In the highly competitive world of foodservice equipment manufacturing, staying ahead of the curve is crucial to your success. Asset management software is a niche solution that has managed to completely revolutionise the industry, and we have first-hand experience of just how potent it can be when implemented for equipment manufacturers serving the fast-paced foodservice and beverage industries.
These are the key reasons why.
1. Continuous product improvement
When visualised through interactive dashboards, the detailed data and insights provided by an asset management platform allow you to identify critical business and product trends. This helps you close the loop when tracking equipment performance, empowering you to make decisions that can ultimately save your business money and keep your customers happy.
With a clear picture of equipment performance, you can understand the types of faults that occur, feeding this back to the factory and creating a virtuous cycle of product improvement and quality control. This data can also be used to implement optimised preventative maintenance schedules and digital self-help troubleshooting, extending the lifespan of your customers equipment and minimising downtime.
Ensuring your platform of choice works seamlessly with IoT (Internet of Things) devices allows your after-sales servicing to become truly proactive. With data flowing in real-time, your decision making power can improve exponentially while service requests can be set to auto-trigger before a breakdown occurs.
2. Complete control over your supply chain
One of the great benefits of asset management software is the complete visibility it provides over everything from product shipments to warehousing, part inventory, order fulfilment and servicing. This kind of visibility means you can quickly identify areas to reduce waste, cut operational costs, and improve your overall production planning. The result is a leaner and more cost-effective production process.
By tracking not just the detailed activities taking place across the supply chain, but also the costs incurred, asset management platforms become a critical tool for managing your suppliers and taking control of costs across the supply chain. By allowing you to set up supplier rates you can create powerful opportunities for automating service and billing.
Other handy features that enhance your control include the ability to track service providers performance against SLA’s (Service Level Agreements), cost and attendance efficiency, as well as managing parts and part suppliers and setting up automated stock reorder points to ensure key parts are always on hand.
3. Business risk mitigation
If you sell equipment to the foodservice industry, you’ll know just how important compliance with industry regulations and standards is. You’ll likely also know how much time it takes to manage compliance week in and week out. Asset management software simplifies compliance by providing accurate records of all service activities that have taken place. You can specify mandatory insurances and accreditations that your contractors will be auto-notified to keep updated.
When a new request comes through, the system will ensure that jobs will only be assigned to compliant contractors. This system capability provides the documentation you need for audits and regulatory inspections, reducing the risk of penalties and legal issues.
Software like mendrhub can further help manage business risk with other standout features including:
- Compulsory sign-in and sign-off digital checklists for your contractors to complete, mitigating OH&S risks.
- Digital on-site sign off from client contacts to confirm work has been completed.
- Real-time tracking of time on site
- Detailed tech specs and explosion diagrams arming your service providers with all the info they need to complete their job successfully.
- Capturing proof of purchase for you end user warranty registration to minimise the risk of false claims.
- Photographic evidence captured during warranty service to support or refute warranty claims.
4. Improved customer experience
In the fast-paced world of foodservice equipment manufacturing, customer experience is the key to success and what will set you apart from competitors. The best asset management software will also provide your customers with the ability to register their equipment for warranty directly from an embedded page on your website or from your own custom branded app that your customers can be prompted to download onto their smartphone. These powerful tools extend to after-sales servicing where customers can lodge warranty and out-of-warranty requests directly from a custom branded app or via an embedded service request web page.
With these requests integrated directly into your asset management platform, such value-adding tools not only simplify things for your customers and save them time, but have the added benefit of saving your service team from such time consuming tasks as fielding calls and managing emails.
Asset management software allows for accurate warranty tracking plus automatic setting of warranty periods upon asset registration, which keeps things seamless for customers. On top of this, customers can also use these platforms for case management to lodge support tickets, receive real-time notifications on their service request progress, and utilise QR codes included on their assets for quick registration, troubleshooting and servicing.
5. Simplified billing
Asset management software takes the manual labour out of billing, and it’s easily able to invoice customers for product and part sales as well as out-of-warranty servicing. You can set up rules to ensure markups on customer invoicing are applied automatically, set up cost limits and service provider rates for straight through processing, and utilise OCR and automatic digitisation to simplify supplier invoicing.
Some platforms such as mendrhub will also instantly integrate with common accounting platforms like Xero and MYOB, meaning that once invoices are approved you don’t need to think about billing again.
In an industry as competitive as foodservice equipment manufacturing, investing in an asset management system is the best move you can make for long-term success. From live dashboards to inventory management, make sure you take the steps today to help you operate strategically, streamline your processes and free up your valuable time.