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Award of Distinction - 1999 EPSS Design Contest 

Air Products and Chemicals - InterLink EPSS

Purpose

The objective of the InterLink project was to develop a transactional web-based EPSS tool to efficiently capture and validate data at the source, disseminate shared data and provide access to data needed by the sales force to create Profit & Loss (P&L) statements.

The scope of the project included developing an online tool for the sales organizations that combined the features of existing electronic tools with the data communicated using paper tools. To accomplish this, InterLink needed to electronically link data in numerous databases while providing access to operational/transactional data for decision making.

Solution

InterLink is a web-based performance centered design tool used by the sales force. During the design of this application we partnered with Ariel Performance Centered Systems to learn and integrate the PCD concepts into the application.

  1. Workbench

The workbaskets organize the sales representative’s prospects in much the same way they would using manila folders and work bins in a physical office thereby providing a contextual framework geared to their work goals. When the user first comes to this page the application will look up their most ‘Recent Work’ which is any prospect they have worked on in the last 60 days.

The ‘Binocular’ icon takes the users to the ‘Lookup’ page where they can use other search methods.

The ‘Quick P&L’ icon gives users the ability to work on a P&L statement without setting up a prospect.

The info bar at the top of the page is present on all pages. On the ‘WorkBench’ page and every other page in the application, the info bar has two buttons, ‘Help’ and ‘Request’. The ‘Help’ button allows you to access the help functionality in the application and the ‘Request’ button allows you to submit an email to the help desk with a bug report or a question.

Fig 1

  1. Lookup

The Lookup page provides a more traditional search method that is presented in an easy to understand format. Additionally, the text on the page includes help on how the information is entered into the application to assist in searching. The search results are presented to the user in the same format as they are on the Workbench page to maintain consistency.

Fig 2

  1. Navigator

The layout of the icons on this page represents the work flow of a prospect through the work process. The position of the icons conveys the order in which functions need to be performed. If a user tries to ‘Share’ or ‘Initiate’ without supplying the appropriate data, they will be presented with a message indicating what data is missing and on which page the data is located.

The three different color sections are presented to give the users a visual queue of the point in the work process when they should be gathering information from the potential customer.

The info bar on this page presents key information to the user about the prospect.

Fig 3

  1. Non-Value Offering P&L

This page is the input for the Profit and Loss calculations. The information is grouped into logical sections such as Customer type, Product and Delivery. The ‘I’ icon gives the user context sensitive help/information pertaining to the given group of data. Other more specific help is shown on the right side of the page near the data element and gives more specific help about a given field such as ‘What is official?’ or ‘Maintenance miles’.

If the Profit & Loss statement is for a contract renewal, the user has two choices, they can choose to populate most of the information on this page from the historical (or actual) data or can create the P&L from scratch. About 75% of the field values in a P&L that is started from scratch are defaulted to the option choices desired by the business area.

As a data selection is made, if there is additional information required, those fields will be immediately displayed.

Once the P&L has been calculated, the info bar will contain more information that is specific to the P&L they are working on. Having this P&L information in the info bar along with the Calculate button, allows the users to make data changes on the various pages and immediately calculate and see the affect of the change on the NPV and OROI without going to view the details of the deal.

Another menu bar is present on the P&L pages which allows the users to navigate to all the P&L related pages with ease, create new P&L’s, look at other WIP P&L’s for this prospect as well as previous year’s P&L’s.

Fig 4

  1. Initiate

This page continues the theme of grouping information. The action of ‘Initiating’ sends the information to companion systems which create the account, start the process of equipment installation and finally delivery of product to the new customer. When the user clicks on the ‘Initiate’ icon from the Navigator page, validation is done to ensure that all the required information is present. Each missing item is noted and the user can use the button adjacent to the info box to take them to the page where the missing information is located.

The check boxes at the top of the page show where the information is complete. The ones not checked indicate missing information required to get to the next step.

Fig 5

Prior State

Prior to the development of InterLink, the organizations used:

  • Stand alone tools (Excel spreadsheets)
  • Word templates
  • Phone/Faxed messages
  • Copies of letters to customers

Different functions within the organization manually gathered the same data, used different methods of data gathering, and used "their" data for decision making.

Often the data gathered was not consistent throughout the functions and "bad" data lead to:

  • Poor service
  • Administrative errors
  • Inconsistent data
  • Higher production and delivery cost
  • Loss of productivity due to data correction efforts

User Profile

  • Fluent in English
  • Moderate computer literacy
  • Familiar with Windows ’95
  • Varying levels of familiarity with the Web & browsers
  • Greater comfort with traditional instructor led classroom training
  • Mix of new and long-term employees
  • Varying education levels (HS to MBA)
  • A mixture of dial-up and LAN users
  • Skeptical of the importance and value of the web to their job today and in the future

The approximately 400 users of this tool comprise of:

  • Field and home office Sales Representatives
  • Field Project Engineers
  • Central Logistics schedulers
  • Marketing staff personnel
  • Commercial Technology Engineers
  • Customer Service Representatives

Results

Users abandoned the old tool and started using new Interlink EPSS tool before being required to!

InterLink has enabled the organization to reduce costs, provide better service, and deliver improved value to our customers through cycle time reduction. InterLink provides shared data throughout the Customer Engagement Process and with Performance Centered Design it has increased the accuracy of the data by providing guidance to the data collection process.

InterLink is a web-based Performance Centered Design tool which:

  • Enables users to quickly use in the context and performance of their daily work
  • Reinforces the use of Best Practices
  • Reinforces and promotes independent learning
  • Requires No classroom training

Deployment of the tool has met very favorable acceptance. It has enabled the users to:

  • Easily and accurately generate, access, and share all data including customer information and P&L statements
  • Interpret P&L data into meaningful business information that is applied to work tasks
  • Enter and share accurate data
  • Navigate through the system and understand the overall data interfaces and processes

Expected tangible benefits of the application included:

  • Reduction of one hour per week of sales administrative time
  • Reduction of 40 hours/week in Marketing
  • Reduction of 40 hours/week in Contract Administration
  • Reduction of 20 hours/week of duplicate data input by Customer Service Center
  • Reduction of inventory by utilizing current data to make decisions. Results include a $33,000 in time value of assets
  • Elimination of necessary trips by delivery and service personnel resulting in $50,000 per year savings
  • Reduction of errors and resulting accounts receivable resulting in $25,000 per year savings
  • Reduction of manual work in asset and property management resulting in a reduction of 60 hours per week of work
  • Eliminated costs associated with classroom training ($225,000 initial and on going $18,000/yr)

Expected intangible benefits included:

  • Data accuracy is sustained and shared in a timely fashion
  • Measurements are enabled and inconsistencies have been eliminated
  • Total cost of ownership reduced through lowered support requirements

Contact

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
7201 Hamilton Boulevard
Allentown, PA 18195-1501
Sally Giamalis (giamalsa@apci.com)
Pam Wagner (wagnerpa@apci.com
August 24, 1999