Brian Cummins Group personalise their client engagement experience with a little help from SME@UTS
After 35 years in business, the team at retail equipment manufacturer Brian Cummins Group (BCG) know that innovation is the key to business growth. As a family-run small-to-medium enterprise (SME), they also know that the cost of accessing the skills, facilities and expertise they need to stay competitive can be challenging.
That changed when they engaged with SME@UTS, a concierge-style service that connects SME manufacturers to university knowledge, student talent, R&D facilities and expertise.
A factory tour and consultation helped the BCG team to identify the key pain points — a lack of Industry 4.0 preparedness in their manufacturing plant and an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that was behind the times — that were hampering their business growth.
Implementing the action plan, the SME@UTS team started connecting them to low-cost solutions across UTS.
“We were originally considering borrowing $15–20 million to build a new manufacturing plant, but the numbers just didn’t stack up,” says Simon Cummins, General Group Manager at BCG.
“During our discussion with UTS, we realised we could look at some lean improvements that would help enhance our operations.”
Smashing the barriers to success
Supported by funding from the Commonwealth Department of Education, SME@UTS exists to reduce the barriers to innovation and digital transformation for SMEs across NSW.
“There’s a plethora of practical opportunities for SMEs to leverage UTS resources. The support from the Department of Education has been instrumental in enabling many business leaders to accelerate their digital transformation journey,” says Annette Dockerty, Program Lead, SME Engagement.
Early on, Annette identified the Software Development Studio and the Mechanical and Mechatronic Design Studio as exciting options for BCG.
These studios, which are part of a suite of UTS programs that SMEs can access,
match senior-level engineering students with real companies seeking expertise to address pressing business challenges.
In the Software Development Studio, BCG presented students with a brief that described what they were looking for: an overhaul of their software system to improve customer experience and engagement.
“At the moment, my sales team will do a quotation and then everything that happens after the initial quote is sent is a manual process. There are no automatic triggers and no automatic engagement that takes place,” Simon says.
“We were lucky enough to get the most amazing group of students working on our project. They took our goal set and created a fully automated solution using third-party software that integrated seamlessly to our current ERP system.”
Over 12 weeks, the students built a bespoke software system for BCG that addressed the company’s needs. The result includes an automated quotation process, as well as extra features including automatic name generation, product images and dynamic marketing content.
Now, for every automatic quote that sends, there are 120 triggers behind the scenes that personalise the client engagement experience.
“The software deployment will categorically save us many administrative hours, and there’s no doubt it will also improve our customer experience,” Simon says.
“I’m certain that over the next 12 months, we’ll be able to see an improvement in sales because of increased engagement with our clients.”
In the Mechanical and Mechatronic Design Studio, students worked in partnership with BCG’s operations manager to design an updated workbench for use in the company’s design and manufacturing workshop.
The existing workbenches were legacy items from almost 35 years ago; now, the new design gives staff in situ access to software programs that will help streamline the manufacturing process.
“There’s now a computer built into the workbench that gives access to all the drawings, customer details, quoted hours and consumables that the team will need at any one time,” Simon says.
“The engineering work that was done on the floor has helped us progress to early-stage preparation for Industry 4.0. It is a massive improvement on what we had previously. ”
A transformational partnership
These solutions have accelerated the use of technology at BCG. The software system is already in use by the company’s Australia-wide sales team while the workbench is slowly being integrated into the production cycle.
While they were delivered by students, the outcomes are on par with what Simon would expect from an established consulting firm.
“I firmly believe that we received professional grade consulting, but the advantage was that we were leading the outcome versus a consultant coming in and saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do’,” he says.
“It felt like more of a partnership. They came in, they listened to us, they understood what we were hoping to achieve and then they put plans in place to deliver it.”
Having recently completed a Managing Modern Industrial Automation microcredential at UTS, Simon is now planning a comprehensive upgrade of the company’s IT systems. When the time comes, he’s planning to hire students or graduates from the UTS Software Studio talent pool.
It’s a next step towards what BCG hopes will become a lasting partnership with SME@UTS — one in which the company can leverage the breadth of opportunities on offer across the university.
Introducing SME@UTS, a dedicated program for easier access to UTS technical expertise and facilities. Our concierge-style service is designed to help SMEs upskill their workforce, access emerging student talent, collaborate on innovative projects, develop strategic roadmaps and test products in our world-class R&D facilities.
Contact the team via SME@UTS.edu.au to arrange a complimentary consultation to explore your needs and ideas. SME@UTS is supported with contributing funds from the Commonwealth Department of Education.