24-08-2012, 04:26 PM
ESSAR STEEL USES RESOURCE PLANNING TO STREAMLINE CUSTOMER SERVICE
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Essar Steel is a fully integrated flat carbon steel manufacturer which covers the full cycle from mining of steel to retailing of steel products. It has a current capacity of ten million tonnes per annum (MTPA) and with aggressive expansion plans in India, Asia and America, it aims to increase output to 14 MTPA.
The company’s products are used in many different sectors such as automotive, white goods, construction, engineering and shipbuilding. Essar Steel is one of India’s largest exporters of flat products, exporting to the highly demanding US and European market, and to the growing markets of South East Asia and the Middle East.
A pioneer and trendsetter in providing innovative solutions to better serve its customers, Essar Steel set up six service centres catering for the major demand hubs in India. Service centres improve the company’s customer service and help to meet delivery timelines, making Essar Steel the steelmaker of choice for large and small customers alike.
The company also has launched Essar Hypermart which is the first and largest retail chain for steel products catering directly for end consumers. Essar Hypermart is a one-stop-shop for a comprehensive range of steel products, including hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanised products. There is a network of over 600 Essar Hypermarts which are conveniently located across the length and breadth of the country.
Maximising customer interaction
“We sought to retain and grow the relationship with our customers and maximise the effectiveness of every customer interaction,” says project head, Sandeep Paliwal. “Customer relations and commitments are paramount and there was a need to become the steelmaker of choice for large and small customers alike and reach out to more and more of them through our multiple channels like hypermarts, service centres, marketing officers, call centres and also over
the Web.
“There also was a strong need to be at the forefront in leveraging technology for all our operations.”
However, the company’s ability to improve customer relations was impaired by a number of problems, mostly surrounding its inability to capture customer and sales data.
To solve these issues, Essar Steel decided to deploy the SAP Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application to provide an efficient tool to capture its collective knowledge of the prospects and customers, their requirements and expectations, operations and applications and also to track and address customer complaints in an effective and transparent manner. The company also believed that SAP would complement its current processes to improve customer satisfaction across all the touch points.
HP provides specialist help
To ensure success of the adoption and change management needed for the CRM solution, the whole implementation was divided into two phases. In the first phase HP and Essar Steel identified and addressed the basic pain points of the company’s customer facing community and the needs of customers.
The second phase involved such things as opportunity management, integration with Microsoft Outlook, territory management and customer survey management. Essar Steel and HP also put in a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measurement and analysis tools and are integrating the CRM system with its
BlackBerry® smartphones.
Customer benefits
Following the SAP CRM implementation by HP, Essar Steel now has an effective prospect and customer database. Improved territory management has brought better work assignment with no overlap. Sales personnel can now plan monthly activities which can be reviewed by managers, leading to better business outcomes. This has minimised lost revenue, increased sales productivity and improved visibility into the
sales pipeline.
More than 350,000 customer visits were recorded in the SAP CRM in six months leading to more efficient sales forecasting resulting in an increase of 20 per cent in forecast accuracy. More than 4,000 sales opportunities were registered in six months; complaint resolution has been improved by better complaint management and the establishment of a customer portal. Five hundred and thirty new prospects were created in the main company and 1,056 in hypermarts in the six month period.