|
Press Release |
|||
|
SA tobacco giant comes out smoking with HeatBritish American Tobacco South Africa, which generates over R5,5 billion ($550 million) per annum in excise and VAT, has replaced its in-house developed IT helpdesk and support solution with FrontRange Solutions' Heat helpdesk suite. The new solution has improved the management of calls to the IT support centre from 1 200 active users at 19 sites throughout the country, a number that is expected to increase to 2 000 in the near future. The group is also using Heat Asset Tracker from FrontRange to perform basic asset management and licence tracking. "Heat has allowed us to maintain a call centre support complement of only three for our expanding needs," says Clint Carstens, LAN manager at British American Tobacco South Africa. British American Tobacco South Africa employs over 2 500 staff countrywide, has over 90% of the local cigarette market share and has two manufacturing plants, one in the Western Cape and one in Gauteng. The company, which was created in 1999 through the global merger of Rothmans International and British American Tobacco, buys 60% of its tobacco leaf locally and employs 46 000 people in agricultural positions. Its four key brands are Lucky Strike, Dunhill, Peter Stuyvesant and Rothmans. Heat was installed by Cape Town-based FrontRange solutions partner e2e in April over a three-week period. Most of that time was spent planning the implementation, with between three and four days for the physical installation of the solution. Part of the set-up included call escalation and other business rules. Operators and managers can now interrogate the system and ascertain exactly how many calls were not met by the service level agreement the company has in place between support staff and users. "We are beginning to perform fault trend analysis so instead of treating symptoms, in many cases we are getting to the root of the problem. That serves to decrease the future call rate and reduces the load on support staff," says Carstens. He says that British American Tobacco South Africa is a dynamic environment because the corporate side of the business primarily fulfils a marketing and distribution role, and although there are 19 sites in South Africa, operations in Botswana and Namibia are also supported by the local operation. British American Tobacco South Africa technical staff underwent Heat training before they began using it in the live environment. In addition, Carstens says these staff will also have Crystal Reports and Administration training to enhance the effectiveness of Heat's use in the company and maximise return on investment. The company has 15 Heat licences and 1 200 scanable Asset Tracker licences, which are also used to track the HP laser printers throughout the organisation. "Heat has allowed British American Tobacco to make more effective use of its technical support staff through task management, along with other means," says David Lees, director at e2e. "The business rules monitor has enabled the company to streamline the support process and allow proper escalation where necessary, with follow-up and call monitoring." British American Tobacco South Africa also bought the Heat Self-Service module, which enables call logging on the Web. Tracey Newman, MD of FrontRange Solutions SA, says Heat is designed to enable organisations to create powerful customer service centres with networked technicians. "Heat software includes robust database, knowledge and asset management capabilities," she says. "The product is easy to use, providing the best time to value, and scales to meet the needs of emerging and established service and support centres." Editorial Contact: Tracey Newman FrontRange Solutions SA +27-11-808 6000 tracey.newman@frontrange.com top of page |
|||