Alcon’s Vision for Streamlined Field Services with ServiceMax & ProntoForms
- Saved 900 hours per year through improvements to Alcon ServiceMax
- Over 1,500 hours per year saved through improved tracking processes
- Reduced 70% of required Surgery Codes fields
- Implemented a streamlined FSE process to close work orders, saving 11,000 hours per year
- Leveraged Advanced Forms powered by ProntoForms to reduce admin work by approximately 50 hours per month within the first six months of deployment
Founded in 1945, Alcon develops and manufactures innovative medicines and devices to serve the full lifecycle of eye care needs. Alcon's Surgical and Vision Care products touch the lives of more than 260 million people in over 140 countries each year living with conditions like cataracts, glaucoma, retinal disease, and refractive errors.
As the services team at Alcon looked to transform their service business into a profit center, they sought out a single, asset-centric field service management platform that would allow them to meet compliance regulations, standardize and automate manual processes, and equip engineers with the tools needed to deliver the highest level of service possible.
Implementing The Foundation for Becoming a Profit Center
Alcon's biggest strategic priority has been to transform the service business from a cost center into a true profit center. To do this, they needed to centralize and standardize processes; develop operational rigor; improve service margins by not giving service away for free; implement remote diagnostics; align sales, marketing, and product development; and position service as a lever to drive sales.
"The biggest savings for our field engineers, in addition to not having to enter the data again because it's all pulled from ServiceMax, is that all of the test tools required for the service test procedure are now automated. These test tools are automatically pulled up when the field engineer starts to fill out the test procedure. This alone is powering a 15-minute per-case savings for the engineer."
KEITH OLODORT, GLOBAL SYSTEMS DEPLOYMENT LEAD, ALCON
In selecting a field service management platform, Alcon wanted one that was built on Salesforce.com and could provide the flexibility needed to address and support Alcon's dynamic business and provide a 360-degree view for all business functions. After selecting ServiceMax as the best solution to meet their goals, Alcon rolled out the platform to over 600 field service engineers and 100 technical support agents in over 100 countries.
"Our initial implementation in 2014 focused on US, UK, and Canada. We have since rolled out to the greater EMEA, Asia and Latin American markets, completing a global roll out to all regions in 2021, allowing us to standardize processes across the teams," said Keith Olodort, Global Systems Deployment Lead at Alcon.
When implementing ServiceMax, Alcon wanted to drive great technology adoption, business and financial improvements, and to see their field team's experience improve. Adoption was a key metric, and the team kept an eye on how many people were using the ServiceMax platform. The system also introduced visibility into error rates, which allowed them to easily measure the financial impact of ServiceMax. As the field onboarded the platform, error rates that had previously negatively impacted revenue started going down.
To gain the field's perspective, the team made sure to bring the technicians into their change management efforts. "We made sure to share information early and often and gather valuable field feedback. We shared our implementation plan including which features, in which order, and worked to turn the field into advocates so they could sell the solution to their peers. This was an important part of the change management process," noted Olodort.
Adding Advanced Forms Powered by ProntoForms to Automate Out Complexity
Prior to implementing ProntoForms, Alcon used smart PDFs that required engineers visit a SharePoint site and select the appropriate service test procedure PDF for the equipment they were working with. Sometimes there were multiple versions and that created the possibility to pull the wrong PDF version and attach it to a case. With Advanced Forms powered by ProntoForms, Alcon can now consistently deploy the correct version for technicians to use.
"The integration that we have with ProntoForms and ServiceMax makes it really easy to go through audits with our internal and external auditors because all the data is right there in ServiceMax. ServiceMax and ProntoForms are incredible at dealing with very complex, sophisticated, highly-regulated work and both solutions have been crucial to our success."
KEITH OLODORT, GLOBAL SYSTEMS DEPLOYMENT LEAD, ALCON
For the engineers, the time savings are a welcome change. "The biggest savings for our field engineers, in addition to not having to enter the data again because it's all pulled from ServiceMax, is that all of the test tools required for the service test procedure are now automated. These test tools are automatically pulled up when the field engineer starts to fill out the test procedure. This alone is powering a 15-minute per-case savings for the engineer," noted Olodort.
Advanced Forms have also removed timely manual processes around digital signatures and connecting forms to a case. "The integration that we have with ProntoForms and ServiceMax makes it really easy to go through audits with our internal and external auditors because all the data is right there in ServiceMax. ServiceMax and ProntoForms are incredible at dealing with very complex, sophisticated, highly-regulated work and both solutions have been crucial to our success," said Olodort.
Hundreds of Hours Saved with ServiceMax Propels Alcon Forward
Today, Alcon has over 2,000 employees using ServiceMax to deliver superior service. They complete an average of 7,500 work orders every month. The Alcon team is now able to automate the entire work order process for field engineers so that they can go and execute effortlessly. This transformation has resulted in huge time savings equating to 900 hours per year through improvements to Alcon ServiceMax, over 1,500 hours per year through improved tracking processes, and 1 minute per case through reducing the number of required Surgery Codes fields. Looking to the future, Alcon is planning to leverage AI and IoT, shift further into proactive and predictive service, and prepare field engineers to use these new technologies.
