The year 2005 marks the start of cooperation between AIDE and Marubeni, a Japanese trading house responsible for promoting Fujifilm on the Russian market. Since the signing of a corresponding contract, AIDE ensures information exchange between all its structure's members and organizes a supply scheme for spare parts to the regions. At the moment, our collaboration is being continued through a direct agreement with Fujifilm. AIDE team coordinates the work of courier hot lines and service centers, supporting the company's image and sales.

Target

Organizing integrated service maintenance of Fujifilm products in Russia, developing reporting mechanisms and ensuring the availability of spare parts for repair works.

Tasks in the first stage

  • Launch a regional service network in a relatively short period of time in order to provide the coverage and accessibility of service maintenance throughout the territory of Russia and the CIS
  • Support the required level of quality when the amount of repair work is increasing
  • Implement a real-time system of repair monitoring
  • Organize the import of spare parts and a local warehouse on the territory of the Russian Federation

Aspects of the work

For the first few years, our collaboration was with Marubeni, Fujifilm's representative in Russia. By the year (200?), a direct contract was concluded which terms and conditions stipulated that AIDE would become the exclusive service provider and control the whole gamut of service operations supporting cameras. As the service provider by the time could not support the active sales increase in the regions, it was essential to launch the service as soon as practically possible. By the start of its collaboration with Fujifilm, AIDE was only setting out on its path as the management company: new departments were formed in the course of its work, monitoring algorithms were optimized, and the company's processes were brought into line with the needs of the client. These large volumes of work actually changed the company for the better, enabling working schemes to be streamlined.

At the present time our priorities have changed: from repairs on a mass scale we have moved over to servicing professional photographic equipment. We pay a lot of attention to support for equipment being moved for repair from any region to authorized service centers. We control and coordinate the work of a hot line, courier services and service centers, providing continuous support for Fujifilm users.

Why does Fujifilm need this?

AIDE became the second (and final) choice of Fujifilm in the sphere of post-sales goods servicing. The previous provider company could not cope with the volume of work, and market competitors set up service schemes that the client found unfavorable, such as service platforms in Moscow which concluded subcontractor contracts with regional service centers, ensuring the necessary coverage. AIDE's crucial advantage is that it is a management company whose tasks include monitoring of service operations and ensuring transparency for the client. In contrast to traditional service providers, AIDE's activity is focused on the quality of its processes and their services as a whole, and not on increasing the volume of repair works, which has a direct proportional impact on the client's increased outgoings. The choice in favor of AIDE was dictated by the team's dedication to the project, the fact that there were no additional costs and that services were transparent, and also by the provision of a sensible work scheme for service centers from a single control point.

Results

  • A scheme for servicing Fujifilm's products was designed and implemented.
  • Regional coverage was provided, and authorized service centers were opened.
  • A real-time system of repair monitoring was developed and launched.
  • A consistently high standard of specific equipment repair requiring particular competences of engineers was provided.
  • In the first years of collaboration, Fujifilm's general budget for service support was reduced while the sales increased more than twofold.
  • We organized an uninterrupted distribution of spare parts and their strategic storage on the territory of the Russian Federation, as well as local warehouses for service partners intended to provide the possibility of rapid repairs.

Setting up a service network for Lenovo

In 2017 AIDE won the tender and began working with Lenovo, one of the world's leading manufacturers of personal computers with head-quarters in Beijing. In a mere two months of working together, we managed to conduct an audit of existing partners and form a new service network with a sensible distribution of workloads.

Read the case Setting up a service network for Lenovo