Success Story
Picturing a Bright Future
Many people associate the Eastman Kodak Company with two of the company’s ubiquitous products: cameras and film. But the full picture of Kodak today shows a company at the forefront of “infoimaging,” or the combination of imaging and information technology. Research and Development (R&D), product support and sales take place in more than 28 countries around the globe.
Ronald E. Auble, Technology Manager for Kodak, notes that WebEx Support Center and WebEx Meeting Center have been in place at Eastman Kodak for three years. In response to an economic slowdown, Kodak management had placed greater restrictions on employee travel. Additionally, the ongoing costs of doing business in a global environment made WebEx services crucial. WebEx Support Center benefits the customer service division, while WebEx Meeting Center is relied upon for sales force communications and supply chain management. “Travel reduction alone made WebEx services necessary,” says Auble. “Side benefits including re-use of information and improved cycle times are gravy.”
Enabling faster, targeted customer support
How does WebEx Support Center help Kodak remedy a business customer’s dilemma? Auble offers one scenario: Kodak provides a variety of software for its film processing customer base, including software for controlling Kodak equipment and performing image enhancement “If a problem occurs,” explains Auble, “the root cause analysis may entail changing local software settings; this change can now be handled remotely. In the past, a representative had to be sent to the customer’s site to debug the program. Now, the customer contacts an Eastman Kodak service representative by phone, uses the URL given by the representative to join in a real-time WebEx Support Center support session, and grants permission for the service person to take control of the application remotely.”
“Customers are delighted,” he says. “When they call, they get an answer instead of an appointment time. Customer service people are more productive. If the technician originally contacted isn’t the best person to solve the problem, the right person can be located quickly and can join the online session. The technician can determine whether or not a physical visit to the site is necessary. The key is to control the customer’s desktop to first evaluate and then resolve the problem. WebEx Support Center makes that control possible.”
Road warriors and innovation
WebEx Meeting Center has offered a new way for the sales force to operate. Some of Kodak’s sales representatives are real road warriors and never know where they might be from day to day. WebEx Meeting Center makes it easy for the sales teams in disparate locations to stay in touch via WebEx meetings. Sales representatives also use WebEx Meeting Center to communicate more effectively with service technicians and product developers to gain a better understanding of various products. WebEx Meeting Center has also been put to work in design reviews between Eastman Kodak employees and suppliers-and, on occasion, customers as well-where product specifications and engineering information are discussed. For example, using the application sharing feature of WebEx Meeting Center, the host can share a complex geometrical modeling application running on his machine and enable all participants to observe the results.
Future developments
In part due to its acceptance by the user community, Kodak is deploying the WebEx Enterprise Edition model to take advantage of the capabilities offered by Event Center and Training Center. Demand for just-in-time training and large scale events is increasing, and having a consistent interface that everyone is comfortable with is one less obstacle people have to deal with as they change how they interact.
“WebEx Meeting Center will continue to allow us to work more with technology providers, universities, and partners,” Auble says. “We’ll save a tremendous amount on travel time right there.”
What additional long-term benefits can WebEx services provide? Holding communications events via WebEx “Web seminars” will increase the efficiency and reduce the costs of new product launches and media briefings. We are also expanding its use in our communications with suppliers. “Currently, these communications are accomplished by bringing people together,” Auble notes. Executives bounce around to different conference centers and give the same spiel. Communicating via WebEx Web seminars would help considerably. With 57,000 workstations for an employee base of 30,000 most people have what they need to participate in a Web seminar.”
Auble explains the company’s future plans for WebEx offerings: “As project teams become more distributed and multi-functional, it is becoming more important to integrate our synchronous communications with our a-synchronous capabilities. Being aware that others are present in our ‘virtual space’, being able to contact them and engage them in a meaningful real time discussion is the challenge we are currently addressing. WebEx is helping us meet this challenge.”
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