Our Q3 Newsletter is chock full of Summer enlightenment. Reach for your coffee/cocktail (hopefully pool-side) to read about an RPA implementation, sustainability progress, Xenith culture and if you get to the end, there’s a special Summer surprise.
Our Q3 Newsletter is chock full of Summer enlightenment. Reach for your coffee/cocktail (hopefully pool-side) to read about an RPA implementation, sustainability progress, Xenith culture and if you get to the end, there’s a special Summer surprise. We keep the drinks, enthusiasm and knowledge flowing, all ways. Cheers!
Liberating a great service team
Contributor Writer, Matt Day
Our “Meet-the-Team” for August, is with Service + Operations, led by Laura Jacques. It’s been nearly ten years since she joined Xenith. In a decade that saw Brexit, a pandemic, and the genesis of the £7 pint, she has seen the service department and the company dramatically improve operations. Most recently with the introduction of robotics.
Image: From left to right (bottom): Hannah O’Regan, Laura Jacques, Jo-Ann Mader, Cristina Budescu, Nayna Patel, Charles Ellis. (Top): Clayton Green, Carly Cornwell, Sarah Foley, Alice Venn, Emily Roberts, Kyle McCoy
Laura explained that things were very different a decade ago. “It was paper heavy with lots of manual tasks. We were a team of three- sometimes it would take all day validating up to five hundred tickets!”.
Tickets are for Customers needing help, fixing their printers/copiers/MFPs, under Xenith’s service. Our team handles anything and everything, from sending Field Engineers out, to delivering toner and doughnuts. Initiating tickets and solving them was a labor-intensive workflow, spanning departments. Keeping track of customer care was an unwieldy process- passing paperwork between teams and entering data from web portals. As we grew each year the efforts required to sustain Client volumes were struggling. It also was a burden accessing, revising, and filing documents in the right folder/file management structure.
Today, the picture is different, cumbersome paperwork that was time intensive and added little value, is, fortunately, a thing of the past. Says Laura, “Robotic workflows plus a cloud-based ERP system made our lives so much better. It eases workflow and saves valuable time to improve service to our customers”.
The team is still a permanent squad of three- but three brains go considerably further when aided by innovative robotics and RPA (Robotic Process Automation). Instead of manually trawling through data, a robot handles all the non-reporting machine's tasks. Laura again, “It’s been a revelation; it saves us a whopping 16 hours a week!” Laura explains, “The more machines with direct communication the more accurate our invoices are, as meter readings are input directly in the ERP system. We are only human, and we’ve reduced manual-entry errors significantly.” Automation has been a blessing for purely practical reasons, too. “Many of the manual tasks were pretty repetitive- and the team are thrilled to apply themselves for adding more value to the business!”
But it’s not all about us- what about the benefits to our customers? “It’s allowed us to focus more intently on value tasks; keeping machines up to date with critical firmware and software, reducing any risks or issues. Especially important since remote working from the pandemic, and security compliance issues were heightened. Every minute not spent inputting data is time that can be spent servicing customers”.
So, what’s on the horizon for the service team? “So much. We’re exploring how to ensure companies' help desks are aware of issues before the user even reports it. With carefully selected software we can look at rolling out firmware upgrades en masse to reduce the time normally taken by IT teams”.
While we cannot reduce the cost of the £7 pint anytime soon, we can liberate your team’s manual processes, while improving the Customer Experience. If digital seems daunting, don’t worry, chat with Client.Relations@xenith.co.uk who will help partner your success.
Xenith’s Sustainability Corner
The month of July saw the weather move from a drab topic of small talk to breaking news. The high temperatures have caused wildfires devastating nature and the UK is now heading towards drought, after the driest July since 1911.
While we Brits rarely complain when a bit of sunshine comes our way, lethal 40-degree heat with 60% humidity was something our homes, hospitals, and travel networks were simply not built for. Scientists have predicted human-induced climate change for many decades, and the reality finally dawned as we googled, “when will this heatwave end?”. Sadly, extreme weather is here to stay, for the short term.
However, it’s not too late. If we act differently we can ensure targets of net zero are achieved by 2050. The power of reforestation and urban green planning cannot be understated as a solution.
A large round of applause for the new clients working with Xenith’s PrintReleaf program to reforest their paper usage.
AXA XL
British International Investment
Fuller, Smith & Turner
Oakray Ltd
Join these great companies. Xenith’s impact to date is 629 trees.
We are celebrating years of tireless service from:
Gary Anstey - 26 (wow!)
Marc Ueckermann - 21
Laura Jacques - 10
Julian Sadler - 5 years.
Thank you all for your amazing service!
August 13th - Weekend in the wilds: another year for Tough-Mudder and fund-raising for Ukraine. (Dirty photos will be posted. Yes, I probably should have written muddy there, but that’s way less fun.)
September 9th - Xenith’s South-African BBQ - beloved CTO roasts gastronomic platters of ribs, lamb, veggies, burgers and chicken, come rain or shine. (Photos will also be posted on LinkedIn.)
There’s a few names and faces hanging around Angel Islington this quarter. Clayton Green, Charles Ellis, Marcus Hermansson, Kieran Lawrence, Matthew Day, Lydia Salmon, Ellie Trundell, Nayna Patel, welcome aboard! We are excited for our journey together.
