Our experts intimately understand the complexities OEMS face when handling repairs and returns in 2024. From limited repair status visibility to unreliable logistics networks – today’s challenges are putting traditional methods under pressure.
Siloes and limited transparency is increasing waste and making costs extremely difficult to control, negatively impacting the environment and customer experience. Adding to this pressure faced by OEMs, customer expectations are now higher than ever, and retention is becoming more difficult as a result. But innovative solutions are available.
“OEMs are propelling their depot repair services into the circular economy future and delighting their customers.”
Sarang Sambare, Industry Solutions Director, Syncron
Enhancing depot repair capabilities is an unignorable opportunity to simultaneously boost your reputation through innovative customer support, improve your sustainability stance as compliance requirements tighten, and transform your aftermarket activity.
In this article, we will dive deeper into the benefits of a truly unified depot repair platform. Particularly in terms of how it accelerates recovery rates, expedites return processes, and reduces the operational expenditure associated with buying new parts.
Turning Complexities into Competitive Advantages
The right depot repair solution will be equipped with leading analytics and AI-enabled capabilities to leverage your data sets and returns velocity. A solution like this will be able to utilise complex information to fuel inventory planning, and dynamically route returns by intelligently taking capacity and demand into account.
Innovative solutions will allow repair orders to be created and managed that track parts, labor, and associated charges in real-time. You will be able to monitor service parts inventory, product shipments, billing, repair order payments, and easily generate customer warranty claims.
Efficiency and accuracy can be further improved by a solution that allows the user to create product inspection orders and cross-reference them with entitlements from service contracts or standard warranties.
Satisfaction and Sustainability
A unified platform will allow customers to initiate self-service requests across a variety of different channels, including online portals, mobile platforms, and email. This streamlined communication and tracking increases visibility of the process for customers (and the OEM), improving their sense of control on the one hand, and boosting retention on the other.
These benefits are taken up another level when a solution can streamline returns by automatically generating return materials authorization (RMA) and shipping labels. By offering a simplified process that gives users confidence, the solution helps you to differentiate and maintain relationships that might otherwise be won by more innovative OEMs. Options to integrate with major carriers like UPS will also help take these efficiencies even further.
The technology-enabled visibility offered by unified platforms, and the efficiency they offer customers, make it much easier for OEMs to cut down on waste. With a clearer view of their inventories, manufacturers can gain a more accurate view of the new parts they need to build, and the ones that can be repurposed, refurbished, or recycled.
Fostering a New Mindset
While the right solution is critical for an OEM to successfully transform its depot repair services and optimize reverse logistics, a culture and mindset adjustment is also essential. The ideology OEMs need to develop is one where waste is viewed as money being thrown away, emphasizing the importance of granular detail and greater control when it comes to repairs and returns.
Creating a dedicated team to champion reverse logistics and use the innovative solutions you deploy is a major advantage. With a unified solution creating visibility and driving a consistent stream of used parts into depot locations, the team can develop dynamic processes that are tailored to you as an OEM.
Syncron Depot Repair
Our industry experts and engineers have developed a solution that equips OEMs to streamline their workflows and achieve comprehensive visibility across their depot networks. Syncron Depot Repair has been specifically designed to break siloes and provide you with intelligent workload management, while transforming recovery rates and returns processes.
The solution enables OEMs to use standard APIs to connect their back-end business systems, while handling multiple workbench repair systems at the same time. Capabilities like these, as well as the unique pricing options we offer, differentiate Syncron Depot Repair from other solutions currently available.
We have developed the solution with the circular economy future in mind, and depot repair is a central pillar of the circular model. Adopting these principles is now more important than ever, with supply chain uncertainty, customer expectations, and competitiveness within the OEM market increasing. Get in touch with our expert team to find out more!