Related Content
Ready to unleash productivity?
Get a demo and start a trial today.
or call us 1-888-282-4184
Past & upcoming events
Europe's best event for service leaders to gather to discuss the major transformations due to globalization, digitization and changing customer behaviours.
The Conference for Leaders in Customer Success, Service & Support.
Our team is ready and waiting to answer any ProntoForms-related questions you have.
The Structure, Tower, and Antennae Council Conference is Canada's premier tower industry event, dedicated to safety and other best practices in the communications tower industry.
Join a KONE executive, business analyst, and field service engineer as they dive into the impacts of rapid automation.
Join ProntoForms, the Service Council, and a packed panel of subject matter experts and industry leaders, as we explore what best-in-class organizations are prioritizing in building a Mental Health, Wellness & Safety driven culture.
This stacked panel brings together field service leaders from GOJO/Purell, Orthoclinal Diagnostics, and Elekta to talk top priorities as they head into 2022. This free virtual event will give you a front-row seat as you gain insights and listen to a few predictions about what lies ahead for organizations with field service teams.
Digital transformation is no longer a nice-to-have for field organizations—it's table stakes. Ditching paper or outdated processes and moving towards rich data collection and visibility has never been more important. Join our session to understand the fundamentals of digital transformation, the macroeconomic factors driving it in field service, and how you can accelerate your organization's digital transformation journey today.
Data is everything when it comes to staying compliant and agile. Shawna Zitrick, Alcon's Business Operations Manager and Mark Scott, ProntoForms' VP of Marketing discuss how low-code apps along with a killer FSM platform streamlines admin work, makes compliance easier, and keeps medical device manufacturing organizations agile.
Our EMPOWER21 User Conference was a huge sucess! If you work in field service, it's the perfect blend of Fortune 500 thought leadership from stellar companies like KONE, Philips, PG&E, and Shell, product best practices, and insider tips. Don't miss out!
Exploring New & Expanded Revenue Opportunities for Future Growth Abstract Blurb: The pandemic taught field service professionals a lot about their field force's resilience, speed and agility. Find out how service leaders pivoted their business models to capture revenue through new/different business sectors, and improved processes for onboarding and training technicians in these new sectors to maximize this revenue.
Field technicians are the customers' face of the company and techs' job processes—for good or bad—influence their happiness and job satisfaction. But what happens when many technicians are debating their future in field service? Join a stacked field panel that brings together executives and technicians from Schneider Electric, Trane Technologies, and Cummins to talk shop on improving satisfaction across the board.
At Phillips Healthcare, low-code apps are part of their solution for ensuring technicians automatically complete work in-compliance and that potential audits are painless. Join us as we dive deep into exactly how Philips uses ProntoForms to service some of the most stringently regulated assets on the planet.
SUEZ, a global water expert in the water and waste sectors, was looking to improve operational efficiency and put the right tools in technicians' hands. Watch this webinar for a deep dive into how digital transformation in asset management is possible with custom field apps and agile technology.
Gain valuable insights from a squad with numerous years of field service experience working at Fortune 500 companies. Pat Foley, ProntoForms' Client Director will be joined by Dominique Vaes, Founder and Senior Partner at Field Service in Motion, and Johan Franck, Associate Partner at Field Service in Motion, to discuss their lessons learned with digital transformation trends. Come learn how to hit targets no matter how agile and fast digital goals are becoming.
Don't make rush digital transformation decisions or implementation mistakes. Chris Bade, VP Field Service & Customer Support at Analogic Corporation and David B. Bishop, Director of Service Operations, Building Solutions North America at Johnson Controls discuss how to ensure internal buy-in and business goal alignment in your organization and that tech you invest in today will delivers value to your customers in the long-run.
Service Council and ProntoForms get together for a fluffy talk on lofty dreams of achieving digital transformation nirvana, but for actionable and meaningful takeaways to help you build out your bulletproof digital transformation strategy for 2021.
This virtual town hall brings together field service expertise and learnings from ProntoForms, an organization that has helped deploy countless COVID-related and 2020 response apps in the past year, and one of their prominent customers who will discuss strategies and actions that has helped their organization stay agile and accelerate digital transformation to meet new and unique service requirements and health and safety guidelines
Field and tech executives join Alvaro Pombo, CEO of ProntoForms, to discuss how their organizations have accelerated their digital transformation and tackled the growing demands and evolving requirements of this new business climate.
Learn, innovate, and network. Whether you're a seasoned ProntoForms guru or just getting started with digital transformation and field automation, get ready to become a field efficiency and safety hero at the EMPOWER'20 virtual conference.
Hear from inspiring keynote speaker Jon Barr, CIO of KONE Americas, and watch virtual panels with Ryan Tidd, the Engine Operations Capability and Innovation Director at Cummins, and ProntoForms' VP of Operations and scaling expert, Aly Mawani.
Discover how Service Council, ServiceMax, and ProntoForms explored what Philips Healthcare and Medtronic are doing to empower their service business through digital transformation.