Sauter has grown significantly in recent years and now employ 350 employees at the Basel site and 2,700 people worldwide and has a turnover of approx. €500 million, making them one of the leading providers in the building automation sector.
Multi-party ecosystem
As manufacturer of climate control systems for large buildings, Sauter operates in a specific ecosystem. This ecosystem is made up of building owners, tenants and maintenance companies. “One of our painpoints”, says Eric Kortz, Manager Smart Components & Solutions at Sauter, “was to combine all these parties involved in the maintenance & repair processes in one single field service solution.”
“We can have a call request from a maintenance company, for which we need to inform the tenant and invoice the owner, sort of speak. Routing all these processes and communication flows was time consuming and not easy to follow up.”
Contract management
The next painpoint was that each building could have very different service agreements. For some buildings the maintenance is on Sauter, for others it is an external maintenance company, and for some buildings it can be a mix. Technicians need to be aware of all parties involved, what they have to do themselves, and what part is for someone else.
The reporting as well must be adapted to the situation. Sometimes Sauter only needs to inform they did an intervention, in other cases they need to list all the used parts and working hours, or communicate detailed inspection reports.
Integration
Sauter is using Navision 2009 and an integration with Navision was essential for this project. All the customers and parts catalog are listed in there. Financial statuses and agreements are as well managed in Navision. A two-way synchronization between Navision and Odyssee was mandatory.
“We could immediately start proto-typing our processes inside the Odyssee solution”
Eric Kortz
Manager Smart Components & Solutions
Cloud solution
Because Odyssee Field Service is a SaaS solution available in the cloud, Sauter could immediately start proto-typing the solution to find the best way to organize all their processes. Odyssee had already all the concepts of building owners, tenants and maintenance companies Sauter needed. All current Sauter processes where described and than implemented one by one in Odyssee and adapted where needed. All parties were involved as not to miss any use case, but also to get the support of everybody, from back office to field technician.
Equipment management
Another key element was to have a very detailed equipment management. “When inside large buildings, it is key to have a clear organization of all your equipments, what they do and which rooms they regulate,” says Eric Kortz.
“We chose Odyssee Field Service because it builds a bridge between the field technicians, the back-office, the building owners and their tenants.”
Eric Kortz
Manager Smart Components & Solutions
