Winn Solutions
Winn Solutions Increases Customer Satisfaction and Boosts Business Growth by 20% with Panasonic Handhelds
Creating a Chain of Custody
As the leader in cloud-based barcode tracking technology software, it is important for Winn Solutions to have a dependable hardware solution that can stand up to the rigorous demands of the fast-paced supply chain market.
The software, Winn Item Tracking System (WITS), tracks any accountable item's movement within an organization throughout its lifecycle, using barcodes and handheld devices featuring scanners. It is designed to simplify the often overwhelming process of organizing, delivering and tracking of mail, packages, supplies, records, inter-departmental transfers, and all manner of high-value assets.
Winn Solutions serve a diverse logistics customer base in the enterprise, government, healthcare, education, retail and entertainment industries. These companies use Winn Solutions' WITS to create and monitor the chain of custody of packages by scanning barcodes with handheld devices that track the workflow through various departments and recipients.
For example, the retail industry uses WITS to track the receipt, repair and return of damaged items, for visibility internally, as well as to display the status to customers online. In the financial services industry, WITS is used in tandem with a rugged device to assist couriers, for example with the delivery of checks or other certified mail. Once the items are delivered to a central mail location, they will be scanned and then tracked as they move to different bank branches or locations. When mail is delivered across 5, 10 or 15 hands, this tracking information is vital given the sensitivity of the items being tracked in financial services.
Challenges
Winn Solutions was spending too much time servicing their Windows mobile devices in use by their logistics and supply chain customers. Devices were not living up to their "rugged" label and were failing in the field.
Solutions
Winn Solutions deployed fully-rugged Panasonic TOUGHPAD® FZ-X1 and Panasonic TOUGHBOOK® N1 handhelds to customers, helping to enhance worker productivity and minimize downtime.
Results
Since switching over to the Panasonic Android handhelds, Winn Solutions has experienced zero device failures, reporting a significant decrease in customer support time and freed up IT budget to invest in other parts, growing their business by 20%.
Tracking Software Matched with Rugged Handhelds
Given the various applications of WITS, Winn Solutions needed a mobile device that could perform these wide range of tasks, while diminishing downtime spent troubleshooting hardware issues. The company's previous Windows mobile device solution was not intuitive for customers, and proved too fragile for the rugged environment of the shipping/receiving market. Winn Solutions was dedicating too much time and resources to handling customer service issues related to device failure.
"We needed a handheld tablet that would be durable and easy to use, as our customers are not IT pros," said Jason Elder, vice president at Winn Solutions. "The mobile solution had to truly live up to its 'rugged' label since the nature of our customers' business is rough. For example, it's not uncommon for workers to drop these devices on concrete at the receiving dock, day in and day out."
Winn Solutions serves a variety of business sectors that depend on reliability. Each market relies on the accurate delivery of packages and detailed reporting of the movement of deliveries once on-site. For a basic mail center receiving 50-100 items a day, when a device goes down, so does productivity.
"Conservatively speaking, this type of customer would lose 2-4 hours of productivity if a device in this workflow malfunctioned," said Elder.
According to Elder, Winn Solutions hoped that the lifecycle of the devices would be at 3-5 years and keep pace with their software. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
Adding flexibility and durability
"Our customer base was moving away from Windows mobile solutions towards other platforms, and we needed to find a competitive advantage in the market," said Elder. "We were looking to expand our business and broaden our product portfolio, but many of our resources were tied up dealing with damaged products and customer responses."
Winn Solutions began testing the Android-powered Panasonic TOUGHPAD FZ-X1 fully rugged handheld tablet, and found they not only offered a great solution for customers migrating from Windows to an Android platform, but also met and exceeded the durability requirements. To date, Winn Solutions has deployed more than 300 TOUGHBOOK N1 and TOUGHPAD FZ-X1 handhelds to customers loaded with WITS. Slim, lightweight and powerful, the fully-rugged handhelds are an all-in-one tool. Customers were able to leverage military-grade toughness and enterprise-class mobile computing power, with Android-powered 4G data and voice services. With the industry’s lowest failure rates, the TOUGHBOOK handhelds enabled Winn Solutions to deliver more uptime and enhanced productivity to its customers.
From putting out fires to building a business
Since switching over to TOUGHBOOK, Winn Solutions’ customer reports of device failures have stopped. Their customers have enjoyed improved product reliability leading to improved business for Winn Solutions. Additionally, the company reduced the amount of time spent servicing older Windows devices so that they could reallocate those resources to grow other parts of the business.
"By reducing our customer downtime due to product failure, and along with it, decreasing service hours, we were able to expand our business by nearly 20 percent. We've been able to add more employees and focus on growing our product portfolio," said Elder. "Panasonic TOUGHBOOK handhelds have contributed directly to our bottom line by helping us to be more productive and grow our business."
