Posted by : bpburnwal on Nov 08, 2003 - 12:10 PM General

Throughout the hurricane season, images of business owners scrambling to prepare for a possible disaster are commonplace, and were seen again this past September with the appearance of Hurricane Isabel. But preparations can be equally intense--and involve more than just plywood--when your business focuses on the maintenance and repair operations (MRO) of industrial companies.
"We knew our branch in Richmond [Va.] was going to go down with the hurricane, so we used our technology and contacted our customer base in the region," says Jake Ring, a senior VP for Newark InOne , a Chicago-based MRO electronics distributor. Newark used its recently installed Seibel customer relationship management system to identify customers affected by the hurricane.

Rather than simply waiting for the calls for replacement equipment once the hurricane hit, Newark called its vulnerable customers ahead of time to let them know their needs would be served even if one or more of Newark's branches went dark. The company targeted five industries deemed to be particularly vulnerable to the storm: manufacturers, transportation companies, hospitals, utilities, and constructions outfits. Sure enough, Richmond was down for three weeks, but Newark customers could still obtain replacement parts for damaged equipment immediately.

Newark also designated a portion of its storm-region sales to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. According to Ring, one customer even pooled its orders and placed a sizeable five-figure order to bolster the donation.

Technology also came into play as companies prepared to submit insurance claims on damaged assets even before the storm hit. For this step, enterprise asset management (EAM) system information can be of help.

According to Marty Osborn, a VP with Datastream Systems , some of its customers planned to use Datastream's EAM software to determine the true value of damaged assets. "Everyone has a fixed-asset ledger, so when the asset is written off, the asset value is zero," explains Osborn. "Yet the intrinsic value of the equipment could be [quite a bit more]. Datastream's system documents the company's investment in depreciated assets." Please visit http://manufacturingsystems.com for more information.