OTISLINE CASE ANALYSIS 1. Why did Otis launch this project?

OTIS currently a market leader in both elevator sales and service industry is a highly decentralized company, serving a highly versatile customer base, i.e. buildings from 2 stories to 110 stories. Services, unlike sales, form a very stable and high margin source of revenue in elevator market. Smaller players are coming up with attractive price propositions to win service contracts and affecting the share of OTIS. As a market leader OTIS has the following reason to launch OTISLINE: Remain the Market Leader: In order to remain at the market leader position, OTIS had to ensure a better product quality & faster service than its competitors. This required an efficient Service Management system especially to handle previous fault related data. Better Customer Service: To be in a better position to meet the existing basis of selection of Service Company was - responsiveness, quality & price. Along with quality, OTISLINE would also provide a considerably lower response time. Centralized System: High variance in quality of answering services deployed by OTIS was a big motivator to come up with a centralized system like OTISLINE, which actually has the sole interest of reducing the customer response time. Available Budget: As the cost reduction program completed in 1982, OTIS Management had a budget to assess the contribution of IT systems in quality improvement of maintenance service. Cost reduction: Otisline would reduce the cost for each elevator by reducing number of callbacks per year by providing preventive maintenance.

2. How was value created in this model? OTISLINE launch , not only improved the quality of service , but added value to many functional divisions of OTIS , following are the noteworthy value addition: Situation specific escalations: Information on callback reports would be readily available to management which can be used to escalate to proper hierarchy levels. Increased customer Visibility: Service business of OTIS was more clearly communicated and delivered to customers Synergy: Infrastructure was used to increase productivity of sales and services personnel. Sub second response: This reduced the time taken to handle customer service requests. SMS: The service management system included all maintenance activity and this data improved certain other applications like service price estimations etc.

Priority handling: This gave a strategic advantage to OTIS as it can now guarantee, the service time involved, to customers which requires immediate attention like hospitals etc. by providing a designated line which will be handled by the dispatcher immediately. Quick Recognition of Affected building: Dispatcher fills in the detail of building which would be useful in recognizing the building, in subsequent calls for maintenance. Performance measurement improved: As the numbers of callback reports were filed consistently by service mechanics, this criterion became unbiased across field offices. Promote Dispatcher efficiency: Dedicated dispatcher for each role. OTISLINE NES : Used by New Equipment Sales representatives for negotiation, estimation and disposition Increased Reliability for current and future elevators: Data used to find trend in recurring problems for resource allocation and identify trends. Improved communication: It contributed towards improved communication between customer and manufacturer. Also the sales and services could submit the report to management more effectively.

3. What adjustments in the organization were needed to accommodate Otisline? OTISLINE implementation necessitated a big change-management in the company, on both technical as well as cultural fronts. a. Technical changes: 4-6 weeks of training given to the new employees change in functionality of jobs migration of computer platforms redundancy of certain service personnel centralization of information b. Cultural changes: Tracking callback included in OTISLINE for Field office managers. Teamwork: Dispatcher was an important part of team and its success. Dispatchers given training to be courteous, sensitive, efficient and speak clearly as they were the customer facing division of OTIS. The innovation established the competitive advantage of OTIS in the elevator service industry.