, Consultant, CUTS International
Fecon Cuts Down Competition with Online Portal for Sales ... · benefits and have a greater impact...
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Case Study © DIGABIT INC. | 303.957.2822 | digabit.com Case Study Fecon Cuts Down Compeon with Online Portal for Sales and Customer Support The Customer’s Business Fecon builds the forestry industry standard in mulching heads with their flagship product, the Bull Hog®. Available for a wide variety of applicaons and vehicles, its ability to clear brush and debris is unmatched. Whether a customer needs a Bull Hog aachment for a skid steer, excavator or tractor, Fecon makes a unit that fits the specificaons. In addion to the Bull Hog, Fecon makes track-driven and wheeled tractors for mulching and ulity work, forestry aachments, chippers, and hydraulic power packs. One of Fecon’s core values is a mandate to build best-in- class products. They do that by applying advanced design technology and materials to create a range of tools, from the tradional HDT rotor to the innovave Depth Controlled Rotor and Samurai™ Knife tool system, which are all built at Fecon’s facilies in Lebanon, Ohio. As a manufacturer of premium products in the forestry indus- try, Fecon doesn’t cut corners in design and fabricaon. They foster long-term relaonships by providing the highest level of customer care possible, in alignment with their corporate vision and values. The Need for a Solution Fecon’s equipment has a reputaon for ruggedness and durability, a necessity in the tough working environments where these tools must operate. Clearing land for development, right-of-ways, and fire migaon involves rough, rocky terrain, extreme heat and cold and other challenges. In these condions, even the toughest machines need periodic maintenance and occasional replacement of worn and broken parts. This means dealers and equipment owners need accurate product documentaon, with clear illustraons and updated part numbers and specificaons. But Fecon’s parts catalogs were dependent on a third-party vendor, who converted product informaon from the manufacturer into parts books and manuals. While employing this service provider to manage the publishing process, it took Fecon months to create a new parts book. New machines were shipped with a generic set of parts books and manuals, even for customers who purchased custom configured units. The overall cost per manual using this external service provider had risen to almost $10,000 per manual. And
Transcript of Fecon Cuts Down Competition with Online Portal for Sales ... · benefits and have a greater impact...
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© DIGABIT INC. | 303.957.2822 | digabit.com
Case Study
Fecon Cuts Down Competition with Online Portal for Sales and Customer Support
The Customer’s Business
Fecon builds the forestry industry standard in mulching heads with their flagship product, the Bull Hog®. Available for a wide variety of applications and vehicles, its ability to clear brush and debris is unmatched. Whether a customer needs a Bull Hog attachment for a skid steer, excavator or tractor, Fecon makes a unit that fits the specifications.
In addition to the Bull Hog, Fecon makes track-driven and wheeled tractors for mulching and utility work, forestry attachments, chippers, and hydraulic power packs.
One of Fecon’s core values is a mandate to build best-in-class products. They do that by applying advanced design technology and materials to create a range of tools, from the traditional HDT rotor to the innovative Depth Controlled Rotor and Samurai™ Knife tool system, which are all built at Fecon’s facilities in Lebanon, Ohio.
As a manufacturer of premium products in the forestry indus-try, Fecon doesn’t cut corners in design and fabrication. They foster long-term relationships by providing the highest level
of customer care possible, in alignment with their corporate vision and values.
The Need for a Solution
Fecon’s equipment has a reputation for ruggedness and durability, a necessity in the tough working environments where these tools must operate. Clearing land for development, right-of-ways, and fire mitigation involves rough, rocky terrain, extreme heat and cold and other challenges. In these conditions, even the toughest machines need periodic maintenance and occasional replacement of worn and broken parts.
This means dealers and equipment owners need accurate product documentation, with clear illustrations and updated part numbers and specifications. But Fecon’s parts catalogs were dependent on a third-party vendor, who converted product information from the manufacturer into parts books and manuals.
While employing this service provider to manage the publishing process, it took Fecon months to create a new parts book. New machines were shipped with a generic set of parts books and manuals, even for customers who purchased custom configured units.
The overall cost per manual using this external service provider had risen to almost $10,000 per manual. And
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the lengthy turnaround time meant parts catalogs were effectively obsolete as soon as they were published. There was no effective way to update manuals in response to engineering changes and product updates.
“Support documentation quickly became outdated, and there was no feasible way to remedy that,” said Kevin McCann, Fecon Vice President of Support. “We have too many different products and configuration options, and the costs involved couldn’t be justified by the potential returns.”
The fact that dealers had limited access to accurate product documentation resulted in extensive phone time with Fecon customer service simply trying to identify the correct parts for a customer’s machine. While solving this problem was a major objective, Fecon had a desire to further improve dealer and customer communications by providing timely service bulletins, warranty notifications, sales promotions and other vital information for equipment owners. It was time for a new customer support solution.
The Decision Process
Fecon weathered the economic difficulties of the early 21st century with little growth, but Fecon’s business began picking up as global productivity rose again.
“As sales started trending up we faced an important decision,” said McCann. “Either we needed to hire more support staff to handle product inquiries and part sales, or we could figure out some way to help the existing workforce be more productive. I felt that improving our technology would reap more long-term benefits and have a greater impact on the company’s overall performance, as well as giving us a competitive advantage.”
When McCann and his team began searching for a technology
solution to address the increase in aftermarket parts sales, they quickly focused on improving online capabilities.
