Laptop service center Micro Solutions (Danbury, CT 203-748-4633) repairs laptops for individuals and Fortune 500 companies. This generates paper. Four or five pages for every laptop. They're improving customer service and saving $10,000 a year with imaging.
"Toshiba requires us to store all repair documents for three years," says Steve Schone, Micro Solutions president and CEO. "We used to store the current year's information in six vertical filing cabinets in our offices. The two previous years' information was stored in 20 cardboard boxes. We have 60,000 pages. Finding paperwork was difficult and time consuming.
Micro Solutions realized paper was not going away. It was growing. They searched for a solution and discovered Scan2File ($400) from Scan2File Systems (Holland, OH 419-865-2100). This program makes it easy to store, index and retrieve electronic copies of paper documents.
When a customer enters Micro Solutions' offices they hand their laptop to the counter clerk. The laptop is placed in a sealed plastic bin with any paperwork the customer has. This could include warranty papers, proof of purchase, letters or specific instructions.
Details are also entered in an electronic form created in Microsoft Access. This includes name, address, phone number, RMA number, serial number, the problem and where the machine will be stored. The customer gets a printout.
When the technician starts work, he accesses the electronic form on the network to see what needs to be done. He also checks out the paper documents with the laptop. If the machine is under warranty, parts are ordered and the machine is repaired. This information is added to the electronic Access form and the laptop is returned to the customer.
If the laptop is not under warranty, the customer is contacted and given an estimate. When the repair is authorized, parts are ordered. The machine is repaired and returned to the customer.
"After the customer gets their machine back, Micro Solutions still has more paperwork," says Schone. "We have another form we have to send to Toshiba electronically if we want to get paid. The customer is given a hard copy of this.
"Most of the information we need is already in the system, but we must have actual images of the forms. Often technicians write notes on the form which may not be entered into the system. These notes can be important. The customer may also request a printout if they lose the form or want to dispute something.
"All of the customer's paper is scanned into our system on a Hewlett-Packard (Cupertino, CA 408-725-8900) 3C scanner with an auto document feeder. This runs on a Pentium 120 with a 15" Samtron (Ridgefield Park, NJ 201-229-4000) monitor. These are stored on a 8GB Seagate (Heathrow, FL 407-531-7500) ultra-wide SCSI hard drive. At the end of the year we plan to burn the data to a CD or to 5 1/4" optical media."
Storing the forms is easy. Finding the information is hard. Micro Solutions chose Scan2File. Forms are indexed by customer name, RMA number and serial number. Anybody on the network can access them.
"We are saving at least three hours a week filing and retrieving forms," says Schone. "Wild goose chases are no longer existent. In the past we could spend 25 minutes looking for documents stored in boxes. A customer may send us his machine under a company name the first time and his personal name the second time. Finding this was difficult. Now we just key in the serial number and get the information instantly.
"Our staff really like Scan2File. It was easy to learn and install. We save at least three hours a week searching for information. Not bad for a $400 program. We are also saving storage space because we no longer have huge filing cabinets in our offices. Putting a dollar figure on the savings is difficult, but it's at least $10,000 annually.
"The big payoff is better customer service. We now give customers instant answers to their questions. We no longer have to call them back 20 minutes later with the answer. Telephone tag is a thing of the past. We look good in the eyes of our customers. They save time. Our staff are more productive. We save money. Scan2File is a great program. I recommend it to everybody." U
