Lippert Components

The challenge

With 25-plus brands and more than 120 plants around the world, Lippert Components, Inc. (Lippert™) receives quite a few inquiries from customers. Often, the customers are looking for proof of delivery or invoice details.

Lippert — which manufactures and supplies high-quality components to the RV, marine and automotive industries — uses Hyland’s Perceptive Content and Brainware intelligent capture to automate invoice processing and order entry. But the company lacked a one-stop shop for its many dealers to get valuable information, and fielding inquiries from customers was a highly manual, time-intensive process for its employees.

The solution

Lippert built a “Lippert Now” dealer portal that utilizes the Perceptive Content integration for Salesforce.

The portal allows customers to check their order status, order history and tracking information. In the portal, dealers can click on an invoice and access pertinent information. They can also save the invoice as a PDF or click on a “print” icon.

“Customers are able to log in themselves and access their data,” Lippert Business Systems Analyst Sarah Demitruk said. “If they can navigate to an order within Salesforce, they can pull up the documentation themselves.”

The Perceptive Content integration for Salesforce combines Perceptive’s document management and imaging capabilities with Salesforce’s customer relationship management offerings. For Lippert, one of the results has been a much-needed self-service tool for its plethora of customers.

The difference

Storage savings: Perceptive Content’s Salesforce integration provides a complete view of customer information. An additional perk for Lippert is that the documents are saved in the Hyland Cloud, which avoids Salesforce storage costs.

That can add up to significant savings for a company like Lippert, which has more than 14,000 employees and facilities in eight countries.

Increased functionality: Lippert has been a Perceptive Content customer since 2007. The platform helps organizations manage content in any format and capture information from almost any source.

“I like the fact that there’s different functionality. We’re always looking to try and use it more,” Demitruk said of Perceptive.

Lippert’s veteran employees “know the ins and outs” of the platform, she added.

“Why would you look elsewhere for X, Y, Z?” Demitruk said.

Improved customer experience: Sometimes, customers misplace information. In the past, that would lead to calls to Lippert’s service team as dealers sought proof of delivery and other key details.

The dealer portal hasn’t eliminated those calls, but there are fewer requests. Lippert’s customers appreciate that they can log in to the portal and retrieve any information they need.

“Now I can stop bugging y’all for invoices,” a customer told Lippert. “That’s awesome!”

Heightened focus: Providing self-service capabilities to dealers is “less intensive on our employees,” who don’t have to field as many inquiries, Demitruk said.

Another initiative that has helped staff focus on more meaningful tasks is Lippert’s cloud conversion. By moving to Perceptive Content in the Hyland Cloud, Lippert has become more agile and innovative and less reliant on installations and configurations.

“It allows us to focus on the most meaningful aspects of our business and allows our cloud technology partners to do what they do best,” Lippert Vice President of Enterprise Applications Seth DeBriere said.

Second act: Lippert recently launched a second portal — one for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

The portal gives OEM customers the self-service access that Lippert’s dealer portal provides. The initiative is another customer experience gain for the company.

Demitruk, who said she’s never shy about asking questions, likes that Lippert’s “questions are always addressed.”

Hyland, she added, always finds “the right people we need to talk to so we can work through the issue together.”

Added DeBriere, Lippert’s VP of enterprise applications, “If you have that right partner, it is possible. And Hyland is that right partner for us.”