“The world is moving toward self-service and will never go back to phone and fax orders” McCann said. “However, we didn’t want to increase IT overhead or have to manage a lot of hardware and software internally. We really only considered a SaaS [software as a service] solution. That gave us a lower upfront cost and more flexibility. At that point, Documoto was the only out-of-the-box solution we could find that matched our vision for customer support.”
That vision called for steadily increasing the share of parts orders placed online, which would in turn reduce demand for phone and email support. Achieving this would allow help desk staffing to remain constant, while still growing aftermarket revenues and providing a superior customer experience.
The Implementation
Digabit’s Professional Services team worked alongside Fecon’s publishing, engineering and information technology staff to guide the implementation process. After Fecon’s cloud environment was configured and the publishing staff received Documoto training from Digabit, they began the
I felt that improving our technology would reap more long-term benefits and have a greater impact on the company’s overall performance, as well as giving us a competitive advantage.”
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process of migrating parts data and illustrations into the new system.
With assistance from Digabit services, Fecon first published parts manuals for two of their key products, the Bull Hog BH74 mulching head and FTX148 tracked carrier. Then the company’s new portal, Fecon Connect, was rolled out to a select group of dealers for initial testing.
“We hired one technical publications professional to manage the illustration and publishing tasks to be performed in Documoto, instead of hiring one or more employees for phone and email support to provide a similar level of customer response,” said McCann. “Thanks to Documoto, we were able to be more efficient and provide better quality of service.”
The new technical publishing lead began working to input all of Fecon’s current products, and a number of out-of-production models, into the Documoto system. They can now offer accurate and updated parts catalogs and other support materials online to owners of machines that were made over the last 15 years.
The Solution in Action
Fecon’s aftermarket portal, Fecon Connect, was rolled out to the entire dealer network after a 90-day period of publishing and testing. This marked a watershed for Fecon dealers, empowering them with the ability to look up and purchase parts online.
Anyone who operates an older piece of equipment can attest to the difficulty of locating replacement parts. This is rarely an issue for Fecon customers, as they can search Documoto for models that have been out of production for a decade or longer. Now these equipment owners have a convenient option to buy high-quality OEM parts rather than seeking out another source.
In addition, dealers have access to detailed order tracking information within Documoto’s Order Management module. Instead of calling or emailing the OEM to check on a particular order or item, the data is available with the click of a button: order history, pricing, saved orders and more.
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Home / Bull Hog Manuals - Excavators
Bull Hog Manuals - Excavators
BH040 EXC Parts Manual
(4)
BH047 EXC Parts Manual
(2)
BH080 EXC Parts Manual
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BH200 EXC Parts Manual
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BH250 EXC Parts Manual
(4)
CEM Manual (prior to CEM36102A10)
(1)
CEM Parts Manual (CEM36102A - Now)
(4)
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“This was a milestone for Fecon,” McCann stated. “We can now update parts manuals in minutes with the most current illustrations, parts number and other information that is crucial for our equipment owners. New books can be created in a number of hours, rather than waiting a month or more for an outside service provider.”
Fecon leverages Documoto’s Cloud Library for more than simply selling parts. Fecon Connect notifies dealers of sales promotions and service bulletins, allows for warranty registration using QR codes, and displays other critical news items for dealers and equipment owners. Service technicians can view parts books, operating manuals, and service manuals for the machines they’re working on.
The company has created an internal dashboard to track data from the new platform. The flexible nature of Documoto’s architecture, along with standardized data formats, allows companies to easily build tools and capabilities that extend its core functionality.
The Results
Fecon had several objectives in mind when conceiving the idea to upgrade aftermarket sales and customer support capabili-ties. The high-level goal was to drive efficiency throughout the after-sale support organization, from documentation to sales and customer service.
In the publishing department, replacing the 3rd-party service
provider led to multiple positive outcomes. Fecon gained control over a critical business function, while producing more accurate parts books with lower overhead and less effort. The time required to update manuals with engineering and part changes is drastically reduced thanks to Documoto’s database foundation.
Part orders placed online went from less than 10% of total orders to 63% after Documoto was fully deployed. Dealers now prefer to order from Fecon Connect, saving a significant amount of time thanks to 24/7 availability, easy part search-es, saved shopping carts and other advantages of an online commerce platform. During the five-year period ending in 2016, Fecon’s annual part sale revenues grew by $2 million, equating to a 27% increase.
“Our largest increase in productivity stems from the reduction in call volume,” said Kevin McCann. “We’ve shifted over 60% of our orders to Documoto, which has freed up counter sales reps. Callers don’t have to suffer through long wait times and our folks can spend more time working with customers who have unique needs.”
McCann estimated that Documoto’s ability to streamline ordering, along with the integration of Fecon Connect with the company’s ERP system, has saved the equivalent of two full-time new hires, improving the bottom line by over $100,000.
Documoto proved to be the right solution to modernize Fecon’s sales and support organization. As an innovative manu-facturer, they are reaping the benefits from applying technolo-gy to improve efficiency and boost revenues.
About DocumotoDocumoto is a cloud-based SaaS platform that modernizes parts catalog authoring and aftermarket sales for equipment manufacturers. Its Cloud Storefront and Cloud Library ensure fast and accurate online parts ordering for dealers, service technicians and equipment owners.
Interested in Learning More? Visit us at digabit.com or call 303-957-2822 for immediate assistance
This was a milestone for Fecon. We can now update parts manuals in minutes with the most current illustrations, parts number and other information that is crucial for our equipment owners. New books can be created in a number of hours, rather than waiting a month or more for an outside service provider.”
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