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Case Study: Panasonic Picks Intranet DASHBOARD
Intranet Journal - 13 October 2009
As the world's largest consumer electronics manufacturer, Panasonic has built its reputation on reliable products and service. To maintain this standing, Panasonic needed to ensure its staff and partners had quick and easy access to technical documentation relating to the thousands of products it brings to market.
Panasonic was being hindered in supplying technical information to its authorized service centre (ASC) partners because it had thousands of documents spread across the business which it needed to draw on at different times.
The company selected a cost effective solution from Intranet DASHBOARD (iD), to manage and publish documents for its network of 600 ASC partners using one central extranet platform. The iD platform launched in late 2008, giving Panasonic's partners instant access to the technical documents they needed in one easy to use location. Partner feedback has been positive, with traffic more than doubling since the iD platform launched in late 2008.
The reliability and reputation of Panasonic products has made them part of our everyday lives, with consumer products ranging from VIERA TVs and LUMIX digital cameras to business solutions such as notebooks and Plasma panels. Panasonic manufactures more than 10,000 products for the worldwide market, 2,000 of which are available in Australia, with a nation-wide network of 600 authorised repair centres.
Communication challenge
Panasonic launches hundreds of new products each year, so has a continuous need to provide technical information and updates to its network of authorised service centre (ASC) partners.
Panasonic identified that it had 10,000 internal documents which needed to be captured in one centralised, searchable location in order to ensure timely access to the most up to date information for the staff and business partners.
"We knew we needed to centralise because the information was spread all over the company - on different computers, different drives and sometimes just in people's heads. Basically, you needed to know where to look to find technical information, and that wasn't good enough," said Jeremy Grofski, Panasonic Technical Services Manager.
Panasonic had a pre-existing website for service centres and retailers, built on an old system which was inflexible and difficult to update. As a result, the company struggled to keep it refreshed with the latest product information.
"Feedback from our partners was that the old website was cumbersome and often out of date," said Grofski. Panasonic also needed to reduce the number of calls coming into its technical help desk. "A skilled air conditioning tradesman who makes money with his tools doesn't care about searching for information online. If it's not right there, he just picks up the phone," said Grofski.
The new dealer extranet needed to be very easy to use to convince partners not to pick up the phone. Data security was another important consideration. Panasonic required a site with permissions-based access which would ensure protection of its IP while helping partners by customizing the information they received to their individual needs.
The business case
Panasonic identified the need for a new communications platform in late 2007, and began the process of defining the scope of the project and the information it would need to supply to its various stakeholders. The extranet was to encompass technical data, communications, customer service and technical news bulletins, on one centralised content management system.
The goals of the project were:
- To achieve a flexible, scalable extranet to centralise its communications to partners
- To support the delivery of specialised information to different stakeholders by controlling information based on profile and security settings
- To ensure that information shared with partners complied with Panasonic's security policies.
Solution design and deployment
After scoping the project over several months, Panasonic decided they'd need to bring a technology partner on board.
"We had an incredible 10,000 technical files to migrate for outward publication to our service centres," said Grofski. "It turned out we couldn't do it internally." Panasonic decided to implement an extranet using Intranet DASHBOARD.
In late 2008, Panasonic began the process of centralising its product information and rolled out its flagship partner extranet which was branded TPAN (technical Panasonic). Built for its ASC partner network, TPAN features nearly 60 discreet areas to cater to the different product families they service.
One of the major benefits of buying the iD solution was that once that platform was in place, it was possible to build additional sites for other stakeholders. Panasonic rolled out the TPAN extranet and its staff intranet, then decided to further extend its iD platform by creating two more extranets to cater to its dealer network and its internal Customer Service Group.
"It's great from an IT point of view, you've bought one system and can configure a number of specialised systems on top of it," said Grofski. "Having the one central data store has also helped us reduce costs."
Results to date
Panasonic's dealers have responded well to the new ASC extranet, with traffic more than doubling since it launched in late 2008. At launch, the site was receiving 6,000 page views a month, and that has grown to 14,000 views a month.
"We've been really pleased with the response from dealers," said Grofski. "One of our national partners recently told us Panasonic is the best at providing technical information. We want our partners to be able to access exactly what they need, when they need it, so this feedback is just what we'd hoped for.
"We also monitor the traffic and the stats tell us that people are finding the data they need and getting out more quickly, which is exactly what we wanted to provide them."
iD lets Panasonic ensure its dealers receive timely updates and can provide feedback to the company. "Tools like Quick Poll and Feedback Director are great because they let our partners share feedback and ideas with us," said Grofski. "Panasonic is a big manufacturer and most of our ASCs are small businesses -- it's important for us to show them that we're listening.
"Ultimately, it's about taking care of our customers and partners. The ASC extranet allows our service centers to fix things fast -- and in doing so, protects the Panasonic brand.
"From a company perspective, our information is secure but available to the people who need it. On a personal note, I have the peace of mind that we have structure to our content management and publication," said Grofski.
Future plans
While Panasonic is already receiving positive feedback from its partners, the company is keen to continue to improve its partner communications and increase productivity by smart use of its iD platform. Grofski indicated Panasonic's extranet would eventually be the platform for launching all support to its ASC network. "Because of the secure setup of iD, we can offer a single access point for our partners to request support on a wide range of subjects -- from technical or spare parts to account management."
"We're also exploring the possibility of providing e-Learning through iD to reach our network of ASC partners who are located across Australia."
 View the article on Intranet Journal
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