"Our field engineers can see the immediate benefits PartsArena brings to our implementation of SAP ® solutions for mobile business. We will now have technical information in the field where our engineers need it, running on PDAs. It's incredible how much information can be accessed so quickly and easily."

Keith Hay, Barloworld's Managing Director

Company Overview

With over 50 years of experience in the materials handling industry, Barloworld sets the standards for others to follow in providing value-added solutions and guaranteed service support. Through its exclusive partnerships with world leading industrial brand partners such as Hyster, Tennant, Baumann and Continental, Barloworld can match every possible need with a fit-for-purpose solution.

Barloworld’s dedication to customer service means customers can trust it to provide the highest levels of support at all times. To achieve this level of service support, Barloworld employs over 600 mobile engineers in the UK alone.

Business Challenge

Because Barloworld sells and services such a wide range of equipment, the amount of technical data it holds is vast. With over 12,000 pages of parts information alone in the form of paper manuals, Barloworld engineers often struggled to have the right information to hand. Furthermore, because of the sheer volume of paper required, printing and distribution costs were high.

Barloworld wanted to find a way of equipping all of its mobile engineers with the information that they needed to do their jobs as efficiently as possible.

Why Barloworld Chose PartsArena

PartsArena is able to compact over 100,000 pages of information for use on a Pocket PC. Consequently, all of Barloworld's parts information could be carried around by the very people who need it on a daily basis. This information can then be updated as required so that the entire workforce has access to a consistent and complete parts library – something that was impossible before.

Naturally, usability was a key requirement for Barloworld. Whatever system they had, it needed to be fast and easy to use. PartsArena's intuitive graphical interface is simple to use and enables engineers to quickly navigate through entire libraries of exploded parts diagrams and then select the required part. This part, once selected, can then be ordered via any recognised Service Management application.

The Natural Progression

Barloworld had already equipped its service engineers with SAP's Mobile Asset Management System on their PDAs. Because PartsArena links seamlessly to SAP's system, Barloworld effectively ended up with a complete, simple to use solution for their engineers.

In a way, PartsArena was the logical next step for Barloworld. It empowered its workforce with the ability to identify parts immediately then order them at the tap of a screen.

End User Benefits

Barloworld has been immediately able to see the benefits of implementing PartsArena. Most significant among the many benefits brought have been:

Parts diagrams and lists are available for the wide range of equipment sold, which has saved the engineers from having to hunt down the relevant paper manual.

• Reduced printing and distribution costs.

• The entire service team has access to the latest information.

• A reduction in wrongly-ordered parts as the human element of transcribing long parts numbers is removed.

For a service team with such a wide range to look after, PartsArena has proven to be the ideal tool.