Nintex > Case Studies > Global Manufacturer Quaker Houghton Enhances Customer Experience with Automated Workflow

Global Manufacturer Quaker Houghton Enhances Customer Experience with Automated Workflow

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Technology Category
  • Functional Applications - Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
Applicable Industries
  • Equipment & Machinery
  • Metals
Applicable Functions
  • Human Resources
  • Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
  • Additive Manufacturing
  • Personnel Tracking & Monitoring
Services
  • Testing & Certification
About The Customer
Quaker Houghton is a global leader in industrial process fluids. Their business is to make other businesses run better by optimizing their processes, reducing their costs, and advancing their safety and sustainability around the fluids they use to make, roll, cut, or cast metals. The manufacturing processes for which its customers use Quaker Houghton’s fluids are precise and sophisticated. If anything’s just a bit off, it can show up on the customer’s shop floor in the form of chemical deposits on a machine, foam in a central system, or defects on steel or aluminum sheets. Quaker Houghton has nearly 20 labs around the world to conduct experiments and analyses to resolve these issues.
The Challenge
Quaker Houghton, a global leader in industrial process fluids, faced a challenge in their customer service process. Their sales and service personnel would send customer samples to their labs for analysis to resolve customer problems. However, they lacked an efficient method to determine which of their nearly 20 labs worldwide should receive the samples. The process was further complicated by the need for tracking, approving, and reporting on the work activities. The existing process was driven by email, which was notoriously uneven in efficiency. It also required additional time from lab managers to locate and organize data to fully understand the overall demand. Quaker Houghton needed a better, faster way to streamline this process to enhance the customer experience.
The Solution
Quaker Houghton adopted a solution using Nintex Forms and Nintex Workflow to automate the process of initiating lab requests. The solution, known as the 'online tool for non-routine service requests', allowed customer-facing sales and service personnel to access the lab request form from an online portal. They could then complete fields and drop-downs with details on the fluid type, how the customer uses it, and the resulting defect. Calculations behind the Nintex Form would then identify the most appropriate lab for the service request and send samples for analysis. Nintex Workflow would route the request to appropriate reviewers and approvers, keeping them in the loop. Once the lab completed its analysis, the resulting report would be sent to all relevant parties and archived in SharePoint for easy access. The solution also included a dashboard that provided a clear overview of all requests at all the labs for all the product lines.
Operational Impact
  • The implementation of the Nintex-based automated workflow solution has significantly improved Quaker Houghton's operational efficiency. The solution has completely resolved the old problem of a service rep not knowing which lab to send the request to. It has also eliminated the need to make time-consuming requests for additional copies of the analysis report. The dashboard provides managers with real-time insight into lab requests, enabling them to manage and optimize workloads for greater efficiency. They can see which labs are running at capacity or well below capacity, which product lines are generating the most requests, which technical issues are most prominent across customers and product lines, and which regions are experiencing the most issues. This new, real-time insight has boosted Quaker Houghton's responsiveness to customers.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Produces a better, faster customer experience
  • Saves 200 hours in administrative time
  • Works with a real-time analytics solution to deliver actionable insights

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