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Pitney Bowes Employs Antenna Software's Mobile Field Service Solution as Integral Part of Global Customer Service Strategy
[April 08, 2008]

Pitney Bowes Employs Antenna Software's Mobile Field Service Solution as Integral Part of Global Customer Service Strategy


JERSEY CITY, N.J. --(Business Wire)-- Antenna Software, delivering real business mobility to the world's most demanding enterprises, today announced the availability of a case study detailing Pitney Bowes' successful deployment of Antenna's AMPower SERVICE(TM) solution to mobilize its field service operations. A forward-thinking, early adopter of mobile and wireless technologies, Pitney Bowes recognized early on the importance of mobility in its overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy. After starting with a practical mobile application for its U.S. field service organization in 2003, the company has since expanded its mobile capabilities by deploying Antenna's solution to many more field service teams across the U.S., Europe and Canada. Today, thousands of service technicians depend on AMPower SERVICE to gain real-time access to critical customer and product information from back-end systems, including Siebel Field Service and SAP. The result is an enterprise-wide, customer-focused mobility solution that helps to drive significant improvements to inventory management, engineer productivity and customer satisfaction.



As a leader in the fast-growing mailstream industry, Pitney Bowes helps its customers create, produce, distribute and manage their mail, documents and packages. The company's U.S.-based field service technicians are charged with keeping mailing systems running around the clock against tight Service Level Agreements (SLAs). By mobilizing field service operations with the AMPower SERVICE solution, powered by the Antenna Mobility Platform(TM) (AMP), Pitney Bowes was able to simplify and automate oft-used transactions such as ordering parts, closing out calls and logging time and expenses. This newfound efficiency helped to increase technician autonomy, improve customer care and accelerate response times.

"Antenna and Pitney Bowes are working together as true collaborators," said Andreas Wetterwald, director field service and ECM applications, Pitney Bowes. "Using AMP, we have built a very good foundation and will continue to develop strategies and tactics to enhance, optimize and develop customer service processes and capabilities."


Pitney Bowes chose Antenna's hosted deployment option to offload the complexities of implementing and managing its wireless deployment via Antenna's AMP Gateway(TM), the heart of AMP. AMP Gateway enables connectivity to U.S. and international wireless carriers and ensures the delivery of transactions between field personnel and the host applications. In the U.S. alone, Pitney Bowes field service technicians process 150,000 messages per day through AMP Gateway. Pitney Bowes developers also use Antenna's AMP Studio(TM), Antenna's model-driven mobile application development environment, to develop, maintain and enhance its AMPower SERVICE application.

Each field service organization has different wireless device requirements, but because AMP is open and flexible, Pitney Bowes is able to support multiple devices, wireless network and back-end systems, using a single mobile architecture. Today, it uses a broad mix of BlackBerry smartphones and Windows Mobile devices, and has the freedom and flexibility to change at any time to meet business needs.

"Pitney Bowes is a terrific example of a company that really 'gets' mobility and understands its importance as part of a CRM strategy and the enterprise as a whole," said Jim Somers, vice president of marketing, Antenna Software. "We are proud of its achievements using Antenna's platform and mobile solutions for field service and the vision and leadership it is demonstrating in a very demanding industry."

Mobilizing Pitney Bowes' back-end systems to its mobile field force in the U.S. organization took approximately six months to complete. Spurred on by the success of the U.S. deployment, Pitney Bowes also implemented the Antenna solution throughout Europe and Canada with similar positive effects on the business. In addition to reducing excess parts inventory by 22 percent, Pitney Bowes has achieved other substantial business benefits, including improved SLAs, call center efficiencies and cost reductions.

To read the entire case study with a detailed description of the challenges, solutions and results, visit: http://www.antennasoftware.com/media/pdfs/ss_cs_pb.pdf

About Antenna Software

Antenna Software (http://www.antennasoftware.com) delivers real business mobility, providing enterprises with a unified platform that extends critical software applications to wireless devices, helping mobile employees to amplify their effectiveness. Built on open standards, the Antenna Mobility Platform(TM) (AMP) is flexible, scalable and enables IT departments to mobilize one or many applications across a full spectrum of mobile and wireless device platforms. Powered by AMP, Antenna's AMPower(TM) mobile business solutions suite provides field sales, service and IT support organizations with specialized, configurable mobile applications that help improve business agility, customer care and profitability. Having a decade of success with Global 1000 customers like AT&T, Pitney Bowes Inc., DIRECTV, Heineken Ireland and EMC, Antenna is recognized by industry experts and leaders for its outstanding commitment to quality and service.

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