ByBox on the Move

In this age of technology, things are getting easier. Contacting someone, sharing information, finding the best deal and even fixing broken machines. And as each year passes, companies have to find ways of changing their business to allow for the simplification of certain processes and avoid becoming inefficient. For example, there will always be demand for high-end engineering, but it is financially inefficient to have highly skilled engineers carrying out low end jobs such as swapping out printers or scanners but these are jobs that are critical for businesses to operate.   

         

ByBox, specialists in field service solutions have found a way to solve this problem. Their national Technical Courier service provides outsourced low-cost engineering resource which is a real alternative to using an expensive in-house field workforce. ByBox can provide 4 hour, 8 hour & next business day technical swap out response, helping companies repair and replace broken machinery more cost-effectively. Their Technical Courier service also helps companies reduce and recover costs spent on emergency jobs. With total stock visibility ByBox can source the corresponding part from the closest site and mobilise an engineer to cover the job within tight SLAs.

Simon Wheadon, Senior Operations Manager, Computacenter said: "Whilst we already have an engineering service in house, we were missing a facility to provide single installations. So where we would normally have an engineer working for a full day and they were only doing one or two installations it simply didn't make commercial sense. The ByBox solution was therefore highly attractive as it is transactional based and therefore commercially viable and also complements Computacenter's existing activities."

ByBox provide a complete offering; they are able to provide technical assistance 7 day a week, including bank holidays. If a piece of equipment goes down, their team of over 70 engineers are on hand to carry out scripted repairs and collections or simply pick up a replacement piece from their warehouse and exchange it with the faulty one.

Customers are therefore not left floundering if a printer goes down on a Sunday or a pin pad or cash register stops working the day before the bank holiday sale. ByBox replace the item quickly to ensure minimal impact to the business and save customers money on same-day and out of hours call out charges. By doing this, they expect to help their customers compete better.

ByBox can also manage the route back to the repairer or repair the item themselves in their in house repair centre and then put the fixed item back into good stock. All stages in any of these processes are tracked and managed by Thinventory, a unique software platform which allows total stock visibility and allows equipment manufacturers to keep track of where and what stage of repair items are at.

ByBox Thinventory used in conjunction with the Technical Courier service ensures ByBox knows where parts required for customers' emergency jobs are and so can source the corresponding part from the closest site and mobilise an engineer to cover the job within tight SLAs.

Any faulty parts recovered are directed to the repair centre the same day; either to the customers repairer or to ByBox' in house repair centre. This dramatically reduces the amount spent on 'new-buy' stock.

The system helps customers reduce stock holding in warehouses and increases working capital by reducing the amount of cash spent on new stock. It also guarantees a 36-hour return loop and increases productivity by decreasing the number of steps in the supply chain. In addition, the service provides total visibility across the entire supply chain, from stock to engineer productivity to first-time fix rates.

Experts at ByBox said the service will provide companies with a more fluid repair solution than using different suppliers at different stages of the process.

Mark Garritt, Managing Director of ByBox, said: "Costs for companies are always important and are becoming even more of a priority during the recession. When machinery breaks down, it is essential that businesses are up and running again as quickly and cost-effectively as possible and that is precisely where Technical Courier can help.

"Rather than companies adopting a fragmented approach to solving problems by using several different suppliers, Technical Courier effectively provides a one-stop-shop for all of their needs."

ByBox currently holds 70 per cent of the field service market which it services through its national network of 18,000 drop boxes at 1,350 locations. This includes a number of blue chip customers such as Coca Cola Enterprises, Konica Minolta, Computacenter, GlaxoSmithKline and Inspired Gaming.

Mark Garritt added: "Technical Courier further endorses ByBox' strong tradition of innovation I am confident it will help many companies operate cost-effectively through these challenging economic times and beyond."