As a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, KONE provides elevators, escalators, and automatic building doors, as well as solutions for maintenance and modernization to add value to buildings throughout their life cycle. In taller, smarter buildings, KONE makes people's journeys safe, convenient, and reliable. Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, they operate in more than 60 countries around the world, employing over 60,000 people and serving 550,000 customers.

KONE, Netherlands, struggled with delivering highly complex Excel and Google form inspections that were often incomplete. In 50% of the cases, a technician had to go back to the worksite because they lacked complete information. This chain of actions led to expensive costs invested in traveling and delays.

Each incomplete form had cost technicians up to one extra hour invested in performing the correct inspection. The technicians had to work with user-unfriendly forms that were difficult to fill, leading to frustration, negative feedback, and more delays. In some other cases, for a technician to access the materials needed, they had to call the back office, or in some cases, even travel to one of the suppliers to request the material, wait for the delivery, and travel back to pick it up. In many cases, it took too much time.

Before starting the work on an elevator or escalator, the technicians waited for hours to have their materials delivered.

The implementation of Smartflow KONE assured the delivery of complete forms since every important question can be set as mandatory in the flow. This helps technicians avoid any missed checks.

Only complete forms can be sent for review. These quick wins have improved sales tenders.

By improving the quality of sales tenders, the hit rate has also gotten better and a bigger amount of tenders can be created having a direct impact on the repair results.

The Smartflow solution has the power to bring people together, giving them the support they need. Using Smartflow, technicians experience positive emotions and their work satisfaction increases since it’s easy to use and it simplifies the work process. Smartflow empowers us to adapt the solution to our needs. Its flexibility in doing so had made Smartflow the most used solution within KONE Netherlands. If you ask our technicians about Smartflow, they will say it’s that one tool they don’t want to lose. It is important that the digital solutions we use to support our business and technicians and improve the way they deliver data and knowledge. Using Smartflow also fastens the sales cycle and improves customer satisfaction since all processes become more effective. When companies improve effectiveness, resources become available easier leading to higher and faster sales.

Nathan Parmentier Process Expert, KONE Netherlands

In the last seven years, Smartflow has helped KONE increase effectiveness while lowering costs.

The Smartflow solution also brings added value when creating the processes for requesting suitable materials. It makes the process quicker and faster, can be done remotely, with zero interaction, and supports technicians with the right questions to ask.

Smartflow makes inspections comfortable because the forms are easy to access, helping technicians save a lot of time and effort. Offering a friendly user experience, enabling technicians to gather information easier, allowing them to review their inspection before delivery, the real-time view within the app, and real-time notifications provided with fixed costs, have improved the overall revenue.

Digitizing processes, forms, checks, and inspections with Smartflow allows KONE to implement them right away and to work as a team by collaborating transparently. KONE has created the concept together with Smartflow’s experts, improving, adjusting, and evaluating it together with the end-user.

KONE Netherlands invests many resources in making sure technicians have a positive experience while performing their work. Smartflow has been easily embraced and adopted by KONE technicians thanks to the user-friendly interface. Smartflow has the capacity to deliver employees’ satisfaction since their work is being simplified dramatically.

Before the implementation of Smartflow, purchase orders were created locally and sent by technicians via email whenever they needed, for example, a spare part, new clothing, or something else.

Then each technician had to wait up to 60 minutes for the office workers to create a purchase order. Smartflow enables the gathering of information collectively.

In 15 minutes, anyone can create a purchase order resulting in zero delays, faster operations, and increased satisfaction among technicians since their waiting time has decreased considerably.

KONE Netherlands creates up to 30.000 forms/year. Technicians save 15 min/form and for some even more, which translates into 525K euros in saved costs/ yearly.

KONE Netherlands saves up to 7500 hours yearly by performing inspections digitally with Smartflow.

Simplifying processes that took too much time and energy, and automating actions were two major needs KONE technicians had. By solving these two gaps their satisfaction grew considerably, creating a positive working environment.

KONE can assure zero paper wastage while performing digital inspections with Smartflow creating an environment-friendly culture.

KONE technicians created up to 33.422 forms in 2021 and plan to add more in the upcoming year.

KONE has gained knowledge and experience with the Smartflow solution that allows them to quickly come up with new concepts and easily adjust the old forms to the current needs. Smartflow supports KONE technicians with tailored features required by the users to assure their satisfaction and success.

Using Smartflow has allowed KONE to onboard new technicians faster, assuring a smooth knowledge transfer and training

Technicians use drag & drop and other visual app-building elements. It also allows them to run condition-based workflows and apply extended business rules.

With Smartflow, technicians are able to collect and report key data with limited to no training in real-time online or offline.

Standardized processes and reduced work have increased the quality of inspections. Technicians can create and submit complete inspections in one go.

Smartflow is a SaaS software platform that digitalizes inspection checklists and standardizes workflows. The cloud-based solution equips companies with a collaborative tool that connects field workers with office representatives to create a fully comprehensive information transfer and data reporting.