Krones AG

The ini­tial sit­u­a­tion

In 2014, the inter­na­tional mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing com­pany Kro­nes AG instructed IP Dynam­ics to ren­o­vate its exist­ing Con­tact Cen­ter sys­tem. Impor­tantly for Kro­nes, its Con­tact Cen­ter solu­tion must also allow a highly effi­cient search for experts and spe­cial­ists within the group. This is needed for a wealth of rea­sons – for exam­ple for oper­a­tion, ser­vic­ing and main­te­nance of the com­plex pro­duc­tion lines of Kro­nes AG’s cus­tomers world­wide. Besides meet­ing con­ven­tional require­ments, there­fore, the cus­tomer call cen­ter also needed to offer addi­tional fea­tures.

The chal­lenge

• The need to inter­con­nect the Con­tact Cen­ter solu­tion with Kro­nes’ SAP sys­tem and enable inte­gra­tive pro­cess­ing of all inci­dents aris­ing (inter­ac­tion records) pre­sented the great­est chal­lenge for pro­duc­tive deliv­ery of the new solu­tion.
• Because the inter­na­tional company’s estab­lish­ments are located on dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents, var­i­ous fac­tors had to be taken in con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing the global prepa­ra­tion of the nec­es­sary sys­tem com­po­nents. On the one hand the com­mu­ni­ca­tion with local con­tact per­sons had to be coor­di­nated, on the other hand the dif­fer­ent time zones had to be con­sid­ered regard­ing the mon­i­tor­ing and sta­tis­tics eval­u­a­tion.

The solu­tion

• IP Dynam­ics devel­oped an inte­grated archi­tec­ture for all require­ments based on the Vox­tron Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cen­ter. The mul­ti­chan­nel solu­tion offers high lev­els of flex­i­bil­ity while pre­serv­ing all stan­dard inter­faces and using the cer­ti­fied Inte­grated Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Inter­face (ICI) for inter­ac­tion with the SAP sys­tem.
• Besides the known require­ments, the new capa­bil­i­ties for the func­tional areas of the Vox­tron Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Center’s func­tional area were also reflected.
• After a pilot phase, the first client (Ser­vice Desk) went live in April 2015. The smooth launch was fol­lowed by a period of adjust­ment and fine-​tuning for the client.
• The sec­ond client (Life­cy­cle Ser­vice Cen­ter in the USA) went live in July 2015. All prepa­ra­tions and the “go-​live” were han­dled remotely. All required doc­u­ments were pro­duced in Eng­lish.
• The most com­plex client (Ser­vice Line) went live in May 2016 fol­low­ing an inten­sive prepara­tory phase. It resulted in the sys­tem being inter­con­nected with Kro­nes’ SAP CRM sys­tem via uni­form inter­faces (ICI, RFC) and based on addi­tional devel­op­ments by IP Dynam­ics.

The result

• Since being com­mis­sioned, the entire sys­tem has oper­ated with­out any major prob­lems. Addi­tional appli­ca­tion sce­nar­ios such as chat and e-​mail rout­ing have also been imple­mented and acti­vated promptly at Kro­nes.
• IP Dynam­ics pro­vides 24-​hour sec­ond and third level sup­port under a ser­vice con­tract. IP Dynam­ics will also sup­port the planned upgrade of Kro­nes’ CRM sys­tem as regards inter­con­nec­tion with the Vox­tron sys­tem.
• Both IP Dynam­ics and Kro­nes con­sider the project a suc­cess – not least because of the high level of mutual trust between the com­pa­nies.

If you are also inter­ested in renew­ing your IT or set­ting up a cus­tomized Vox­tron Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cen­ter, please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us.