Client Background
The client is a main manufacturer of household products in the global region with more than 5,000 employees.
The Client business (then known as Electronic Appliances Company) was established in middle east as a domestic appliance retailer.
They have been the market leader in the middle ease for almost 50 years, pioneering the cooling products and services of tomorrow for a greener, cleaner world.
In collaboration with their partners. They are defining the future of commercial and residential cooling in the region.
And underpinning this with stand-out service and support.
Problem
Initially the support staff delved into excel to understand the stock inventory of the spare parts.
The data in the excel was not the updated one as well as the pricing.
Hence, it always involved the support staff based upon the enquiry to follow-up with warehouse and operations department towards the price and available quantity.
For approvals from senior that includes manual process are time consuming and slow process to notify each one includes in hierarchy of management need to automate for fast process.
This slow process made it hard to track the availability of spare parts; also, the support staff felt severed as they couldn’t reply with a proper availability and price details to the client requests.
Assessment
The main purpose of the project was to create an on-premises solution for the client’s sales reporting structure as well as the flexibility to move their entire data to the cloud for faster processing time.
The client wanted to generate iterative as well as precisely formatted reports, visually explore huge data and quickly discover patterns to make quicker decisions.
Our team assess the complexity of application and map out each process’s steps, decision points, and actions. This will help you identify potential bottlenecks, optimize efficiency, and ensure clarity for future maintenance.
Solution Delivered
Our team along with client proposed the solution using Power Automate and SharePoint. All the data from their legacy application were uploaded into SharePoint.
The SharePoint environment was connected to the legacy application using Power Automate connectors.
Thus, the inventory of the spare parts pertaining to various AC models were update. The entire stock details were built at a metadata level for a strong search functionality built using Microsoft Search.
Based upon the search criteria, a Power Automate workflow then automatically picks the data and uses client calculation criteria to arrive at the respective price point for the related spare parts; also, at the same time giving the result exactly about the spare parts availability at different warehouse of the client with exact quantity.
When the support staff, needs further clarity relating to spare parts, the automation engine also pulls in and shows the respective manual relating to the part whether it’s an indoor model or an outdoor model.
Automating the processing of customer complaints and routing them to the appropriate staff for resolution. This can improve customer satisfaction and save time for staff.
This helps the support staff to validate their decision of suggesting the right spare part for client requested models.
Once the relevant information is arrived at, through Power Automate on special cases the support staff generates a pdf printout with all the spare parts information to be shared as an email.
There is need of updating product prices and sending notifications to customers. This can ensure that prices are accurate and up-to-date, and keep customers informed of any changes.
Automating the process of generating, reviewing, and processing invoices and payments, reducing manual effort and speeding up payment processing.
Approval flows are used to describe the information flow to the command system in a Power Automate system.
These flows describe the power of the system. Approval flows are also commonly referred to as transaction flows.
This extensive connectivity allows for the automation of workflows across different systems, breaking down data silos and facilitating efficient data flow.
The solution enables advanced programmability, extensibility, and usability.Â
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Architecture Design-
Result/Outcome
The Power automate enabled process relieved the dependency on excel for stock information.
Thus, with this spare parts automation application, the support staff average turnaround time from 10-15 mins have come down to 2-5 mins.
Thus, its estimated there was a 50% improvement in productivity as well as saving of 16 hours per support staff per month.
This SharePoint and Power Automate driven system, enabled their support staff to see a clear picture of the spare parts across various model, their quantity across various warehouses and their pricing too.
Easy to track the inventory of the spare parts across various warehouse location.            Â
Up-to-date pricing and availability of various spare parts.
Quick suggestions to their customer by presenting both the applicable as well as alternative spare parts.
Power Automate offers a vast library of connectors, enabling seamless integration with various applications, services, and data sources.
This extensive connectivity allows for the automation of workflows across different systems, breaking down data silos and facilitating efficient data flow.
Savings in terms of productive hours for their support staff.