Scheidt & Bachmann Parking Solutions GmbH

The ongoing fight for a good parking space 
Scheidt & Bachmann is a global leader in parking solutions. In an increasingly digital industry, the German business has an 80% share of some markets. Its solutions include ticketless entry and exit by scanning license plates, cameras to monitor availability of parking spaces, and the use of QR codes, UHF-Tags, RFID, and payment cards. Scheidt & Bachmann not only creates these innovations, it provides service and maintenance for all operational hardware. It is recognized globally for its innovative vision and customer orientation.

The challenge for Scheidt & Bachmann is to continue to bring innovation to market and manage an increasingly diverse mix of customers and technology. To maintain its leadership position, hardware innovation alone is not enough. Scheidt & Bachmann must excel in service and operational efficiency.

Ensuring a 24/7 customer service 
Scheidt & Bachmann’s customers include local councils, airports, facilities managers, and large enterprises. All expect parking systems to work 24/7. If a payment machine is out of action, or cameras monitoring parking spaces go down, Scheidt & Bachmann needs to know, the customer must be informed, and an engineer deployed. “Our challenge was primarily to achieve the high-quality level of our operational service in planning and organization as well. Our in-house service technicians are very well trained – something we have ahead of the competition – but we lost a lot of quality through complicated organization.

“With ServiceNow, we have been able to optimize our service dispatching and service execution workflow. The user experience for our customers has improved a lot, as well as our internal processes,” says Kai Harperscheidt, Head of Tools & Processes at Scheidt & Bachmann.

The previous approach to service and maintenance was reactive and inconsistent. There was no central visibility of the deployment landscape, and customer communication was less than ideal. Engineer dispatchers would receive a phone call or email asking for a repair. They would have to ring round the engineers to see who was closest. “It was a game of memory,” recalls John Gouw, Dispatcher at Scheidt & Bachmann Benelux. “You had to remember, where is my engineer? I had to call them constantly. The amount of information you gather is key for effective service intervention. Monitoring service updates via post-it notes does complicate things! “

Scheidt & Bachmann wanted to implement a harmonized service management tool and fully integrated customer portal. This would enable issues to be fixed more quickly, drive operational efficiency, and strengthen communication with customers. “We had an in-house solution for our service management which delivered a basic solution,” says Jason Barnes, Operations Director at Scheidt & Bachmann UK. “But if we were to transform to a true, service-driven business, we required more data, more visibility on how we performed as a business.”

Driving parking efficiency with ServiceNow
In July 2020, after considering several options, Scheidt & Bachmann implemented ServiceNow Field Service Management (FSM) and Customer Service Management (CSM) within all its global subsidiaries and 20 of its distribution partners. This has created a single service management tool with a new customer portal integrating more than 5,000 customers and almost 11,000 car parks worldwide.

ServiceNow was selected for its out-of-the-box functionality, leadership in the field, and unique platform approach, says Kai: “It was the best fit in terms of our vision of creating an integrated, harmonized service management tool and the 24/7 servicing needs of our customers.“

Today, a team of around 40 people logs cases, qualifies work orders, and dispatches tasks to the technicians. When a failure occurs, the team raises a ticket through FSM, and dispatches an engineer who can remediate the problem which automatically notifies the customer and issues an invoice. Engineers are also using the mobile app to schedule materials and improve communications. “ServiceNow can now use my location to efficiently plan my route throughout the day and streamline communication activities with our technical department,” says Field Service Engineer, Dion Olie. “I’m excited to work with our own inventory overview and the no-nonsense scanning app makes life just that bit easier.“

The Scheidt & Bachmann team is making full use of FSM’s Dispatcher Workspace to bring new speed and efficiency to field service scheduling, while providing service dispatchers and managers a complete view of tasks, teams, locations, and status.

Real-time data and first-rate service
“One of the key business benefits we get from ServiceNow is the data we can access in real time,” says Jason. “This allows us to investigate every service call, if need be, look at dwell times, response times, first-time fix, or parts inventories. It provides more certainty around recording and tracking of warranty work too.”

“We monitor the total service call journey and apply measures to each component. For example, we trend the times that the majority of service calls are logged so that we have more staff available to log, assign, and follow up with the customer. A more long-term measure is our response time from accepting the call to arriving on site. As our customers are with us on average for 12 years, it is important that our business growth takes consideration of our carbon footprint so that we can look to reduce journey times by recruiting staff in key areas. We also measure the number of active calls that are passed to second level support. This gives us clear guidance on the technical training our team needs to reduce reliance on second level support.“ The detailed reporting we get out of ServiceNow will deliver real, long-term improvements to our service.”

The new ServiceNow customer portal has improved Scheidt & Bachmann’s relationship with its customers, he continues: “As the majority of our customers run 24/7 operations, they can access the portal at any time and log service calls, which then creates an alert both for us internally in the business and for the customer’s car park operations manager.” Maintaining the highest levels of customer loyalty is a key driver for Scheidt & Bachmann who see this as its USP, alongside innovative, intelligent parking technology. “Feedback tells us 97% of our customers are ‘satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with the new service,” says Kai.

Geared up for greater efficiency
Digital workflows are transforming engineer productivity and creating a proactive service mindset. This is helping to reduce fix times and improving service transparency. It also establishes a consistent platform capable of supporting international growth. “The aspiration is to continuously improve the business, not only internally in regard to increasing efficiency but also in regard to customer satisfaction and customer experience,” says Thorsten Braun, Director of Global Operations at Scheidt & Bachmann. “We serve a huge variety of customers with different demands and in order to be prepared for whatever’s coming down the road, it was really important to implement certain change. That is why we started this journey with ServiceNow.”

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