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The good old days weren’t always so good. For decades, finding spare parts for the machines that keep your production process up-and-running could be time consuming and tedious. You often had to search for information in a myriad of catalogs, some of which could be out-of-date. If you needed to call for information, you could only connect during business hours.
That was then. This is now. We’re at the dawn of the age of Parts Sophia, an interactive, easy-to-use, multi-lingual and multi-platform tool that’s at your fingertips to keep you connected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Parts Sophia is always wherever you are, ready to take your requests for quotes and orders, give you pricing, and verify whether a part you need is in stock.
Introduced in Europe, exclusively for Biesse and Intermac customers in May 2017, Parts Sophia was unveiled to the North American market two months later. Parts Sophia has now celebrated its first birthday and has proved to be a welcome innovation.
“It’s a bit like the Amazon of our world,” says North America Parts Manager IIario Olivi. “Its self-service, on-demand design gives our customers total control of the parts ordering and tracking process without having to wait on anyone to help.”
Gregory Bell, North America Parts Quality Assurance Leader, says Parts Sophia is very simple and intuitive. “You can quickly set up an exclusive customer login. The system will automatically associate all of your company’s machines to your account, allowing you to flow through this robust, interactive tool by machine serial number. There are three, four-minute videos on the Parts Sophia landing page, but most don’t need to watch them. They simply dive right in.”
Customers can register one person as an administrator, and create more accounts for additional employees. This structure makes Parts Sophia a valuable tool for the maintenance team as well as the purchasing agent. Maintenance can find the part code and open a request to the purchasing agent. If a customer wants their buyer to be the only one who can see prices, that’s easy to set up too. “One customer has 22 employees registered, but not everyone has ordering capability,” Bell says. “The customization capability of Parts Sophia allows information sharing, but not loss of centralized control and allows each user to find what they need quickly”
“The Parts Portal is interactive and easy to navigate due to the use of graphics and machine schema,” Olivi says. “Simply click until you find the part or, if you have the part number, just type it in and check part availability right away.”
“It saves so much time spent ordering as well as checking the status of orders by removing the need to send emails and make phone calls,” Bell says.
Another great benefit of Parts Sophia is the ability to create a recommended spare parts list based on Biesse’s experience. Users can consult this list and get information that was not readily available before, making it easy to determine what type of parts you should keep in stock.
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Customized account capabilities
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Available 24/7
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Easy navigation by machine serial number
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Shopping cart function with availability and price list
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Order history and tracking
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Recommended spare parts list
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App for mobile devices
In July, Biesse and Intermac offered all US and Canadian customers incentive to try Parts Sophia. When you placed an order through the portal, you were rewarded with free ground shipment.
See for yourself how simple and easy it is to use Parts Sophia today. You’ll quickly discover that, thanks to such intuitive technology, these really are the good old days.
For tech support, call or email Gregory Bell directly: 704-357-3131 ext. 1089. Gregory.Bell@biesseamerica.com.
