CRM Case Study: Pharmapac - Planned Maintenance

Pharmapac develops WinShark crm into a cost effective planned maintenance system Software solution selected as a tactical tool for delivering time and cost savings to the task of equipment maintenance for SME’s. Winshark Limited (www.winshark.com), a leading Customer Relationship Management software developer for small to medium enterprises (SME’s), today announces a partnership with Pharmapac UK Ltd, a leader in contract manufacturing and packaging for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Under the terms of this agreement Pharmapac has tailored WinShark crm to meet demand from its SME customers for a cost effective way of planning and recording the maintenance of their business critical equipment. For the majority of SME’s the maintenance of equipment is only undertaken when the equipment breaks down or is required as part of a manufacturer’s warranty. Planned maintenance is a function that is often considered to be an expensive luxury. However, regardless of the size of a company, if it owns equipment, then this equipment should be maintained in some form or other, as inadequate maintenance can lead to frequent outages, longer downtimes, and can also result in a corresponding negative effect on customer relations and company profitability. Whilst a large company may use a fully integrated computerised maintenance system, costing tens of thousands of pounds to purchase and install, and requiring a large number of engineers and technicians to run it, this may not be a financially viable solution for smaller businesses. Therefore, Pharmapac was looking for a cost effective solution to the particular maintenance problems experienced by its customers.

	“Lost production, caused by unscheduled stoppages and breakdowns, can have an even more devastating effect on the finances of an SME than on a large multinational company,” comments Joe Tose, managing director, Pharmapac (Barnard Castle) Ltd. “We started searching the market for a low cost software solution that could be easily developed to be used by Pharmapac’s customer base to carry out planned maintenance. As our customers are predominantly SME’s price and ease of use are very important to them. WinShark crm has proved to be both cost effective and easily adaptable to the individual needs of the SME sector.”

The planned maintenance system that Pharmapac has developed from the WinShark crm solution, can be used to generate the necessary maintenance schedules required by the SME, as well as providing a full maintenance history and record of equipment breakdowns of individual items of equipment. It can also link-up the necessary safety documentation such as, Permits to Work (PTW), Limitation of Access (LOA), and Sanctions to Test (STT), at the proscribed times to ensure that any maintenance is carried out safely. Furthermore, the breakdown information can also incorporate coded breakdown types, which can in turn provide sufficient statistical information with regards to fault types, man-hours utilised and equipment types, to quickly identify breakdown trends, resulting costs and even possible future equipment failures. This ability to anticipate equipment failures and act proactively is a major asset to the SME in their control of costs. Further development of the software now allows each machines stock usage to be linked to a master stock card, so that store records are automatically adjusted as spares are used. All these documents are produced using standard Microsoft ‘Word’ and ‘Excel’ formats.

	“With WinShark crm we are able to offer and market a cost effective, tailored solution to meet specific SME maintenance demands. We have also been impressed by Winsharks positive approach to our customers problems, and would have no hesitation in recommending both the product and the company.”

WinShark crm has been developed to answer the demand for a bespoke CRM application for the SME market and has been written to enterprise-level standards to deliver speed, power and flexibility. A fully secure, user friendly, Windows based application, WinShark crm enables the quick and simple administration of client data from 100 to 100,000 customers.