Leading Australian family business Headland Machinery was able to transform its business performance by implementing the NetSuite ERP/CRM solution.
Founded in 1949, Headland Machinery is part of the manufacturing and machine technology industry, with an enduring dedication to technical service and support across Australia and New Zealand.
Over the last 10 years as the business grew and service regions expanded, Headland’s management team, directed by the Kloe family, were finding it increasingly difficult to assign and manage projects to their growing and always mobile service workforce. Managing Director, Richard Kloe recalls that they experienced a number of pain points such as duplicated work, additional administration functions, cost of systems management and IT support requirement.
From 2004 – 2007, Headland had tried and tested multiple applications and service management systems, at one stage running three systems simultaneously in order to gain organisational efficiencies.
With a service team made up of 25+ field Service Engineers who were constantly on the move, plus another two dozen office and dispatch staff who all required access to the database, Headland Machinery was running multiple on premise applications but finding it difficult to manage customer data, making it near impossible to schedule service calls, automate maintenance, or streamline billing and invoicing. Not only was the situation impairing productivity but the miscommunication within the business limited their growth.
By 2009, it was evident that the disparate systems were not going to sustain the business, and finding a solution became the top priority.
Implementing NetSuite OneWorld in 2011, Headland has since transformed its business performance for its Australian operations and global management in sister company, Aotea Machinery.
After evaluating solutions from Epicor, Microsoft and SAP, Headland decided on NetSuite OneWorld as the single cloud ERP/CRM solution that could provide the ‘single source of truth’ for a comprehensive, real-time view of their customer’s lifecycle.
Headland successfully demonstrated ingenuity and resourcefulness by leveraging NetSuite’s powerful SuiteCloud environment to build its own field service management SuiteApp, NextService.
Named the winner of NetSuite’s 2013 YOUR SUITEY Award at last year’s SuiteWorld conference, NextService delivers a single customer view that is accessible via the cloud and integrates seamlessly with NetSuite for a 360-degree view of Headland’s business.
Richard Kloe explains that NextService delivers Headland’s scheduling of maintenance and repair work, project installations, breakdown support with increased speed and clarity, ultimately benefiting the customer with greater accuracy, faster response, and problem resolution.
Offering a complete, single-system-solution, the NetSuite and NextService combination features: Cloud based field service management; Management of all account services through a single dashboard view via the Internet with all back-ups, upgrades and installations completed automatically; Visual scheduling for easy service management, customisable based on project role using the colour coded drag and drop schedule board; Mobile integration allowing access via smartphone, tablet and laptop devices for users to accept jobs, invoice from the field, and log start travel time; End-to-end parts management allowing service staff to order from the field and have parts dispatched from the warehouse or van in real-time; and, Workforce automation for efficient planning, scheduling and administration for a more streamlined workflow in customer follow-up activities.
NetSuite is available from Klugo Pty Ltd. According to Klugo General Manager Lucas Vear, as the number of NetSuite users grow year-on-year, so too does the importance of having an integrated field service management system, one that maintains the high level of service offered by NetSuite, and one that leverages off the flexible and customisable SuiteCloud platform.
Built for NetSuite, NextService is a field service management solution designed to help organisations keep up with the demands of business. The SuiteApp does this via real-time scheduling of demanding service requests, service delivery, integrated end-to-end parts management, and field mobility for total transparency across all departments.
One of the key benefits of implementing a single system field service management solution is the end-to-end management and project accountability of field and office staff. Where disparate systems lead to duplicated files or doubling up on invoices, NetSuite, and now with the SuiteApp NextService offers total business efficiency, operational functionality, and above all, customer satisfaction.