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Vitalograph
1 . Overview
Based in Ennis, Co. Clare, Vitalograph (www.vitalograph.ie)
designs, manufactures and markets respiratory diagnostic
products and is recognised world wide for its simple
and effective lung function test equipment. These products
are widely used in primary care, occupational health,
sports medicine, asthma management and hospitals.
Vitalograph’s main driver for implementing an eBusiness
project was to provide technical support for distributors,
staff and customers.
Product support had been provided, on an ad hoc basis,
by a member of the Research and Development team who
supported the Technical Support Manager in each of the
company’s three branches - Buckingham (UK), Hamburg(Germany)
and Kansas (USA). Unfortunately, the level of support
required was getting greater and greater to a point
where the R&D department was becoming swamped.
With upwards of 50% of the R&D department’s
time spent dealing with technical support issues it
was decided that the process should become more electronic
and self-service.
Additionally, there was no corporate web strategy and
no Irish web presence – each country had its own
website but there was no corporate standard across all
the sites. There was a UK based site for the group but
this was a simple, static site with basic product information.
Other key objectives included:
- Reduce
impact of technical support on R&D
- Work
smarter
- Increase
efficiency
- Reduce
costs
- Create
a single corporate web presence
In addition
to providing technical support documentation (generated from a database
of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)), the website also provided:
- Product
information
- Technical
data
- Comparisons
to other equipment
- Product
leaflets (in PDF)
- Quick
reference guides
- User
manuals (in both English and foreign languages)
- User
information leaflets
- Service
information
- Legal
information
This wealth
of information saved both time and money for Vitalograph. No longer did
they have to distribute information by mail – it was all on the website,
in PDF format, ready to be downloaded by users.
The website architecture was designed with Vitalograph’s future requirements
in mind and could easily be adapted in the future to handle:
- Software
updates
- Training
materials
- Customer
orders
- Supplier
queries
For Vitalograph,
the critical part of the project was getting the design of the infrastructure
right. Getting the right infrastructure in place meant that the addition
of extra functionality in the future would be relatively straightforward.
The site will go live as this case is being completed, a year after it was
handed over to the team in Vitalograph. On handover, the site was set-up
on an internal web server but, at that time, lack of staffing internally
meant that the team was unable to make the site public. Commented the project
manager, “There were always more urgent things to be done – we
bit off a little more than we could chew”.
Once the website is live, benefits to customers will include:
- Better
quality of product information
- More
efficient service
- More efficient
support
Benefits to
Vitalograph include:
- Increased
efficiency
- Future
proof solution
- Cost
savings
There were two
main lessons learnt by the team throughout the duration of the project:
- Resourcing
– It is vitally important to ensure that the
project is properly resourced and therefore to have
a very good understanding of what can be sub-contracted
and how much work that will leave internally.
- Ensure
requirements are properly defined – It is both
unfair and unwise to expect a vendor to understand
exactly what your needs are without giving them
a tight brief.
Plans for future
functionality include:
- Supplier
access to certain parts of the MRP system via the
web to check availability of stock
- Online
ordering for other offices
- Online
training packages
- Software
updates and patches
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