Kubota Corporation, based in Grapevine, Texas, has signed with Tavant Technologies, a cloud-based warranty platform, to handle warranty issues.
According to Cristop Nathan, who handles warranty claims from dealers and warranty recovery from suppliers as well as assurance and technical support, Kubota has relied on 4C Solutions for warranty claims processing, but has now turned to Tavant because the company has outgrown the old system.
Nathan explained that the company’s warranty volume has rose about 150 percent and that warranty issues have become more complex. For example, diesel engine emission standards and electronic controls have changed.
He noted that Kubota considered a number of vendors to handle warranties and used a grading process to select Tavant. The process looked at 350 different metrics and features including grading systems on how easy it was to perform flat-rate lookups on items such as part numbers.
The process reduced the competing vendors down to four companies –- SAP, Oracle, Tavant and Mize. Mize had been maintaining the 4CS system for Kubota for five years after PTC stopped. Tavant Warranty on Demand ultimately won.
Nathan explained that Tavant was chosen for three reasons:
- It involved Cloud computing.
- It could connect to dealer business systems.
- It could connect to Kubota’s Internal business systems.
He added that Tavant’s system includes Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that Tavant was familiar with the industry Kubota serves.
Improvements that will occur due to the Tavant system will be in workflow management for Kubota’s dealers. For example, dealers will be able to start a work order and then change it later into a warranty claim without having to re-enter data.
The system will allow dealers to have access to a dashboard view of their own metrics. This should help Kubota understand better of what’s occurring in the field due to better connectivity and more accurate data. The new system will also generate improved reports.
In the future, improvements in connectivity to telematics systems on the equipment itself will bring more data to the company and help generate better reports and provide better analysis.
Kubota has been performing user testing in December. If all goes well, the company will launch its new warranty system with U.S.-based dealers in March.
Nathan concluded that winter is a good time for Kubota to upgrade; because construction and lawn care activities are at their minimum and claim volume is low, too. It is expected that by the summer 2019 dealers will be capable in the Tavant Warranty On Demand system.
(Source: Farm-Equipment.com)
