Otis Elevator Company (India) Ltd is a part of Otis Elevator Co., US, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation. Otis Elevator Co. is the world’s largest manufacturer, installer and maintainer of elevators, escalators, moving walkways and other people-moving systems.

The Need

The existing system consisted of a structure that did not have a standardized procedure for the initialization of a contract for prospective clients. A single contract involved physical transfer of about 30 documents in the organiczational hierarchy comprising approximately 13 departments in the Regional Offices and the Head Office. There was no automation involved till the order reached the order finalization stage. Also, the automation was limited to the department level whereby documents were processed for department-specific purposes. As a result, there was a definite redundancy of data and delay in document transfer and information retrieval.

Solution

Otis CIOV. Subramanium entrusted the work of creating a Net Framework based workflow solution for managing the sales lifecycle for the clients to Maestros Mediline Systems Ltd.

Maestros developed a .Net Framework based workflow solution for capturing the contract details for the clients right from enquiry to handover. The application was developed using the SQL server as the backend. The database designed clearly defined the organizational hierarchy with the aim of achieving centralization of information with the scope for a complete gradual integration and automation. Exhibit 13.1 shows the solution architecture used for implementing BPM at Otis. The application included the modules mentioned below:

Enquiry Module

The process is initiated whenever there is an enquiry for elevator/elevators. The Secretary (Secy.) or Sales Executive (S.E.) initiates the enquiry. On logging into the system the S.E. is initially displayed a listing of all the enquiries assigned to him, and the option to select and view the source or the person who has assigned the enquiry. On selecting the appropriate option from the dropdown, a listing of all the active enquiries assigned to the S.E. is displayed along with the role of that person who had assigned the enquiry. The process is started with the filling of the client details in the client form. This form contains a brief detail of the customer.

After the client form is filled in, the details are then mapped to the enquiry register.

The enquiry register contains the client name and a brief specification of the requirement. If the enquiry fails to mature into a proposal, a loss report is generated.

Proposal

A proposal is the enquiry document that has been approved by the client, and starts the order booking process. A proposal is differentiated on the basis of the type of elevator and further on the basis of speed. In case of the elevator type being traditional, specific requirements are captured in the Sales Negotiation Datasheet (SND) for pre-sales estimation. The documents involved in this process are proposal document, which are legal documents, SND sheet, 2824 form, price page, loss provision form and NS 1 form.

Order Finalization

This process is invoked by the approval of the proposal by the client. It involves capturing of client specific information by the SE. and its dispatch to the SM./GM. and Mktg HO. as the case may be, for approval....

Question For Discussion
1. What was the problem in the existing sales system at Otis Elevator Company (India) Ltd.?

2. Explain the solution evolved by their CIO, Mr V.Subramanium.

3. What were the benefits derived on introducing Business Process Management at Otis?