The Automotive Aftermarket division of Robert Bosch in Poland has been using our Order Manager solution for almost 20 years now. Bosch and their customers are highly satisfied with the upgraded Order Manager online portal. All order processes are handled electronically, from availability requests to the dispatch of tax-compliant electronic invoices. By digitising the entire order-to-invoice process, Bosch is able to save time and cost and increase customer satisfaction – ideal conditions to boost sales.
At the very beginning of the Order Manager solution, back in 2001, Bosch Automotive Aftermarket Poland was one of the first who decided to use the B2B platform for electronic order processing. Around 700 customers installed the software TecLocal and although the solution was still in its infancy, it already made the daily work much easier. However, the handling of the local installations caused a lot of administrative work and sometimes caused technical issues, especially for smaller customers without internal IT department.
Thus, the trend has moved away from locally installed software to online solutions over time. In 2017 the Order Manager online portal was launched in Poland with a host of new functions and improvements. With this web-based solution, purchasers can check availability and prices of replacement parts, place orders, receive dispatch confirmations and electronic invoices. They always have an overview of all processes in the journal. The transparent status information guarantees reliable order processing and permits rapid responses to their customers. Since 2018, the Order Manager app has been available, allowing to fill the shopping cart from any global location and transfer it to the Order Manager account for further processing.
Working together for the perfect solution
Klaudia Uszyńska, Customer Process Partner Europe at Robert Bosch Automotive Aftermarket in Poland, has been responsible for order management since 2007, first using TecLocal, then TecWeb 4.0. When the new Order Manager online portal was launched, Bosch Poland and their customers started testing it. “We were highly interested in switching to the new online portal. But there were some critical points that had to be clarified first”, says Klaudia Uszyńska. She collected all the requirements of the division and their customers and discussed them with Dr. Loïc Winterhalter, Product Owner of the Order Manager online portal at TecAlliance. “The direct feedback and input were very valuable for us”, says Dr. Loïc Winterhalter. “We prioritised the requirements and checked what we can implement and when.”
For Bosch, close cooperation and technical support laid the foundation for future success. “TecAlliance has undergone a great deal of change in recent years. There is a dedicated support hotline for Poland and Hungary for all technical issues and we are in close exchange with the headquarter. We really feel that the TecAlliance employees listen to us and actively support us”, remembers Klaudia Uszyńska.
Agile development: closer to our customers and faster to the market
Since the end of 2018, TecAlliance’s Business Unit Order Manager has been completely restructured, based on the principles of agility. Several interdisciplinary, cross-functional teams are working on the further development and improvement of the Order Manager solution. Product owners, Scrum masters, software developers, testers, sales staff and consulters are working hand in hand, all of them relying on agile development with the Scrum method. New features and functionality are being developed in sprints of one to two weeks. “The agile development allows us to be closer to our customers and deliver innovative new features much faster to the market”, explains Bryan Marschall, Product Lead Order Manager at TecAlliance.
Successful conversion to the online platform
Step by step, Dr. Loïc Winterhalter and his team implemented the requirements and optimised the Order Manager online portal in close cooperation with Bosch and their customers in Poland. “One of the most important issues was the Journal where our customers receive the ‘reverse messages’ of their suppliers, i.e. order confirmations, dispatch confirmations and invoices”, says Klaudia Uszyńska. “To name a few examples: Our customers wanted to have the invoice number of their supplier included there and use it as a filter criterion. They also asked for an icon that shows at a glance that an invoice has already been exported. Another important feature that TecAlliance implemented for us was the option to restrain access to the Journal. Sometimes there are hundreds of users in one organisation but only some of them (e.g. accounting) should see the invoices. Now we can hide prices and reverse documents and show them only to selected users within the same organisation.”
As the software is getting better and better, more and more customers are switching to the new online platform. “All Bosch Car Service workshops in Poland and the great majority of our other customers are using the Order Manager online platform now. They are very satisfied and so are we!“, says Klaudia Uszyńska. “We encourage all our customers to switch from the old TecLocal software to the online platform, because we are really convinced that it is the best solution. It simplifies and improves all order-related processes, it enables cost savings and shortens response times.”
A long-standing success story
Since the beginning of the cooperation Bosch has achieved a lot with the solutions and support of TecAlliance. “We have been working hand in hand with TecAlliance for almost 20 years now. Thanks to the TecAlliance solutions we can now offer our customers everything they need for their daily work. They all use TecDoc catalogue and Order Manager and that makes their work so much easier. They get any information whenever they want – 24/7! They do not need to call us or send an email: they find the right part, know if it is available and how much it costs and they can order it. And TecAlliance is really working on further improvements all the time – there are new functions every month. I am always positively surprised when I open the news section in Order Manager and see which new features have been implemented. We are really very satisfied with the cooperation, support and the TecAlliance solutions“, Klaudia Uszyńska sums it up.
Are you also interested in optimising your order-to-invoice processes? Get in touch with us so that we can work together to find the best-possible solution for you.
