Remote maintenance and management tool shoots cost-saving lights out

Kyocera's remote maintenance and management tool, Kyocera Fleet Services (KFS), is providing great cost savings for its partners and customers. Hosted in the cloud, this Web-based solution enables dealers to remotely monitor, manage and maintain their customers' network devices and to swiftly respond to evolving customer needs.

"Offered as software as a service (SaaS), Kyocera Fleet Services (KFS) is hosted in the cloud. This means that service providers and dealers need not invest in IT infrastructure such as PCs and servers, nor do IT staff need to spend time on maintaining this infrastructure. Travel costs are also cut significantly, and, of course, productivity increases tenfold when our dealers can remotely maintain, troubleshoot and configure customer devices, eliminating the need for packing up, travelling to the client and then analysing the maintenance need with very little background information," says JP Lourens, Software Product Manager at Kyocera Document Solutions South Africa.

Dealers are driving efficiency and increasing their competitive edge by using Kyocera Fleet Services, as SaaS makes it easy for them to expand and optimise their service offerings.

"Offering our customers genuine cost-saving potential while remaining focused on improving customer relationships is crucial when it comes to customer retention," says Wayne van de Werken, from 123mds, a partner that is using KFS. "Using KFS has allowed us to retain existing customers, attract new business, increase efficiency and visibility, and has cut costs by 30%.

"We've drastically reduced the number of customer visits and, should an on-site visit be required, our service technicians are much better prepared in terms of device status information, enabling them to bring along any parts and tools that may be required. This means the duration of customer visits is optimised, minimising service and overhead costs, while maximising device uptime and customer productivity," says Van de Werken.

KFS enables its partners to greatly improve their supply management to the customer, by providing real-time information on the toner levels of customer devices and sending e-mail notifications when supplies are running low. In addition, this solution generates scheduled device counter reports for customer billing and click contracts.

Lourens says: "We always focus on the end-user's and partner's needs in our offerings. As an example, the end-user's information is secure and protected because the device information obtained from customers only contains information necessary for the management and maintenance of the devices. It doesn't contain sensitive customer information, such as address books. For our partners, our constantly evolving offerings aim to put them ahead of the competition."